New Canaan, CT -- APBA computer baseball fans can now participate in that
time-honored sport of second guessing professional baseball managers.
MicroManager, the newest release for APBA Baseball from Miller Associates,
puts fans to the test by allowing them to take their ideas onto the
field.

MicroManager is a user-programmable, rule-based expert system that lets the
fan define baseball concepts and strategies in Baseball Talk, a language
designed for expressing baseball ideas. The new MicroManager allows
playing APBA against Blackie Dugan or Blaze Pascual or any other manager
that the user creates in his own image. It's designed for season replays,
draft league away games, solo play, or spectator mode.

With Baseball Talk, fans can create managers with their own rational or
wacky ideas about how to manage a team. In the MicroManager playbook
editor, fans can write baseball definitions that express their ideas about
baseball. For instance, they could define "IsBetterHitterThanBatter" as
having a batting average at least 30 points higher than the current
batter. They can then use these definitions to create baseball strategies
which make managerial decisions for the team, like
"PinchHit.7thInningOrLater". It's a challenge to capture good baseball
ideas. But once they're expressed clearly, the micromanager can head for
the field.

For a quick start, MicroManager comes with Blackie Dugan and Blaze
Pascual--two built-in managers. By fielding one of these managers, a fan
can learn how a manager works without creating one himself. Fielding a
manager takes only a few seconds; the APBA game plays the same with or
without a micromanager.

MicroManager allows a fan to manage both teams himself, to play solo
against the computer, or to let micromanagers manage both teams. If he
chooses a micromanager like Blackie Dugan to manage a team, a fan has a
variety of play modes (see below).

MicroManager passes the acid test for computer managers: Does it make good
baseball decisions? Blackie and Blaze make all the routine decisions like
when to play in or deep, which base to throw to, when to intentionally
walk a batter, when to swing away or bunt, and when to pinch hit when the
game is on the line.

But Blackie and Blaze also make the tougher calls like when to cut off the
throw, when to pinch run in order to hit-and-run or steal, how to manage a
depleted bench, when to double switch, when to shift and substitute
players to optimize the defense or offense, and how to manage a pitching
staff.

"Even John McGraw wouldn't have managed every team well," says Roswell
Miller, a principal of Miller Associates, and the chief architect of
MicroManager. "The same is true with previous computer managers, so we
took the difficult road of providing an open architecture that lets you
create as many new managers as you want. It's harder for the user, and it
was certainly harder for us. But in the long run, this sort of open system
will allow for managers you couldn't create otherwise."

If a fan disagrees with the strategy used by Blackie or Blaze, with the
open architecture the strategy can be modified. The fan must think through
his beliefs about baseball strategy, and then decide how to express those
beliefs. Miller Associates will publish a book describing Blackie Dugan's
strategy with hints on how to modify micromanagers.

Full-season replayers traditionally have had to suffer through those second
division, late season games that won't have any effect on the standings.
With dualing micromanagers, a fan can now play two last place teams
against each other and then either watch them--be a spectator--or go into
speeded up Quick Play to get the games done.

In the fastest mode, on a 386 class machine, games take about 2 minutes to
complete; on a 286/AT it's 3 to 4 minutes. In this mode, the game still
unfolds on the screen (though it's too fast to read) and all of the
complex managerial decisions are still made as if the game were at a more
drama-filled speed.

If a fan wants to play a series between two teams, he can set MicroManager
to play up to 255 consecutive games. MicroManager cycles through the
pre-stored line-ups to make player use flexible.

Detail mode allows a fan to watch the manager think. This is a "Brain scan"
which shows the details of the manager's decision making.

Break mode lets fans study a certain type of decision, like
hitting-and-running, playing the infield in or pinch hitting. They can set
the manager to Break on specific decisions. When the manager Breaks, the
game pauses and the fan has a chance to study and override the decision.

Step mode allows watching the game one play at a time. After each play the
user can study the game situation and decide whether to let the
micromanager make the decision.

In Run mode the game continues automatically at the Quick Play speed chosen
by the user, from very fast to slow. A fan can relax and watch two
micromanagers play against each other.

Any of these modes can be interrupted at any time by pressing any key. The
user can then change to another mode or return to Manual mode. In Manual
mode the gamer manages the team himself. In all modes, the commands for
carrying out actions are the same as APBA Version 1.5.

MicroManager comes with the same install program as other APBA Baseball
programs. SETUP guides a user through hard disk install and decompresses
the program. If a user accepts the default subdirectories, installation
takes approximately one minute on a 27-ms hard drive.

MicroManager requires APBA Major League Players Baseball; a PC or PS/2
compatible computer; a hard drive with 2MB available storage; monochrome
or color graphics adapter; at least 640K of memory; two drives; and DOS
3.1 or later. DOS 5.0 or some other memory swapper is required if the user
runs any TSRs.

MicroManager is available directly from Miller Associates by calling the
order line 1-800-654-5472, or by mail or fax. Price is $49.95.
MicroManager includes the APBA 1.5 Upgrade ($12 separately).

Miller Associates, Inc., based in New Canaan, was founded in 1983. The
company, a pioneer in PC baseball applications, also publishes Wizard 2.0,
StatMaster 2.0, Duerk's Electronic Baseball Encyclopedia, the only
PC-based baseball encyclopedia, and more than forty years of APBA season
disks.

Miller Associates, 11 Burtis Ave, Suite 200, New Canaan, CT 06840
203-972-0777

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