Oh, Say, Canseco

There are times during APBA baseball season replays when some players far exceed their actual statistical performance, clubbing more home runs, having a far better batting average, winning more games on the mound then their real-life counterparts.

And there are times when they don't produce as well as expected and for whatever reason have stats lower in the game than they did in real life.

When I replayed the 1998 season, that steroid-laced slugfest between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, both performed even above their actual tallies. McGwire ended up with some inane tally of 76 or so (I'm not at home to check my past season stats). Even San Diego Padres outfielder Greg Vaughn outdid his real self in that replay, hitting more than the 50 he did in the actual season.

But when I rolled 1957, I anticipated a lot more from Mickey Mantle. He was coming off his Triple Crown season of 1956 and I expected his APBA card to reflect that. The cards, for those of you uninitiated in APBA games, are created based upon player's real hitting and fielding tendencies. A home run slugger in the real game will have a card that should produce a lot of home runs in the replay game. Inversely, a player with a ton of strikeouts, like, for instance, Rob Deer in the 1991 season, will have several "13s" on his card, the corresponding number to a whiff.

Then, there are also the times when APBA players perform outstandingly for part of a season and then "cool off" during another part. Think Reggie Jackson and that 1969 season of his. By July 31, 1969, he had 40 home runs in the real game and was on pace to beat Roger Maris' season record of 61 homers. But then his bat shut down. He only hit seven more home runs during the year.

That's happening with Jose Canseco in my 1991 replay currently underway. By May 31, 1991, in the replay, Canseco had 16 home runs. In June, he hit 15 more and at the All-Star break, he sat with 32 home runs. There was a time when I knew he'd hit a home run whenever I rolled the dice. A toss of "66," the universal home run result, would seem to show up constantly. Or, if someone was on base, Canseco's result would be a '5,' meaning a roundtripper in that situation.

But then his bat went quiet and now, as I reach July 31, 1991, Canseco has 35 home runs for the season. After hitting a home run on July 1, he didn't put one in the stands until July 15 - a two-week stretch with naught a clout. He's also batted .223 for the month of July. Before the All-Star break, and I've not tallied the stats and am only guessing based on observation, Canseco hit over .300.

All that to say, this is what drives this APBA game in our lives from childhood through adulthood. Most of us began playing the game at an early age, thrilled just to be holding the cards and feeling some slight, personal connection with our childhood heroes. It stuck with us, though, as we left that age of innocence and evolved into more adult skepticism, wariness and cynicism. That thrill is still manifested in the cards. We may be old and void of much of the youthful hope, but the cards still offer a spark of that.

If the cards played out exactly as the ballplayers did in real life, really, what would be the point of playing the game? There's always that outlier, that oddity of some player that stands out. Sure, the game is based on math and many players' replay stats will be similar to their actual seasonal numbers, but there's so much more. There's Canseco in a slump, Mantle not playing up to expectations, substitutes doing extraordinary things (for a while, it seemed whenever I put in Dave Bergman at first for the 1991 Detroit Tigers to give Cecil Fielder a rest, he'd go 3 for 5 with a home and double) and others excelling far beyond their statistical realms.

There's more than two months remaining in my 1991 replay. Will Canseco get hot again? Is Maris' 61 home runs still the record for the season (pre-2001 Barry Bonds)? Will some other player suddenly stand out for the rest of the season? It's why we keep rolling the games.