The Slow Pace

Sometimes, APBA replays go quickly. I've finished a full season baseball play — albeit a pre-1969 season when less teams played fewer games — in less than a year.

Sometimes, they take much longer. It took me 17 months to wrap up the 1950 replay I did.

It's taking me the longest time ever to advance the 1991 replay I'm doing now, but I have a valid reason.

Replay fans embark on journeys when they begin a replay. I've written about this here before. We elect new presidents, major news events happen, people get older, teams win championships in the real sports all while we continue playing our own replays game-by-game.

Two years ago tonight, on Aug. 16, 2015, I began rolling the 1991 season. Houston beat Cincinnati, 5-3, and Roger Clemens struck out 10 to lead Boston over Toronto, 1-0. The season was underway. I was back into the groove of another season and I figured I could knock this one out in about a year and a half, what with my limited social life and the fast pace I can maintain playing these games.

I start each season with anticipation. There are many games to roll and during the trek, players to get to know personalities of teams, winning streaks, losing streaks, players who achieve above their real life statistics and players who don't produce as well as they did in the real seasons. You really experience a season playing it one game at a time. And there's always the looking ahead factor. You knock out one season and start another. It's not that the games are tedious. By all means they're aren't. It just that there are so many seasons to experience, things to learn.

I began the 1991 season with all that in mind.

But a week after the first dice roll hit the table, I made a phone call. Again, I've written of that here before. I called a girl in northern Illinois on Aug. 23 that set my world a-spinnin'. A month later I drove up there, met her, fell butt over head in love and … voila! .. life change.

Holly has moved to Arkansas and a lot of my time is now divested in the new life. Where once I was a reclusive geek who remained at home after work, rolling games and listening to U2, Fleetwood Mac and Radiohead on the stereo, now I'm often zipping off to Wal-Mart to pick up bread, toilet paper and whatever lotion of the day the boss wants. Ah, life.

Tonight, I'll probably roll Game #800 in the 1991 season. There's 2,106 games in a full replay and I don't do rainouts. So, I'm 38 percent finished with the season. At this rate, I'll complete the 1991 replay in about five and a half years.

But the game is always there, and I find time occasionally to roll contests. It's shaping up to be yet another good season. Seattle is a surprise, leading the American League West Division and Minnesota, the actual World Series of that year, is two games behind the Mariners. The two Canadian teams are bookends of this season. Toronto, with a 43-20 record, is the best team in the league. Montreal, winning only 15 and losing 48, are far the worst. Pittsburgh and Atlanta are also taking big leads in their National League divisions.

And Jose Canseco is on pace to hit 66 home runs for the season. He's clubbed 26 in 63 games so far for Oakland, which otherwise is pretty dismal, anchoring last place in the American League West, 15.5 games behind Seattle.

I'll update the standings in a post soon. In addition to the change in frequency of games, I've not been writing Love, Life and APBA as much either.

Changes. We all have them in life at some point. I've been here before. I stopped playing the APBA football and basketball contests as much when I went off to college, maybe tossing a game or two on the weekends I returned home. And I once began a 1925 season and, after burning out on the errors and multitudes of walks each pitcher gave up, I went cold turkey and quit the season. I may have reached about 33 percent of the season and simply stopped. If I resume it, I'll start over since it's been so long.

But 1991 is on the forefront and I'll continue rolling at my slow pace, just enjoying the time I do have with the game when I do find time in my changed life.