Update: May 18, 1950

The pace has slowed in the 1950 APBA baseball replay after two months of rolling and I'm finding myself in an odd situation: I'm tired at night. I never used to be, but now, after slogging home and eating whatever chow I can dig up, I zonk out, it seems.

I still won't go to bed until after 1 a.m. Old habits die hard. But I'm more of a zombie than I used to be in the wee hours. And that doesn't bode well for replaying the baseball game. Sure, I've done games before when tired; there have been those moments when I forgot how many outs there were in an inning, and I've failed to accurately count runs scored when sleep approaches, but I catch them quickly.

This time, I'm too tired at times to even start a game on occasion. Nap time tends to slow the replay down.

But, all that said, I've reached May 18, 1950, in the baseball season and I've picked up on a few facts. There's parity in the National League. The Boston Braves are leading the NL! In real life, Boston finished fourth. Pittsburgh is second; in the actual season, they finished dead last.

Part of the Braves' success can be attributed to catcher Walker Cooper who is batting .392 with six home runs and 27 RBIs. Yes, I am still keeping stats! Outfielder Roy Hartsfield, in limited action, is batting .454 with 4 home runs and Warren Spahn is 5-0 with 36 strikeouts.

After a slow start, Ralph Kiner is leading the Pirates with a .349 batting average, 7 home runs and 25 RBIs.

I'm a bit behind in updating my stats, so these are the latest available. Being tired at night doesn't just keep me from rolling the games. The stat loading is also on hold at times.

Here are the standings for the 1950 APBA replay season

AMERICAN LEAGUE NATIONAL LEAGUE

Team          W  L   Pct           Team            W   L   Pct.

New York   21 8  .742           Boston          19 12   .613

Boston        22 11 .666           Pittsburgh     17 11  .607

Detroit        18  9  .667           Philadelphia 16 15  .516

Cleveland   18 12 .600           St. Louis       14 15  .483

Washington 14 16 .467          Brooklyn      14  16  .467

Chicago      11 19 .367           Cincinnati     13 15  .464

St. Louis      9  19 .321           Chicago        11 15   .423

Philadelphia 6 25 .194           New York     12 17   .414

Other outstanding NL players so far: Stan Musial is batting .406, Ted Kluszewski is batting .395 for Cincinnati and Duke Snider is playing far ahead of his real season for the Dodgers by batting .380. On the inverse, I'm disappointed with Jackie Robinson. He's batting .280, but only after a couple of decent games. He was hitting at about a .230 clip for a while.

In the American League, Dom DiMaggio is pacing Boston with a .419 average and Vern Stephens has knocked in 30 runs for the Red Sox. George Kell has an average of .340 for Detroit and Joe DiMaggio is living up to expectations with a .413 batting average with 9 home runs and 25 RBIs.

Again, it's still early in the season and a couple of good games, or bad games, will drastically change batting averages.

I'll update the averages soon — I'm about 40 games behind — as soon as I can stay awake.