Rules of Play

Tearing Up the Pea Patch is a draw-poker-like game played with the true career records of major league ballplayers. It is free, requires no account, and settles its own arguments.

1.00 — Objectives

1.01 The objective of each player is to field the finest nine — a lineup whose combined careers best satisfy the Pennant Rule in force.

2.00 — The Deck

2.01 Every card bears a ballplayer's true career line. Three decks are sanctioned: the Full Roster; the Immortals (Hall of Famers only); and the Journeymen (everyone not so enshrined).

Rule 2.01 Comment: Enshrinement is a matter of record, not of merit. The Committee declines to adjudicate Cooperstown's omissions and invites players to do so loudly among themselves.

2.02 Each card shows the player's initials over his stat fingerprint — a twelve-ray figure drawn from the career itself. No two players in the catalog throw the same figure. No photograph, likeness, or club insignia appears on any card.

3.00 — The Deal and the Draws

3.01 Each hand begins with nine ballplayers, dealt face up. 3.02 Four draws follow, strictly descending: trade as many as four men, then three, then two, then one. 3.03 A player may stand pat at any time, forfeiting all remaining draws.

3.04 The nine held when the drawing ends are the hand. There is no discard, no benching, and no further selection of any kind.

Rule 3.04 Comment: Earlier editions required retaining five cards from a dealt seven, a provision abolished in the 2026 revision after field reports established that nobody could find it. A lineup is nine men. It has always been nine men.

4.00 — Judgment

4.01 Each hand is judged under one Pennant Rule: Slugger (most combined homers), Pure Contact (highest combined average), Table Setter (on-base), Run Producer (RBI), Wheels (steals), Bust Line 2,200 (nearest 2,200 homers without going over; exceed it and score nothing), or Mystery Stat (concealed until judgment; you draw blind and answer for it anyway).

Rule 4.01 Comment: Pure Contact punishes greed. A twelve-thousand-at-bat legend is a great weight upon a batting average, and the Committee has watched many a proud lineup sink beneath one.

4.02 Your nine is graded against every possible nine in the deal — all 92,378 — and the grade is the share of them you beat. A grade of 100 is the one perfect lineup. 4.03 Your nine careers are then combined into a single composite batting line, and the judges name the historical player it most resembles. This finding is advisory, unappealable, and the entire point.

5.00 — Pennant Matches

5.01 Two players is 9 Outs; three, 18; four, 27. 5.02 Every seat receives the identical deal and draw stream, sealed until all have batted — the duplicate principle, borrowed from bridge and dressed in flannel. Luck is issued equally and is therefore no excuse.

5.03 The inning's winner collects one out from each defeated opponent, and is credited by margin: above 50, a single; above 60, a double; above 70, a triple; above 80, a home run. A winning grade of 50 or below is a walk — outs collected, no at bat charged. Each defeated player goes 0 for 1. 5.04 A tie is a foul ball: dead hand, nothing moves.

5.05 First to the target wins — and every champion, at every table, records exactly nine winning innings. A complete game. The arithmetic permits no other outcome, which is why the Committee chose it. 5.06 Batting lines are real: averages accrue across each match and your whole career of matches.

6.00 — Pennant by Post

6.01 Matches may be conducted by correspondence, identified by a six-character wire code. Innings stay sealed until every seat has batted. 6.02 Only decisions travel the wire; scores are never transmitted — every device derives the standings by replay.

Rule 6.02 Comment: Under this construction a fabricated score is not forbidden. It is unexpressible, which the Committee regards as the superior prohibition.

7.00 — Challenge Links

7.01 A completed solo game compresses into a code of about seventy characters. A rival who opens it plays your identical deal against your ghost, grade for grade.

8.00 — The Judges

8.01 The Judges are deterministic: the same deal, from the same seed, is identical on every device on earth. The daily deal is one deal, shared by all. 8.02 The Judges keep no accounts, sell no notices, and call no third parties. The whole ballpark is one file.

Historical Note

Red Barber, calling ballgames on the radio when the radio was the ballpark, kept a phrase for a team on a rampage: they were tearin' up the pea patch. This game is named in his honor, and the pea vines on the signage are for him.

A Macguffin Co. Game · Where the Legends Add Up