Mow is Me

I declared my lawn mower dead a few weeks ago when I attempted to start it and it mocked me.

It did that slow “chug-chug-chug” noise like an evil chuckle before the engine quit. I tried pull starting it several times, raising blisters on my hand and nearly yanking my arm out of socket only to hear that chugging. The noise sounded like the mower was laughing. “Yeah, sure, you’re going to get this started,” it said. “Heh-heh-heh-heh.”

Half of my front yard was cut when the mower gave up the ghost. I tried repairing it. For some reason, I have a talent for fixing lawn mowers. I can’t balance a checkbook or tie my shoe normally, but I can repair a Briggs and Stratton small engine blindfolded. It’s like when God was dishing out the skills, he pointed at me and said “Lawn engine repair.” I would like to have bargained that my chosen talent could have been business savvy or professional athlete or some other money-making gift. However, negotiation, alas, was also not the talent I was deemed with, either.

I stood in the yard, looking at the half-mown yard (half-grassed?)  and realized I had no other option but to roll out a 70-year-old rotary mower to finish the job. For some reason, during Holly’s move  from Illinois to here, we were able to bring along her grandfather’s Scotts’ Silent  “reel mower.” The rotary mower, for those who are less than 90 years old, is the type with no engine. Blades rotate along the wheels’ axle, quietly clipping the grass. I think Pa on “Little House on the Prairie” was the last to use one.

It sounded good in theory. I actually embraced the idea at first. I wouldn’t have to buy gasoline, the job would be quiet and peaceful and there’d be a sense of accomplishment in some nostalgic form.  I could free myself from the shackles of subdivision standards and do away with the gas-powered tradition.

So, I rolled the rotary, or “clippy mower,” out and finished the yard. It was slow going and, because the blades were somewhat dull, it wasn’t the greatest cut. But at least the yard was finished and I thought I found something new to do.  I rationalized that I needed the exercise of pushing a heavy wheeled thing around the yard all evening.  Despite my sloth-like existence, I do like the concept of health. It may be somewhat ironic that I love watching the NBC’s “American  Ninja Warrior,” the television show that features constants running through a gauntlet that requires them to crawl hand-over-hand on some narrow beam or to swing on a bar and leap across a pool of water.  My Ninja moves including dragging myself out of the sunken couch in our living room, dodging the cat, weaving among his scattered toys and opening the refrigerator for my giant bottle of Pepsi. Me, a Ninja? None ya’ business.

The following week, I rolled the clippy mower out again. The yard had grown because of several rains and pushing the Scotts’ Silent was difficult. And it wasn’t silent. My noises of exertions and cursing rendered the product’s name moot. It was like pushing a plow through mud without a horse. I’d back up, rear up and go at again, only to clip two or three blades of grass.

I was the neighborhood show, too. I looked like an Amish person. All I needed was suspenders, a long beard and a better attitude than I had .

Some lawn care business guy stopped his truck by our yard to gaze at my work.

“Ain’t seen one of those in a long time,” he said, pointing at the clippy.

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that,” I replied.

I finished the yard in three days. Three days! I’d come home from work, change into the mowing clothes and tackle the yard, trying to get as much done before the light faded … both the sunlight and my own personal  light called my soul.

Finally, I realized my return to the days of yore was not going to work. Holly and I went to a local hardware store last week and I ended up buying a gas-powered mower and returned to the 21^st century. I cranked it up the next day and mowed the entire yard in 40 minutes. No one stopped to point at me and, as far as I know, the mower made no cutting remarks about me. (I know, dumb pun)

How does this all apply to APBA? Well, considering it took three days to mow a yard and adding in the prep time, the showering afterward and the general  tired malaise that followed each session, there was little time to roll games.  By the time I became civilized again, it was late and only enough time to roll a game or two in my 1947 replay before I had to go to bed, get up and do it all over again the following day.

On the day I breezed across the yard with the new mower, I got three or four games in.

Because it’s a Briggs and Stratton engine, I can repair it and keep it running for a long while. Mowing will no longer cut into APBA time.

Mowing.  It’s such a pain in the grass.

1947 Begins

Starting an APBA replay of a new season is always fun and interesting, and I think that’s why most of us do it. It takes dedication and determination to plow through an entire season, rolling the dice game by game, but it is also rewarding.

And, you can learn something along the way. Sure, we know about the “headliners” of whatever season we’re doing. We know all about the Ty Cobbs, Henry Aarons, Mickey Mantles, Barry Bonds et al.  Because APBA is an intellectual game, most of the players are also avid readers as well. I’m sure we’ve all delved into our share of baseball biographies and histories. But, there are also the other, less known players that pop up in a replay and, after rolling many games, we begin to learn their characteristics.
I began rolling 1947 about a month ago after finishing my four-year odyssey of the 1991 season. Based upon my own baseball likes and particulars, this may be the best season for me to replay.

Examples: I’m not one of those “managers” who replaces pitchers for every batter in the late innings. I’m still of the old school of leaving a starter in until he really gets into trouble and then, finally, bringing in a relief pitcher to mop up. I may end up using only three or four pitchers in a game, which works because the APBA company only designates cards for a certain amount of players. Generally, when you buy the basic set, you get nine to 11 pitchers on average. Subtract the regular starters and spot starters and you have three or four relief pitchers.

That said, in 1947, managers didn’t go to their bullpens that often.  New York Yankee pitchers completed 47 percent of the games they started that season. Brooklyn starters finished 42 percent of their contests.  Last year, the Yankees had one pitcher, Masahiro Tanaka, complete a game. The other 161 games New York played in 2017 had at least two pitchers.

So, I can leave pitchers in longer and, because it’s that era, I don’t completely skew the game.

There were no designated hitters in 1947, so that lets managers have at least one more element of strategy. Despite my penchant for keeping pitchers in longer, do I pull a starter late in the game and pinch hit for him when it’s his turn to bat?

Home runs are at a premium. It’s not a slugfest like it is today. The National League’s 1947 home run hitters, Ralph Kiner and  Johnny Mize, each had 51 dingers to lead the league. That’s more than enough.  Ted Williams’ 32 home runs lead the American League.

Other interesting observations from 1947 include a lot of walks. Pitchers almost toss as many base-on-balls as they do strikeouts. In the first replay game for the Boston Red Sox, Williams had four walks. In his complete, 2-1, victory over the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland pitcher Bob Feller notched six walks to his 2 strike outs.

Scoring varies. In my replay, the St. Louis Cardinals clubbed Cincinnati, 17-0. A few games later, the Pirates edged the Reds, 2-0. Many games are pretty close and entertaining to the end.  In one contest, Brooklyn beat the Boston Braves in 17 innings when, with one out in Brooklyn, Pee Wee Reese singled in Dixie Walker who was on second for the win. Where else can you say something like that but APBA?

And here are a couple of other notes from the first month of the 1947 replay. Fitting, Joe DiMaggio had the first RBI of the season, leading his Yankees to a 10-4 win over the Washington Senators.  Thomas Henrich had a grand slam for the Yanks in that game, too.

Kiner hit a home run in his first game against Chicago. Willliams hit two home runs against Washington. Mize and Terry Moore also had two-HR games.

Williams leads the AL now with four home runs after games through April 27, 1947. Bill Nicholson of the Cubs also has four homers to lead the National League.

And there are a few surprises with the teams. The Cardinals lead the NL with an 8-2 record, 1.5 games ahead of the New York Giants and their 7-4 mark. The Dodgers, those Bums, are, surprisingly, only 5-6. In the American League, sparked by Williams’ early Triple Crown run of 4 HRs, 12 RBIs and .395 batting average, the Red Sox are 8-3 and lead the Yankees, who are 7-5. DIMaggio has yet to hit a home run, but is batting .370 and has seven RBIs.

It’s early in the season and anything can happen as the games progress. But so far, 1947 looks like a very interesting and enjoyable season to do.

Life Happens During Replays

A lot can happen in your life while you do an APBA season replay, especially if the replay takes nearly four years. While rolling the dice and recreating the past, playing game-by-game of some season of ago, at the same time the game-player is also creating his or her own new history.

I began my 1991 APBA season replay Aug. 16, 2015, with no idea what my future would present.

A week later, I called Holly, my soon-to-be Illinois girl, for the first time and embarked on a journey that’s still going. Before The Call, I could finish a season replay in about a year. I had a pretty shallow life of just working and going home. I’d think nothing of tossin’ several games each night; there was no other thing to do. In previous replays, it was a routine. Throw a frozen dinner in the microwave;  throw Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Joe Cocker on the CD player; and throw dice each night. Lather, rinse, repeat and there you had my life.

But after making The Call, I drove to northern Illinois in September of that year to meet Holly and promptly fell head over heels for her. The games suddenly became secondary, a thing done to pass time before my next trip. And that’s why it took so much longer than before for me to complete a season replay.

A lot of life happened, though, between the first pitch and the last out of the 1991 season.

During the length of my 1991 replay, this is all that happened in my own life: I went from being a single loner to a near-married guy with domestic responsibilities and constant trips to Wal-Mart for hairspray, cleaners and pet food. I found companionship and someone to watch shows like "Dateline"  and to go on neighborhood walks with.

I was laid off of my newspaper bureau job and I had five different jobs during the replay’s tenure. I now have two jobs and work seven days a week and I got out of the newspaper business entirely, something I never thought would happen.

I cut the cable television and internet services at home to save money and have become even more culturally illiterate. Speaking of culture, during the replay, the country elected a new president and shows like “The Bachelor” grew in “popularity” during peak dramas and then returned to their limited relevance.  The Cubs won the World Series  in 2016, about 15 months after I began the replay.

We lost Holly’s mother, who, sadly, passed away suddenly in June. We also lost two cats and Thor, an old Siberian Husky who may have been the greatest dog of all time. We got another cat in late June who is extremely rambunctious. I have to watch him to ensure he doesn’t bite the APBA cards or eat the dice during games.

We got a new car after my trusty Honda Pilot bit the dust (Must have been all those road trips to Chicago). And, on that subject of travel, since I started the 1991 replay, I’ve driven to Chicago 38 times now.

Physically, I continue falling apart. My knees are in constant pain and my hair is even whiter than when I began the replay. I ended up in the emergency room in 2016 after I got  pretty sick once. Doctors actually told me I was showing early signs of bladder and prostate cancer. Thankfully, I got much better and the cancer scare is no longer around.

Despite all the trauma, the losses, the job changes over the past four years, the frustration and stresses of it all, Holly and I continue to be strong together and we continue to grow in the relationship.

There’s a lot of life that goes on during replays. Everyone who does replays, or who is alive for that matter, experiences life and its changes.

Like I said, while we are recreating games that happened in the past, we are forging ahead with our own live and creating things that will eventually become part of our own pasts.

And there’s something worth noting about the APBA game itself. While life was going on, the game was always part of it. You can’t say that about many games, but APBA has always been there. Since most of us began playing APBA as children, the games have taken a back seat in various points along our lives. Going to college, getting married, job changes, moves, things happen that take precedence for a while.

But the game always comes back. It always does.