For us, beer baseball is basically better beer pong. Bigger teams, bigger plays, high stakes. It’s beer pong crossed with flip cup, and played like baseball. An epic drinking game. A competitive boozer. Sounds complicated: but it isn’t. So we’ll break it down here. Let us take you where you need to go.
What you need:
To play, you’ll need 14 cups (plastic ones, able to be flipped and dropped etc), a ping pong ball, a reasonably sized table, and room to move around it. The game is played with a minimum of four players, but more is better. We've played with eight per team, and it rules.
Set up:
For the set up, each team put four cups in a straight line near your edge of the table. The cups rims should be touching each other. These are the targets for the “batting” team (the team who will throw the ping pong ball). Fill all the damn cups with beer about halfway.
Next put three cups spaced out along each side of the table. These are the “bases” (where you will go depending on what target you hit). Fill these cups with some damn alcoholic beverages about halfway as well!
Then split into two teams. Preferably of an even number of players (if not, wing it). Then, determine your batting order, and have a shoot-out or coin flip to determine which team chooses whether to bat or defend first.
Here’s a highly technical picture by experts that is definitely not drawn by me in Microsoft word just to show you the setup visually:
Gameplay:
To play, one by one, players from the batting team take turns to throw ping pong balls at the four cups that are in a line touching each other on the other side of the table.
The cup closest to them is first base, the cup second from them is second base, the third cup is third base, and the cup closest to the defending team is a home run. If they hit a cup, they move to the corresponding base (or score a home run!)
Each player gets three attempts before they strike out. If they miss the table completely and the ball is caught by the defending team before it hits the floor, they are out immediately. Furthermore, if the ball hits the rim of a cup and is caught by the defending team before it hits the table or the floor, they are also out.
Whenever a base (cup) is hit, someone from the defending team must drink all the beer in that cup. Then refill it.
Once you are on a base, you advance the same number of bases as your teammate hits. (E.g. you are on first base and your teammate hits 3rd base – you record a run!)
Once you are on a base, someone from the opposing team must mirror you on that base. Why? Because you can steal bases. You can steal bases while your team is batting at any time by starting a game of flip cup and beating your defender (if they are not paying attention… too bad for them).
To play flipcup:
- Finish the drink in the cup before you
- Place the empty cup on the edge of the table, and using two fingers from one hand only, try to flip it up and over so it lands face down (open end down).
- The defender races you to do the same
- If you successfully flip your cup first, youre safe and advance to the next base. If the defender wins, you are out.
Yes, you may try to go all the way through all bases at once if you keep winning and want to.
The defending team can choose to have other players defend the other bases (so that if you are beaten they can defend the next base immediately), or to station them behind the table for extra catching, or to run a moving defence where you try to catch and defend.
You record a run by either hitting a home run in the cup, or by getting to home base (either through teammate runs, by stealing bases, or some combination of the two). Record each run your team scores. After all batting players have batted, they become the defense and the other team goes!!
Choose on whether you want to play one innings (everyone from each team bats once) or multiple innings!
The team with the most runs at the end wins.
Good luck.