APBA New Year

It’s that time of year again where we look back on our successes and, in my case at least, realize that, alas, they weren’t all that good.

But the new year beckons and it’s a time for creating changes, for making improvements and for achieving new goals. At least for a few days it is.

I used to make all those standard New Year’s Resolutions that everyone does and then breaks because normal habits set back in. I’ve continually done the Lose Weight Resolution, but generally break it soon into the year in some feeding binge that includes Pepsis, ice cream, greasy potato chips and ashamed guilt.

That usually happens by the half time of the Rose Bowl game on Jan. 1, so, granted, it is a short-lived resolution.

I’ve also resolved to make more money each year, too. I try and freelance write for magazines, but after a litany of rejections from magazines I say a curse word that rhymes with the buck I’m trying to grab.

Being a better person, eating right, helping others are all formidable resolutions, but they go against my genetics. How can you change 52 years of experience merely by firmly declaring one day, “By golly, I’m going do it this time.”?

Yeah, those improvements ain’t goin’ happen in 2013.

So, instead, I am going to focus on more attainable platitudes. That’s not to say I’m making it easier. (I once went out with a girl and during that first-date fact-finding mission, she found out I set high goals in my writing at work and was often disappointed I didn’t reach them. “Why don’t you just lower your goals?” she asked, which rankled me. Immediately, popping into my head was “I did. I’m going out with you.” But, fortunately, I kept that opinion to myself. Note to myself: A good resolution is to think before speaking).

So, my resolutions for 2013 will involve mainly sports and the APBA game I play and write about here.

I resolve to learn more about sports in 2013. I can say, “Sure, Nebraska will be good in football next year.” But I need to know why. I need to back it up and I want to sound knowledgeable enough to be on Fox Sports Southwest. (Originally, I thought about ESPN, but maybe I am lowering my goals.).

I resolve to not hate the National Hockey League when it returns to play sometime in the next decade. I am one of only three Arkansans who love hockey, and the lockout has really hurt. I am sure I’ll act like some jilted high school girl grabbing back her on again, off again boyfriend when the season resumes.

I resolve to be more aware that there are more than the four major sports out there. I’ll try and watch tennis and bowling and that fighting thing in a cage a bit more. But I won’t accept soccer. I’d break that resolution to watch soccer sooner than I would break the Lose Weight Resolution.

And, I resolve to continue playing APBA at the pace I’m doing. I have several seasons yet to do and each take time. I’ll wrap up this 1981 baseball season I’m on sometime in April and then tackle 1942. Then there’s many more ahead.

So, APBA fans, enjoy the New Year and, if you make resolutions, put thought into them and make those that are both challenging and reachable. But, if you’re like me, those healthy ones will be busted by mid afternoon on Jan. 1.

Christmas Magic

APBA first came to me on Christmas of 1977 tucked among the shirts, socks, a pair of shoes and other presents, wrapped in the large box it came in from the company.

I was 17 and I was pretty sure my parents bought me the 1976 football season. I had requested it, promoting the game during the fall and talking about it all during the 1977 NFL season. It cost $18.75, a steep price for a kid in the days before video games, but I constantly told them I would get my money’s worth.

Two years earlier, they bought me a Sherco II dice replay baseball game that replaced the raucous electric baseball game I had. The APBA football game, I reasoned, would replace the equally loud electric football game I played with each fall and winter.

So, I expected the game that Christmas, but, as was the case with my folks, they always saved the best present, the headliner, for last and I had to go through the myriad of other gifts first. Clothing, a box of Lifesavers, pens and notebooks for school, a book or two — all appreciated, but, alas, set aside in anticipation of the big gift.

When my parents finally slid the large box out from under the tree, I was sure it was the APBA football game. But I had to see it to believe it.

I opened it, and there it was. In my hands were the game cards for the players I watched on television each week. Each card was packed in the player’s team envelopes. I looked at the stars of the day — Roger Staubach for the Cowboys, Bert Jones with the Colts, Terry Bradshaw in Pittsburgh — and I knew this was something special.

It was a complex game to learn, and I remember spending that Christmas day and night reading the instructions and playing a practice game. School was on Christmas break so I stayed up into the wee hours that night learning the game.

The seed was planted.

Two years later, my parents bought me the NBA version of the game. Most longtime APBA players never liked the game, criticizing it for its extremely slow pace of play. But I loved it and for the next 14 years it was the main game I played.

Now, 35 years later I still stay up late playing the game. This time it’s baseball. I was a late bloomer by getting into APBA baseball in 1998, 21 years after I was first introduced to the company. Most people begin with baseball. I had to do it backwards.

I am widowed now and have no children. My parents are long gone and I never had any siblings. The magic of Christmas is no longer a possibility for me. In fact, this year I’m working on Christmas Day at my newspaper. My assignments are to cover the possibility of ice and snow the following day and to write about others who are working that day.

But the magic of the game lives on as I continue to roll. I hope somewhere out there a wrapped present under a Christmas tree contains an APBA game for some  youngster. And, after he sifts through the shirts and other presents, he opens the APBA box and begins a lifelong journey of his own magic.

A Year Into the 1981 Replay

As the final dice roll of the Aug. 18, 1981, APBA replay baseball game between St. Louis and San Diego tumbled on the mouse pad tonight and I recorded the last out, it ended my first year of replaying this season.

A year ago today, I began rolling the 1981 season and embarked on a venture that the replay gamers take every time they begin a project.

It is a long venture, one that is drawn out for months upon months, game upon game, dice roll upon roll.

I’ve played 1,543 games in the year’s time. That averages to 4.2 games when you divide it by 366 days (I’m including the Leap Year Day of 2012). I don’t know how it compares to other people’s replay schedules; it may be more than an average daily amount for many people.  On the same hand, it may be slow. I average playing a real day’s slate of games in about four days. A four-to-one ratio is not a great pace to knock out the games quickly.

But I plod on, determined to finish the season.

And this one is a bit different. In the real 1981 season the games were disrupted by a player’s strike in June, resulting in the loss of 50-60 games per team. It was followed by a goofy playoff format akin to minor league baseball where the league winner of the first half of the season played the league winner of the second half to move onto the World Series.

In APBA, there was no strike. The games are played as scheduled. So that makes the season longer for me. Throw in the fact that I don’t do rain outs and every team plays its full schedule of 162 games.

A lot has happened in the real world this past year while I played the fictional season. As a news reporter, I covered a lingering drought in this state for many months. I wrote about several trials, detailed several murders and other crimes in my coverage area and scribed numerous decisions made by city and county leaders. Life moves on. And the progression of real life is mirrored somewhat by the progression of the 1981 replay days.

I keep a small desk flip calendar on the table where I play the APBA games. But rather than keep it current with the present day’s date, I set it to whatever day I’m playing the season. So, the calendar will stay on Aug. 18, 1981, until I finish that day’s slate and move on to the next day.

I still have 563 games remaining to complete the 1981 season. If I maintain my 4.2-game a day pace, I’ll wrap this up in 134 days. So, by mid April I’ll have finished this season and gear up for the next one.

It’s never ending, this obsession with the game. And the pace I keep means one of two things to me. Either I possess the dedication and the determination to complete seasons (I’ve finished six seasons so far since 1998 when I started playing the baseball games), or I totally don’t have a life.

What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

A friend of mine asked what began as an innocuous question about the frequency of my APBA game playing regimen.

She had read some of my previous posts here about the zen of this game and she knew I was obsessed with the dice rolling hobby and the historical knowledge it provides.

But she didn’t know how often I played and that was the basis of her query. 

“So, do you only play the games on the weekend?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, somewhat surprised by her supposition. “I play every day. I roll four or five games each day.”

She paused and then continued on to the next subject. But I knew what would have come next. I’ve been there before. There are some who think this game is child’s play and a waste of time and that I should be doing something better with my time. In the past, I’ve had former girlfriends tell me that had I spent as much energy on, say, writing a book or curing cancer as I do on the game, I’d be rich.

Notice, these are “former” girlfriends I’m talking about. They didn’t get the peace the game brings and the feeling of accomplishment it gives when you complete a season. And if they don’t get that, they ain’t for me.

Of course on the inverse, had I spent more time solving the world’s problems than juggling the 1981 Minnesota Twins’ anemic batting lineup or scheduling the rotation of the Dodgers’ 1964 pitching staff, I may have become rich and been able to keep any  one of those exes from gaining the moniker “former.”

But this game is important in my routine of life. And the fact that I play it nearly every day may ease the problems I have for not being rich and not winning the Nobel Prize for fixin’ diseases. At least it brings a sense of satisfaction and soothes the fact that, nay, I’m not going to be able to afford a new car every other year.

“You need to get out more,” the same friend who questioned my game-playing schedule once said. And I thought, “What are you talking about? I go places every night.” I’m at several ballparks nightly while playing the games. If Delta gave out frequent flyer miles for the stops I’ve made while replaying the 1981 season alone, I’d be able to fly to the moon and back for free.

Other than when I was sick earlier this year, or on the rare occasion  if I have a very early morning news assignment, I grab the dice each day.

And it’s become a part of my daily habit. Wake up, roll two or three games, go to work, come home, eat, roll two or three games, go to bed, lather, rinse, repeat.

When things change, it affects me. Today, for example, I fell behind while writing a seemingly endless barrage of news and stayed at work late. There were three murders in the area and I had to chronicle each one. When I finished writing one, a police department would issue a news release on a second killing. That done, a third release would appear, all while I watched the clock. I felt like yelling out, “Stop getting whacked! I’ve got games scheduled for tonight.”

But, like most days, I made it home and eventually drifted back to the room where the game lies and got in a few games.

Tomorrow, it’ll be the same. And, although I’m not spending my time curing cancer, at least I’m not out there killing folks.

1981 Update at Game No. 1,500

The APBA replay games keep rolling; one by one the season progresses. It’s a slow process when you look at the big picture — the entire season. But there are also accomplishments the replayer revels in when surpassing certain marks and I hit another tonight.

With the completion of the Aug. 15, 1981, game of the New York Yankees at Detroit, I rolled game number 1,500 in my 1981 baseball replay. I have 10 days left before I’ll reach a year in playing this season, so I’m averaging about four games a day. Not bad, I think, when I consider I lost a week of games when I flirted with pneumonia earlier this year and I work at a place that seems to ramp up production quotas and stress as the year progresses.

The season so far has been a good one, and while I play 1981, I often think back on that year for me personally. It was somewhat of a turning point for me, one of many in life’s travels, I guess, but that year made an impression on in many ways. And this game provides a mechanism for me to look back and reflect on life 31 years ago.

As I’ve said here before, I’ve ignore the actual baseball strike that plagued the middle of the 1981 season. All is perfect in APBA. No strikes, no lockouts, no player discord, no rainouts. Every game intended to be played that year will be played.

All is perfect in APBA.

All, except for the Minnesota Twins, which endured a horrific 26-game losing streak in the replay, and now the Yankees,which are in a seven-game losing streak of their own.

Here are my standings after game 1,500 was just rolled.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

EAST        W L WEST W L

Detroit 70 46 Kansas City 74 40

New York 69 47 California 71 46

Milwaukee68 47 Chicago 62 53

Baltimore  65 51 Oakland 60 57

Boston 56 59 Texas 55 61

Cleveland  52 63 Seattle 37 79

Toronto 41 76 Minnesota 30 85

NATIONAL LEAGUE

EAST W L WEST W L

Montreal 79 35 Los Angeles 78 36

Phil’phia 67 48 Cincinnati     68 48

St. Louis 61 54 Houston 66 48

Pittsbrgh 52 64 Atlanta 48 67

Chicago 44 72 San Fran. 48 68

New York42 73 San Diego 37 77

Quirky Superstitions

A friend of mine said she described me to another person as being “quirky and eccentric.”

Well, I’m certainly not eccentric. I don’t have enough money to be considered as such. The difference between “eccentric” and simply “weird” is based upon income. You can follow the psychological definition of a mental status by finances. Rich equals “eccentric.” Middle income can be considered “weird” or “different.” Poverty level is “insane.”

I’ll take “different.”

But I’ll grant her that I may be quirky at times.

And some of that quirk comes from sports, I’m sure. There are quirky superstitions sports fans have to follow in order to lead their team to victory. You know — don’t talk about an ongoing no-hitter; wear the lucky pair of socks, pants, hat, etc., during games; sit on the correct side of the couch when watching games on television; park in the same spot if you can when attending games live. The list goes on.

And in my case, and this may be the quirky part, it carries over to the replay game I love and write about. There are several obsessive-compulsive things I do during games. For instance, I roll the dice on a computer mouse pad. If the dice goes off the pad, it doesn’t count. Dice have to stay on the pad.

If a pitcher in my replay games gives up six earned runs in six innings and I take him out, I won’t write on the score card the “6-6-6” he earns for the number of innings, runs and earned runs. I’ll leave the runs off first and write in the walks and strike outs first. Can’t be summoning the devil with the evil number during replays, now.

Also, I won’t leave in the middle of a game that I’m playing. I stay to the end, and at times that’s difficult when it’s 2 a.m. and a game goes into extra innings. It’s also becoming a bit more of a task since my last doctor’s visit. The doc put me on a diarrhetic to help get fluid off because I’m old and a fat ass and yada yada... The point is the pill has a tendency to create situations. Nothing worse than a rain delay in a game, if you get my drift. 

I also compile the games’ final scores, update the standings and keep up with the little statistics that I do the same way after every game. The routine is compulsive, but I figure it works since I’ve been playing APBA for 35 years now.

So, it’s superstitious, quirky, weird, insane. But it is what it is and I’ll continue doing it the same way. I’m hoping one day I’ll make enough that my actions are considered only “eccentric.”

When a Season Ends

The end of any sports season is sad in itself, but I include a ritualistic ceremony that makes the completion of whatever sports I’m obsessing over that much more forlorn.

After the last World Series pitch is thrown, after the victors parade the  Stanley Cup around the ice, the colored confetti falls from the Super Bowl stadium and the coach snips the netting from the winning team’s basketball goal, I sit for a moment and reflect.

Then, the ritual begins.

Sadly, I take the preview magazine of whatever season just concluded and move it from my living room coffee table back to a bedroom closet where all old sporting magazines go.

Since I’m not married, I have no one telling me I can’t put things on the coffee table. I’m not even sure why it’s called a “coffee table.” I don’t put coffee there. My table is generally covered with the preview magazines, Sports Illustrateds and Hockey News. 

I just moved the baseball preview publication back to the closet shelf, stacking it with years of other magazines. I’ve done it for years, now.

I don’t think I’m a hoarder by any means. I’ve never had the health department come in with masks and expressions of morbid disgust and I can easily maneuver around my home without tripping over anything I collect. I mean, it’s only one shelf where the magazines reside.

Instead, I think it’s the reluctance of letting the season go. Sure, there’s another one ahead. Sports is never ending. There are more magazines to buy and seasons to watch. But the passing of a season is rather sad. We watch it in its entirety, know the personalities of the players and teams, learn the quirky stories that accompany the games and become immersed in it all.

I don’t know why I keep the old magazines. I may use the schedules printed in them whenever I decided to do an APBA season replay. I don’t frequent the magazines that much other than maybe to quickly reminisce on a team or a player of ago. 

Soon, the college and pro football magazines will be placed in the closet shelf. The college basketball preview will go there in April. And the NHL preview ... I have no idea when I’ll put that away. There may be no season at all; I could shelf it now for that matter.

So, when the season ends, I pick up the magazine and carry it like a Tibetan monk back to the sacred back bedroom closet and stack it with the rest of them. I’m not a hoarder, but it is tough letting that stuff go.

The Streak Ends

After losing 26 games in a row  in my 1981 APBA baseball replay game, the Minnesota Twins’ streak is over. It took them a Pete Mackanin home run in the 12th inning to beat Seattle, and what had become a routine of suffering for me has ended

I opted to replay the 1981 season for two purposes. One was to correct the baseball strike that split the real season in half. The division almost rendered that year irrelevant. The playoffs system that ensued didn’t seem real  what with the first and second half division winners playing each other to advance to the league championships. The L.A. Dodgers’ World Series victory didn’t carry the credibility that a full season win would have.

The second reason for that year’s replay was for a more personal basis. My college girlfriend moved to New York to attend art school in the fall of 1980 and we didn’t make it. I learned that absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. It makes it forget. That New Year’s Eve of 1980 was the last day I saw her. The following year began sadly for me in the way  that lost love renders all things for youngsters. 

So, I tried to rely on ensuing baseball campaign in the spring of 1981 to quell the loss. But that season broke, like my heart, and for over a month in midsummer, there were no games; the parks were empty, the bats silence and, in my stat-addled world, the newspaper was vacant of box scores.

Forward 31 years to now. I began to replay the 1981 season in December to see how things would have turned out had there been no strike. I wanted also to focus on a season that, when the teams were actually playing, I didn’t totally pay attention to. Each baseball year is a gift and, as a fan, I felt I should have devoted more heed to it. Instead of moping, I should have followed the game.

But in an attempt to right my emotional wrong of 1981, I brought back another world of hurt. Those dang Twins couldn’t win, and it got to the point of being ridiculous. After they lost their first 10 games, I began wondering if they would win. The next 10 loses came and went as well and it reached absurdity.

They tied the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies’ 23-game losing streak, which set the actual baseball record for futility. And they lost three more.

I play four or five games a day, so it takes about three days of replays to complete one real day of baseball. The Twins’ streak lasted more than two months in my replay.

The Twins’ victory almost didn’t happen. The team built a 7-2 lead in the sixth inning of its game against Seattle, but gave up four runs in the sixth inning on seven singles. I felt the doom approaching that came 26 times before, the realization that the team I grew up with was going to lose yet another game. Dave Engle hit a homer for Minnesota in the top of the eighth and the Twins led, 8-6. But Richie Zisk (remember him?) hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the inning and the teams were tied.

Mackanin, who hit only four home runs in the real season, popped his with two outs in the 12th and the Twins hung on.

Now, I reflect back on that 26-game streak as well as my life in 1981. I once went to a relationship counselor on the bequest of another girlfriend who, after I questioned his motives, told me I analyzed things too much. “What do you mean by that?” I queried him.

Maybe I do overanalyze things and try to find meaning in all, including this 1981 season. I’ll have to ponder on that one. In the meantime, the Twins’ next replay game is 11 games away for me and they play Seattle again. It’ll take three or four more days to get to that game. They’ve won one game now. Let’s see if they can start a new streak.