1965: When the Myth and Magic of Baseball Began

I was about to turn 5 in the summer of 1965 and I was just getting a hint of the legends and mythical figures of those who played baseball for a living.

My parents had moved to Madison, Wisc., a year earlier so my dad could finish his doctorate in music at the University of Wisconsin and I was about to attend kindergarten that fall in a school about two blocks from our West Lawn Avenue home. I had yet to become obsessed with sports and at that age I was more interested in playing cowboys and Indians and going to the nearby city zoo.

But news of baseball, and football because of the state’s worship of the Green Bay Packers, was always available, even for a youngster my age.

Somewhere, I heard about Henry Aaron, the outfielder for the Milwaukee Braves that summer. It was either from my father relating a story he had heard earlier or from something I saw on television. I’m sure I didn’t read it in the Sporting News while poring over box scores, which I started doing a decade later. Wherever it came from, it implanted the first notion that baseball players were special.

Aaron, the story went, had such strong wrists that he could hit baseballs through outfield walls. Aaron had already achieved godlike status in Wisconsin for his 1957 MVP season and winning the World Series against the New York Yankees with his three home runs that year. I wasn’t alive then, but I had heard of Aaron, so the story of his powerful wrists had to be true.

One late summer day before school started for both me and my father, my family drove to Milwaukee. I sat in the back of our old Rambler station wagon and looked at the city. We were downtown and we passed what I thought was County Stadium where the Braves played, driving right next to the brick walls of what I believed was the outfield wall. I’m sure it wasn’t. There was no parking area for fans; it must have been some construction site. But I looked closely and saw sheets of plywood pinned to the wall. I assumed it was the outfield wall; we were looking from the outside, so it had to be the back of the wall. Again, I didn’t even think of stadium seating for the fans behind and above the wall, just that where the outfield ended the street began. Remember, I was only 5.

I noticed holes in the plywood and, by gosh, I knew, I knew, they were made by the slashing line drives of Aaron. The myth became a reality in my world and Aaron was elevated to my favorite player status. Still is, by the way.

Now, 55 years later, I know, no matter how strong Aaron’s wrists were, he couldn’t drive baseballs through outfield walls some 360 feet away. Still, I like the tale and I hang on to that.

I began the 1965 APBA baseball replay a couple of weeks ago and when Aaron is at bat, I think of that story. We hold on to the magic of baseball all these years. Rolling the game dice for him brings back that memory and of a time when my only worries were if my friend across the street could come outside and play and if the lion in the nearby zoo could roar loud enough in the evenings that I could hear him through the open windows of the bedroom.

One of my APBA friends said 1965 was her favorite season to replay. I may echo her on that assessment, although usually whatever season I’m doing is my favorite. However, 1965 seems really special. I remember so many of the players on these teams, and it’s sad that many are passing away. Joe Morgan is the Houston Astros’ second baseman. Jim Bouton, four years from his “Ball Four” fame, is a starter for the Yankees. The Braves are stacked with Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Joe Torre and Felipe Alou, one of the three fascinating Alous who played in that era. I get to roll for Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Lou Brock, Curt Flood and Bill White are on a Cardinals’ team that’s doing really well in the replay so far. Willie Stargell, who I emulated his hitch-swing later when I played whiffle ball in Minnesota, is with the Pirates. And I get to roll for Harmon Killebrew, who I idolized along with Aaron.

This is one of the main reasons I believe APBA game players love this game. We can go back in time when we remember these players. There’s no Covid-19 in  APBA, no players’ strikes and no salary fights. There are not even any rainouts in my replays. It’s a great way to remember the times. And when I roll for Aaron, there’s a chance that maybe, just maybe, he may drive one so hard that it does go through the outfield wall and into the streets of Milwaukee.

APBA Christmas 2020

Another Christmas has arrived and for most of us, I’m guessing, the magic of it all, the excitement of the times, has somewhat passed by.

I’m not being a curmudgeon saying “Bah,” to the holiday, but I’m offering that as we age, the tables of this season have tipped. When we were kids, we got things. Now, those of us who ended up with kids, we give things.

I never had kids and I worked at the newspaper on Christmas days so others could be with their families during the nine years between when my wife died and I met Holly, who is now my family. One Christmas, I covered a deliberate fire set at the boyhood home of former Pres. Bill Clinton in southern Arkansas. Another year, I wrote a story about people who had to work on the holiday and then filed a late story about a snow storm that hit northern Arkansas that night.

But, despite the negative tone of all this, there is still some magic for those of us who play the APBA games. Most of us who play this game are probably reaching middle age or beyond. We grew up in a time before Play Stations and other video games and our sports games consisted of cards or spinners or dice. But we loved those games and for many of us, I bet, we got our initiation into APBA through Christmas.

I did. In 1977, 43 years ago, my parents bought me the APBA football game. It was the headliner present of the season. It beat the shirts, sweater, books and other things I received then and I remember the heft of the package. I still recall that Christmas night, poring over the cards and realizing I had a sports universe right there. I played Washington and the New York Giants in my first game. I probably did it wrong, but I entered the realm that I’m still in. A year later, the APBA basketball game was under the Christmas tree and I was hooked with the game company.

Flash forward nearly half a century. I am no longer toiling in news and instead work for the prosecuting attorney in the county in which I live. We are off Thursday and Friday for the holiday. I spent Christmas Eve Day playing games in the 1965 APBA baseball replay I began two weeks ago.

The Christmas magic is still there. I’m 60, but I still had that feeling of wonder as a child as I rolled a game between the Milwaukee Braves and the Chicago Cubs. The wind must have been blowing out of County Stadium in Milwaukee. Eddie Mathews hit two home runs, Henry Aaron, Joe Torre, and Gene Oliver each hit one for the Braves. Billy Williams and reserve catcher Chris Krug, who with a “5” has one of the lowest ratings for a catcher I’ve seen, each hit homers for the Cubs.

Earlier in the day, Willie Mays hit his second home run of the season, pacing the Giants to a doubleheader sweep over the New York Mets. And even earlier, Pittsburgh and Houston split games in their doubleheader. Later tonight, as Santa loads his sleigh and heads out on his run, the Los Angeles Dodgers will face the Philadelphia Phillies. Sandy Koufax is scheduled to start his second game of the season.

So, despite my age and the loss of the childhood awe of the overall season, there still is that spirit of excitement with this game.

And, raise your hands if you’re with me on this: Whenever you order a season from the APBA company, you wait for it to arrive with anxiety. And when it comes, regardless of the month, you tear into it much as you did when you were a child opening a Christmas present. There’s a shelf by our kitchen door in the garage where the postman leaves packages. I’ve always gotten a charge when I saw a box on that shelf with unmistakable red APBA logo.

What else have we carried through our lives this long? The game still has that innocence we had as youngsters. It’s a simple game. Roll two dice, look at the results on a player’s card, match that with the results on a chart and see what happens. But it’s also a complex game. Things can happen that inspire our imagination. Willie Stargell hit two home runs in a game I played a week ago. I didn’t need to see it occur on a video game screen. I could see Stargell do his hitch swing and then clout one over the Pittsburgh fence.

And there’s that magic that we hold onto that is the spirit of Christmas. Despite changes in life, whether it’s loss or failed dreams or not having enough money or just being alone on the holiday, those of us who roll the game still have that feeling we had when we were young and first played the game.

Merry Christmas, APBA brethren.

1947 World Series recap

Amidst the backdrop of uncertainty and bizarre times, I recently completed the 1947 APBA replay that I began in August 2019. Other than a brief stop in daily play when I got somewhat burned out and another stretch when I dealt with two infections, the season moved along pretty quickly and its resolve turned out well. Like I always, always say when doing these replays. It was a good season.

And one of the draws of APBA is learning the particular season. Sure, when we roll the Brooklyn Dodgers of 1947, we know of Jackie Robinson and Gil Hodges and Ralph Branca, but I learned of relief pitcher Hugh Casey who, I believe, cost the Dodgers’ their pennant with poor pitching during the stretch. The Dodgers lost the pennant to the Cardinals by six games. Casey lost six games during the season, mostly during that stretch. There was a point when he’d come to the mound, I almost expected him to blow the lead and lose the game. Often, he did.

So, we see some of the nuances of the season develop as we play. The New York Giants seemed to hit back-to-back home runs often. The team led the majors with 231 home runs. In the real 1947, they hit 221 home runs to lead baseball. And in a mirror to real life again, Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize tied, each with 53 dingers, for the home run lead in my replay. In the reason season, each hit 51.

There were frustrating teams to play. Cleveland, with Bob Feller on the mound and decent bats, couldn’t make a run and finished 17 games behind the Yankees. The White Sox only had Rudy York, who played well above the rest of his White Sox and the Southsiders finished a dismal 68-86, some 28 games behind New York. And speaking of dismal, the Cubs ended up 53-101, 51 games behind the Cardinals and one game behind Pittsburgh for last place.

As I battled through a serious kidney and prostate infection and then tested positive for Covid-19 around Thanksgiving, I wrapped up the season slowly. Going into the World Series, I picked the Cardinals to win in five games. The Redbirds’ pitching was strong. MVP Stan Musial batted .348 with 32 home runs and 149 RBIs and White Kurowski also hit 32 home runs. The Yankees were a good team, but they seemed inconsistent. They could just as easily score 14 runs against a Philadelphia As team as score one run against the Tigers or Indians. It was hard to predict how they’d do. My prediction, I would discover, would be wrong.

Here’s how the World Series games went.

Game 1 St. Louis 9 at New York 6

The Cards opened with back-to-back home runs. Terry Moore and Musial each clouted a lone shot off Yankee starter Spec Shea. The Yankees responded with a six-run third, but St. Louis chipped back, scoring three in the fourth, tying the game at 6 in the seventh and then adding three in the ninth to take Game 1.

Game 2 St. Louis 4 at New York 8

Tommy Henrich hit two home runs, driving in four runs and Yankees pitcher Spud Chandler added his own shot to pace New York to an easy Game 2 win.

Game 3 New York 5 at St. Louis 1

The Cardinals took the lead in the first inning as the game moved back to Sportsmens’ Park in St. Louis and Moore drove in Red Shoendienst. But Yanks’ pitcher Allie Reynolds shut the Birds down. The key blow came in the sixth inning when Phil Rizzuto drove in two runs with a triple.

Game 4 New York 3 at St. Louis 4

The Cardinals had taken a 3-0 lead into the seventh when pitcher Murry Dickson walked three batters with the bases loaded. Enos Slaughter had hit a two-run homer in the sixth to give the Birds a seemingly insurmountable lead. After the Yankees tied the game, Slaughter stepped up to the plate with two out in the bottom of the ninth and belted out a single, scoring Shoendienst for the winning run.

Game 5 New York 8 at St. Louis 2

The Yankees took a three-game to two-game lead while dominating St. Louis in Game 5. Bull Johnson drove in three runs for New York and Joe DiMaggio, quiet for most of the Series, clipped a two-run double in the ninth. This game showed that the Yankees did have the depth to be a World Series champion.

Game 6 St. Louis 3 at New York 2

Del Rice hit a two-run home run for the Cardinals in the second and held onto a 3-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth. Rizzuto hit a two-run shot with two outs to make it interesting but Harry “The Cat” Breechen got Snuffy Stirnweiss for the last out and the victory.

Game 7 St. Louis 1 at New York 3

Spud Chandler gave up six hits in his complete Game 7 win. The Yanks scored two in the second when catcher Aar0n Robinson hit a one-out single. Chandler added an insurance run in the sixth doubling in Robinson. The Cardinals scored their lone run in the third when Musial drove in Schoendienst and when pinch hitter Ron Northey grounded out to Stirnweiss in the ninth, New York captured its crown.

The season is over. The game cards have returned to the envelopes and boxes and the next season is about to begin. During the quarantine period of my covid issues, I got the 1965 season ready to play. I wrote out team pages with complete schedules, set up pitching line ups, created stat pages for home runs and pitching records. One era, 1947, is over. Another is set to begin. One thing I already noticed is the number of strikeouts in the 1965 season. There were an awful lot of walks in 1947. In the fourth game I’ve played in this 1965 season already, Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax struck out 14! In the following game, Juan Marichal and Bob Veale each had nine strike outs for their Giants’ and Pirates’ teams, respectively.

Despite the ever-changing world, one thing is certain, APBA will always be there with games for us to delve into, to forget about the struggles for a while, to learn about another era and just to relax and watch as our heroes perform.

Covid

The plan was to finish my 1947 APBA baseball replay during the Thanksgiving break. For only the second time in more than 20 years, I had both Thursday and Friday off since I’ve been out of news reporting. Couple that with the two-day weekend and I had a four-day slot open to wrap up the season.

Instead, I was knocked down by two different infections that even the iconic red and white APBA dice couldn’t conquer.

The season was only about 20 games of being finished. The St. Louis Cardinals had easily won the National League, fueled by MVP Stan Musial who batted .348 with 32 home runs and 149 RBIs. He also had a 19-game hitting streak during the season. The American League was much tighter and with only two days remaining, New York, Boston and Detroit were all capable of winning the pennant.

But on the weekend before Thanksgiving, I began feeling sluggish. I was getting weak and - this is way too much information but bear with me – I was having a hard time taking a leak. I say this because I had this issue once before in 2016 and I had a hint it was returning. It was a bacterial infection of the kidney, bladder and prostate. Lovely, being of this age. The infection caused swelling of that entire pee line and going to the bathroom was an exercise in torture. Think of trying to water your yard while your car is parked on the hose. It felt like my bladder was having dry heaves. My doctor diagnosed it as prostitis, which is Latin for “Holy, s***, I can’t piss.”

Medicine quickly corrected it, but I still felt bad. My temperature began spiking and on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, it climbed to 101.7 degrees. I missed another day of work and then went back to the doctor. Meanwhile, the APBA games were suspended for a bit. I was able to roll a game every so often when the fog of the fever cleared. I did have a classic, too. Bob Feller threw a 13-inning no-hitter against Detroit, winning 2-1 and knocking the Tigers out of the race. The Yankees then killed the Philadelphia As, 15-1, and Boston was stunned by the hapless Washington Senators, 9-4, and the Yanks were in the Series. Despite sickness, some sense of the games had to go on.

I returned to the doctor the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. I had just started a small cough, alerting the physician who jammed a Covid test up my nose so far and into my brain I can’t recall 1984 anymore. Two days later: positive. I, along with millions of other have this awful virus now. It pisses me off, too. (As much as can be pissed due to the prostitis.)  I don’t go anywhere but work and to the store if I have to and I wear the mask when I go. Still, Covid-19 is everywhere. Of the 20 people or so who work on the third floor of the courthouse annex where I work, at least eight have now tested positive. It’s inevitable that this disease will continue to spread; northeast Arkansas, where I live, is a hotbed. Maybe it’s because this is a college town. Maybe it’s because our city leaders are afraid to shut down things because they don’t want to lose tax revenues. Maybe it’s because of the culture of adaptation. I went into a tire store the other day to repair a tire. My mask had a broken ear thing and I asked the proprietor if he had an extra.

“Don’t need one,” he gruffed. “They do more harm than good.”

I looked on the wall for his medical degree and his high standing with the Centers for Disease Control. All I saw was a plaque that he could rotate tires well.

The good news is that Holly has tested negative despite fluttering over me in care during the worst. The health department thinks I may have had a minor bout of  Covid and my contagious period is over now. Let’s hope so. In a year of insanity and despair, some good news is greatly welcomed.

Enough politics. I’m quarantined now. I feel a lot better and I’ll finish the 1947 Series soon. I also used this time off to do all the prep work for my next replay: 1965. I write out team schedules and write pages to keep up with home runs, win-loss records and saves. I’m always debating about creating a full stat program, but generally opt out and just enjoy watching the games roll. And I’m chomping to play 1965, too, which was given to be as a gift by an APBA brethren. Each new season is an adventure, a voyage to learn about the season in depth. I was alive during 1965; the players are memories of my childhood. Henry Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, Sandy Koufax, Frank Robinson. They’re all there, waiting to provide hours of enjoyment in the hobby that has stayed with us for decades.

 

No-hitter

The Brooklyn Dodgers were struggling in a pennant race in my 1947 APBA baseball replay. With only seven games remaining, they were trailing the St. Louis Cardinals by 5.5 games. Basically, the Bums had to win each of their last games and the Cardinals had to bomb in historic fashion.

Five of the Redbirds’ remaining eight games are against the Chicago Cubs, the worst team in the replay that is sure to lose 100 games this year.

So, after being swept in three games in St. Louis a few days earlier, Brooklyn took two out of three in Cincinnati and then traveled for what seemed to be two easy games to Pittsburgh before returning to Ebbetts Field. In fact, the first game of the two-game series against the Pirates, played on Sept. 17, 1947, seemed more of a football game. The Dodgers scored three touchdowns on their way to a 21-15 rout. It only stood to reason to speculate they’d score plenty the following game and head home with hopes still intact.

Ralph Branca, the Dodgers’ ace with a 20-6 record, faced Pirates’ hurler Kirby Higbe, an overused pitcher, both as a starter and reliever, with a 14-16 record. APBA rated Branca, a 21-year-old right-hander, as an “A” pitcher, which is about as good as it gets in the mostly weak pitching of that era. Higbe, a 32-year-old rightie from Columbia, S.C., was given a “C” rating. APBA grades pitchers based on their ERA and won-lost record, much like a grading system in school.

It seemed like a lock that the Dodgers would win, especially when only one hit was recorded in the game.

Brooklyn opened with Pete Reiser getting on base with a two-out walk. Dixie Walker then grounded out and the inning was over.

The Pirates responded with two runs. Jim Russell tripled, driving in Wally Westlake, and then Westlake scored on a long sacrifice fly by Frankie Gustine. Pittsburgh led, 2-0.

From then on, it was a pitcher’s duel. Higbe retired the next seven batters before walking keen-eyed Reiser again in the fourth inning. Meanwhile, Branca matched by getting eight out in a row before Hank Greenberg walked.  Higbe then bore down, getting 16 in a row out. Branca, meanwhile holding Pittsburgh hitless since the first, struck out Russell to end the eight and the Dodgers were up in the top of the ninth.

Higbe walked Eddie Miksis to open the top of the ninth and, after getting Eddie Stanky out on a grounder, hit Jackie Robinson with a pitch. For the first time in the game, Brooklyn had two runners on base. Reiser popped up and Walker, who leads Brooklyn with 132 RBIs in my replay, came to bat. Could he clout a home run and give the Dodgers the lead? Would he poke a single through a hole, scoring Miksis and continuing hope?

Nope.

Instead, and this is the case I’ve seen many times in APBA. Higbe bore down and struck Walker out.

The line score was simple. Branca gave up one hit and two runs. He walked four and struck out three. Higbe walked three and struck out five.

Earlier, St.  Louis beat the Boston Braves, 2-1, winning their 99^th game. A day later, on Sept. 19, the Cards took a 5-1 lead in the second inning against the hapless Cubs and a victory seemed assured. But Chicago came back, and fueled by Bill Nicholson’s 32^nd home run of the season, won, 7-6, after Emil Kush filled in as a reliever and gained his third save for the Cubs.

The no-hitter symbolized the frustration of the Dodger’s last two months of the season. On July 1, Brooklyn was a half game ahead of the Cardinals. Branca had won 11 games at that point and Harry Taylor and Joe Hatten had each taken 10 games. But since then, the Dodgers have gone 45-29 to St. Louis’ 51-22 mark. Stan Musial, with 141 RBIs and 30 home runs as of Sept. 19, 1947, is a lock to win the National League Most Valuable Player. Although the Cards have only two pitchers who could win 20 games in the season – Harry Breechen and Cotton Brazle – only one pitcher has a losing record. Jim Hearn has a 5-6 mark on the mound for the Cardinals.

Brooklyn will host Boston for two games and then New York before traveling for one game each in Boston and Philadelphia. Even if they win all six games to finish with a 100-54 record, if the Cardinals win two games of their remaining eight, which they surely will, they’ll take the pennant and head to the World Series where, whoever they face (the Yankees, Red Sox and Tigers are all in a dogfight and are within 1.5 games of each other now) will be the favorite to win it all.

 

 

Hitting the Wall

I had planned to begin the World Series in my 1947 APBA baseball replay today. It wasn’t that I was on any set schedule; the pace I had been playing during the past several months just seemed to indicate I’d be done with the season on Oct. 17 and ready to start the Series today.

But as of today, I still have 79 games left to play.

Three things happened in the past few months that changed the pace of play.

First, I’ve involuntarily changed my sleep habits. I often don’t go to bed until 3 a.m. I wake up at 7 a.m. to head to work. I’m tired. Now, when I get home, I crash on the couch and start passing out just after the local news ends at 6:30 p.m. This may be the oldest thing I’ve ever said so far, but there are days when I fall asleep before the final puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.

I awoke the other day in that neck-kinked, bleary-eyed stupor you get from nodding off. The Bachelor was on television. Our local news comes on the ABC station and it’s usually on that channel when I pass out. The Bachelor comes on at 7 p.m. When I woke and saw that, I thought maybe I was either still dreaming or I had died in my sleep and descended into hell. The program featured gang of guys pining for some plastic woman, trying to win her hand in marriage while out-drama queening everyone else. In the brief moment I saw the show, there were more guys crying there than in Brooklyn when Bobby Thomson hit the home run in 1951 to lead the Giants over the Dodgers.

So, there’s less time to roll APBA games when I’m in coma land.

Second, I now have monthly assignments for two magazines and a newspaper may soon pick up some of my stuff. I’m spending more time freelance writing, which is nice. I got three checks in the mail on the same day  a couple of weeks ago and for a brief moment felt like I wasn’t living in poverty. I need to keep doing that.

So, there’s less time to roll ABPA games when I’m in writing land, too.

And, finally, I’ve reached that point all replayers hit at some time during a full-season replay, albeit a tad later than I had hoped.

I hit The Wall. It’s hard to get motivated to play a Sept. 14, 1947, doubleheader between the Philadelphia As and Cleveland Indians when both teams have long be eliminated from pennant contention. Or a contest featuring the Phillies and the Cubs, or a clash between the St. Louis Browns and the Washington Senators. 1947 has been an entertaining season, though. After leading the American League for most of the season, the Boston Red Sox have slipped and the Yankees have taken over. New York is now 90-53, compared to Boston’s record of 88-57. The surprising Detroit Tigers are half a game behind at 87-57. It’s headed down to the last games of the season to determine the American League champion. Can the Yanks hold on? Will Boston have resurgence? Will the Tigers surprise everyone?

In the National League, St. Louis has all but wrapped up the crown. At 97-44, the Cards are 6 games ahead of Brooklyn. The Cardinals have 13 games remaining to play; the Dodgers have nine games left. St. Louis’ last nine games of the season are against Chicago and Pittsburgh – the two worst teams in baseball. Hand the Cardinals the National League pennant.

So, there’s reason to be motivated to keep playing and to roll many games to see how this turns out. Other teams are fun to play as well. Despite its 51-95 record, the Pittsburgh Pirates have Ralph Kiner and Hank Greenberg in the lineup. Kiner has been stuck on 51 home runs for several games now. That’s the number he hit in the actual season. Will Kiner’s bat hit at least one more in the remaining eight games to top his actual mark?

The Giants are another fun team. Bobby Thomson is having an amazing season with 34 home runs and 107 RBIs so far. Johnny Mize is trailing Kiner with 47 home runs and Will Marshall has 39 dingers. The Giants won’t have a record of above .500, but they’ll lead the league in home runs by a huge margin.

And of course, there’s the rivalry between Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. DiMaggio has a batting average of .353 and hit 20 home runs with 124 RBIs. Williams is leading the Triple Crown with a .367 average, 43 home runs and an astounding 175 RBIs.

The Wall takes time to overcome. We APBA replayers have all been there at some point and it often takes a jolt to the system to get back on track. Holly and I are headed to Chicago this coming week. Maybe when I return, I’ll find the spark to finish the season.

But it’s hard to keep the game pace going when I’m falling asleep on the couch or trying to build up a writing business. And then there’s time I have to spend watching to see if the winning Bachelor is the guy who cries the most.

1947 American League race

When June ended in my 1947 APBA baseball replay, the Boston Red Sox had a five-game lead over the New York Yankees and it seemed they were a lock to represent the American League in the World Series.

Sox’ outfielder Ted Williams was leading in the league in Triple Crown categories with 21 home runs, 87 RBIs and a .378 batting average. Pitcher Joe “Curly” Dobson had an 11-2 record to pace the team on the mound for the season and Red Sox pitchers had six shutouts in June. In fact, the team dominated everyone else that month, going 24-5.

But then July came and Boston fell back to earth and the American League race became a lot closer. The Red Sox gave up 13 runs to the lowly St. Louis Browns in a loss on July 25 and despite a relatively easy schedule for the month, could only put together a four-game winning streak. Although he hit nine home runs and drove in an astonishing 39 RBIs in July, Williams’ batting average dropped 26 points to .356. It seemed Williams wasn’t hitting in clutch situations like had done earlier.

And this is what makes APBA’s game even more enjoyable. The game is based upon statistics of the player’s real seasons. Each player is given a card with numbers that correspond with batting situations. Williams’ card is heavy with hits, of course, because in the real 1947 season he batted .343. Based upon the mathematical formula on its own, it would seem Williams would hit at a consistent pace to hit around .340. However, there are unexplained variances in this game. Players actually get “hot” with the bat or fall into slumps. All APBA players have seen certain players either shine above what they are expected to do (Richie Zisk was a monster for Seattle in my 1981 season replay) or fall short of their expectations (Mickey Mantle was a disappointment when I replayed 1957). So, as Williams cooled off so did the Red Sox.

Meanwhile, the Yankees were having issues in June, going 18-11 for the month and seemingly were not going to make the World Series as they did in the real 1947 season. Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio was clipping along with a .313 batting average with 16 home runs and 58 RBIs when July began. Pitcher Allie Reynolds had a 9-5 record on the mound and reliever Joe Page led the league with 10 saves, but New York seemed listless. They split a four-game series in St. Louis early in the month and then lost two of three in Chicago. On June 30, maybe as a foreshadowing of things to come, the Yankees did beat the Red Sox, 1-0, when consecutive errors by Red Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky and third baseman Eddie Pellagrini scored Robert “Doc” Brown, who had singled for New York in the second inning.

The Yankees went 17-9 in July to Boston’s 16-11 record. New York remained 3.5 games behind when August started with a 66-37 record. The Sox were at 69-33.

The Yanks beat Cleveland, 3-0, on Aug. 1, but then lost three in row to drop to 4.5 games behind Boston. However, the two teams met in Fenway Park on Aug. 8 and the season changed. New York won the first game, 8-7, holding off a ninth-inning rally by Boston. Dom DiMaggio hit a three-run home run with two outs to cut the Yankees’ lead to one run, but Williams then flied out to end the game. The following day, New York shut out Boston, 3-0, as Spud Chandler gave up only four hits in his complete game. Williams went 0-4. The third game of the set was a blowout. The Yankees beat their rivals, 19-1. Thomas “Old Reliable” Henrich hit his 19^th and 20^th home runs in the game and Page, in his first start of the season, clouted a homer. Williams went 0-3. The win gave New York a record of 72-40, a game behind Boston’s 72-38 record. Williams went one for 12 at the plate with no RBIs. DiMaggio had five hits in 12 at bats during the series with four RBIs.

A week later, Boston traveled to Yankees Stadium and lost two out of three games, including a 12-inning clash. Suddenly, New York was in first place with a 76-41 record. The loss dropped the Red Sox to 74-41.

The two teams play five more times, including a four-game series in Boston in early September. The Red Sox travel back to New York for one game on Sept. 25, in a quirky schedule that saw a lot of one-game or two-game series at the end of the season.

Despite his slump, Williams is still the Triple Crown leader as I head into games for Aug. 20. He’s batting .377 with 35 home runs and 145 RBIs. DiMaggio is hitting at .347 with 18 home runs and 102 RBIs. DiMaggio had a streak of 26 homerless games before he hit one. His bat went quiet again for 14 more games before he hit another. The following day, against Boston, he hit a grand slam in the Yankees’ 9-2 win.

It looks like it’ll be a great pennant race through the rest of August and the last of the season. Will Williams get hot again? Will DiMaggio find his home run swing?  Will some unsung hero step up to pace his team? We’ll see.

In the National League, St. Louis continues to lead Brooklyn by 3.5 games. The two teams play each other in a three-game set in St. Louis in mid-September. The Cardinals, like the Red Sox, seem unbeatable and are the likely team to represent the National League in the World Series. But then, a month ago, I thought the same about the Red Sox.

60

If I was a car, I’d either be in a classic car show, gliding down some Main Street during a parade or heaped up with other cars in the junkyard.

If I was piece of furniture, I’d be on Antique Roadshow with the host describing my old Kennedy-era manufacturing.

I turned 60 a couple of weeks ago; I’ve gotten old.

60!

It’s hard to even think of that number. It seems like I was a teenager just a few years ago and now I’m a candidate for Senior Discounts at most restaurants. The other day I looked online at our library’s schedule. It opens at various times during the pandemic and I was checking to see if I could go there during a lunch break at work. There, posted first, were the special times for the elderly. They could come in daily from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. before the rest of the public was allowed in the library. The “elderly” referred to those 60 and older. I didn’t take advantage of the special times and instead went to the library during the “youngsters” times.

 I know there are those who are saying “Age is just a number,” and “You’re only as old as you feel” and “60 is the new 59” or whatever they say. I get that. But I also get just how fast the years have gone by and that’s what stuns me.

Mentally, I haven’t changed. Those who knew me in high school would agree. I still have the maturity of a 13-year-old. I still laugh at farts and poop jokes. I still haven’t figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I best be gettin’ to work on that last one.

Physically, I’m shot. I tore the medial meniscus in my left knee the day after Christmas walking up steps. Youngsters tear their knees playing football or scaling mountains. I bummed mine up climbing six steps and using a handrail.

The past two weekends, a friend and I drove to a book warehouse in a town about 100 miles from here. The warehouse owner would get thousands of books delivered by truck and he’d sort them and dump them in large bins. Customers could dig through the bins in search for books and be charged by the weight of their finds.

The first weekend we went, I noticed as I got out of the car after making the two hour trip how my knee had locked up and I limped into the store. Then, as I stooped to dig through the bin of sports books, my back started hurting. Sheesh, I thought. How old am I? Then I realized.

Yesterday, we returned and I refused to let age get in the way. I dug through the sports bin again like a woman searching for sales and found nearly two dozen great books. I ignored my age and acted like I wanted to, not how my age dictated I should.  And when I mowed the yard a few days ago, I did the entire yard in one push. Generally, I’d stop after cutting the front yard, rest a bit, mow the side, rest again, and then finish with the backyard. This time, I shook my fist at the age demon and just kept mowin’.

Here’s the APBA part of it all. As I grew, APBA grew with me. And the game is what grounds me. I began rolling the dice with the APBA replay basketball game in the winter of 1977 and worked my way through the football, then hockey and finally the baseball games. I’ve done this for 43 years now. So, while I am aging, I still play the game that I did as a teenager and it’s kept my youthful in one way.

It is odd being this old now. It’s weird saying it, although I still really don’t want to admit it. But then I go the baseball room in our home, pull out the 1947 season cards and time seems to stand still for a while and I revert back to days when I still had a future and my knee didn’t hurt.

I’m sure when I turn 70 and then, if I make it, turn 80, I’ll still be rolling games and whining about being old.

1947 Nicknames

With a last name that rhymes with a word for poop, at an early age I knew I was in a world of crap when it came time to dole out nicknames.

Sure enough, on the first day of first grade, the first day, I received a new name. “Kenny Heard, the big bird turd,” came the chant from some little booger-grabbing classmate. And so it stuck. Years later, when I reached adulthood, a friend’s father always greeted me with “Turd,” when he saw me. His name was Richard, so I always responded with “Dick.”

I wasn’t so stunted as to not hand out nicknames as well. In that same first grade, we had a girl whose last name was Lauderbaugh. I ended up calling her “Little Turd Ball.” I know, nice. With our combination of early nicknames it was a wonder we didn’t end up together in some fecal matrimony. Later, a really obnoxious girl got her hair fixed at some salon. Most of us in that class got our trimming from our mothers, electric shears and a bowl for edging. This girl thought she was pretty special and, because it was in northern Minnesota, she didn’t fit into that humbleness for which we all strived. We ended up calling her “Ozob,” which is Bozo spelled backwards, which we said her hair looked like.

And, when I moved to Arkansas while in high school, I burned my foot battling a large woods fire near our home. I still had a strong northern accent and limped around like an Arctic bird. Of course, I became known as “Penguin.”

So, it is with interest and long tradition that I pay attention to the nicknames of the baseball players that are in our APBA replay games. The game company creates cards for players that we use in recreating seasons and lists their names, position, ratings, demographic and, in some cases, their statistics for the year. The cards also include given nicknames.

In 1947, the year that I’m currently replaying, those who gave nicknames were pretty creative.

A few of the names focused on players’ sizes or lack of and some, apparently, were made in irony.

There was Clyde “Big Un” Vollmer, an outfielder with Cincinnati who, at 6-1 and 187, seemed sort of average in size in comparison to other players. He was a mere shadow when facing Pirates pitcher Ernest “Tiny” Bowman who stood 6-2 and weighed 215 pounds. There was also Bill “Big Bill” Voiselle, a Boston Braves hurler, who was 6-4 and weighed 200. Another odd nickname was Del “Skinny” Ennis, a Philadelphia Phillies outfielder. Ol’ Skinny, at 6-0 and 195 pounds, was actually heftier than “Big Un.”

Nicholas “Jumbo” Strincevich, a Pirates pitcher, was 6-1 and all of 180 pounds.  William “Hoss” Cox, a Pirates shortstop, was 5-10 and weighed 150 pounds, which is the lightest player carded for the 1947 season. He is even smaller than Harold “Pee Wee” Reese, the Dodgers’ shortstop who tipped the scales at 169 pounds.

Nationalities were also handed out as names. Earl Harrist, a Chicago White Sox pitcher, was nicknamed “Irish” and was born in that Celtic hub of Dubach, La. Apparently  the Phillies weren’t all that creative when doling out names.  Both pitcher Emil Leonard and second baseman Emil Verban were nicknamed “Dutch.” Both were born in Illinois. Must have been the first name connection. Hometowns didn’t mean much in those days. Andrew “Swede” Hansen, a New York Giants pitcher, hailed from Lake Worth, Fla.

Others were given names based on animals. I imagine Giants first baseman Johnny “Big Cat” Mize overpowered St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Harry “The Cat” Breechen when the two met based upon size alone. Swamps may have been prevalent at the ballparks in Pennsylvania and Ohio. William Dietrich, a Philadelphia As reliever, was known as “Bullfrog” and Cleveland Indians outfielder George Metkovich was called “Catfish.”

Some nicknames played on the player’s actual names. There’s Donald “Cab” Kolloway, a White Sox second baseman who was named as such perhaps for jazz singer Cab Calloway. Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Virgil “Fire” Trucks was a natural as was Boston Braves outfield John “Hippity” Hopp.

And then there were odd ones. William “Puddin’ Head” Jones, the Phillies third baseman, took the cake, or at least the pudding.  Braves reliever Clyde “Hardrock” Shoun should have trademarked his name in light of the successful restaurant franchise of the same name of years later.  John “Bear Tracks” Schmitz, a Cubs ace, was named such because, I read somewhere, of his large size 14 feet and his bearlike shuffle when taking the mound to pitch.

Then there was Giants pitcher Sheldon “Available” Jones. He only pitched in 16 games – six starts and 10 in relief -- in 1947. I can see him in the bullpen when the manager calls for a reliever. “I’m available,” he’d say sadly when someone else was summoned to the mound. I guess he could commiserate with Sam “Sad Sam” Zoldak, who won nine games in 35 contests as a pitcher for the 1947 St. Louis Browns.

Paul Lehner, an outfielder with the Browns, was named “Gulliver,” in 1947, which foreshadowed his future travels. He ended up playing with six teams in seven seasons.

Of course there’s the “Reds” and the “Leftys” that are commonplace for teams back in the day. And in 1947, there were at least three “Spec” or “Specs” and three “Babes,” none who had the power of George Ruth. But there are scores of unique nicknames in this season as there are in any era. They are as reliable as double plays, strikeouts and home runs in baseball. Just ask Yankees outfielder Thomas “Old Reliable” Henrich.

Emulations

When I was a youngster playing driveway basketball at the home of my friend’s in northern Minnesota, I often emulated Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s skyhook.

I should say I tried to emulate Jabbar’s patented skyhook. Back then, I was nine, about 4 and a half feet tall and had the hoops skills of a one-celled amoeba. But it didn’t matter. On that driveway, shooting at a garage door hoop that was only eight feet off the ground, I felt like I was Jabbar. It also didn’t matter that I probably made five out of 100 shots. Back then, in my mind, I was doing what Jabbar did.

Like all kids, I continued emulating sports heroes. When at bat during our whiffle ball games in the small back yard of my friend’s house on  Calihan Avenue in Bemidji, I would wait for the pitch by taking counterclockwise swings and hitching the bat at the top of the swing each time, just like Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates used to do. Another hero, another form to copy. And when I pitched, I often held the ball in my glove, shook the glove and raised my arms in my windup as Boston Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant did.

My baseball skills, like my basketball skills, were non-existent, but I kept at it. At that age, I didn’t realize the one in a million chance it took of being a Jabbar, Stargell or Tiant.

The emulations continued on into my teenage years. When we played basketball in a dusty church gym after my family moved to Arkansas, I would wipe my hands on my shoes like Larry Bird did. I never figured out if I was doing it to clean the dust off my shoes or give my hands more grit to be able to handle the ball better. By then, I had evolved into a 6-foot teenager that still had the one-cell amoeba playing style.  Larry Bird would be ashamed of seeing me, I know now.

When my friends and I snuck onto the golf course in my town to play a few holes, Fred Couples was my golfing hero. So, I tried to be him. I couldn’t copy his skills, of course, so I copied him. I walked like he did, when approaching a shot. I’d pace the fairway with a cool-moving stride just like he did. Couples embodied the essence of nonchalance and being laid back. I came across more like a slinking Xanax addict trying to stay awake.

Again, it didn’t matter. Maybe it wasn’t having gained the sense of failure or that people would be judging me for those moves back then. In college, a few of us journalism students would go to someone’s house, put the Rolling Stones on the cassette deck (this was in the late 1970s) and we’d all become the group. It stuns me now of those Stones’ days because I try to keep a low approach and just stick to the periphery of the public radar. Back then, though, I’d be the brash Mick Jagger. I’d strut around and dance herky-jerky like he did and actually copy his vocals, all while the others were singing and being Keith Richard and Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood.

I’m embarrassed now even reading back over that last paragraph.

So, what happened? When do we quit emulating our sports heroes (or musical ones) and begin the more subdued life we will carry on to the end. Maybe it’s the realization of not being able to be as good as the real people we tried to mimic. I’ll never be a Fred Couples walker now. After tearing the medial meniscus in my knee last Christmas, I walk around more like Fred Sanford with hemorrhoids. The last time I played golf was maybe 10 years ago on a simple par 3 muni course. I played so poorly that I immediately called a golf shop after the game and tried to sell my clubs. They only offered me a dollar a club, so instead I briefly put them on sale on Craigslist until I realized only serial killers use that internet selling spot. The clubs still sit in my home behind a chair.

If I tried now to mimic the Stargell hitch, I’d get a hitch all right. A hitch in my back, as they say in the south, that would require chiropractic care.

Oh, I still try to emulate people at times. But no longer are the replications of those who can do physical things. As I near six decades of life in a couple of weeks, that whole sports thing is over. Instead, when I was a newspaper journalist until two years ago, I’d try to write like my hero, former Chicago Tribune columnist and author Bob Greene, or bark out questions in press conferences like Sam Donaldson of ABC News used to do.

But those carefree days of thinking I could be like the athletes I admired are gone. Maybe it’s part of the tipping point of when you go from a kid with endless possibilities to an adult who knows reality. It’s part of life, I guess.

Three Games in July

It was the proverbial immovable object against the irresistible force when Brooklyn hosted St. Louis in a three-game series in mid-July of my 1947 APBA baseball season replay. The Dodgers were armed with excellent pitching that helped the team. Starters Ralph Branca was 12-2 at the All-Star break and Jeff Taylor was 11-2. Joe Hatten was 11-3; the Bum’s three starters were 35-7 at the break.

The Cardinals came in with hot bats. Stan Musial and Whitey Kurowski were tied with 18 home runs and Musial was leading the league with 76 RBIs before Pirates’ left fielder Ralph Kiner began slugging at an amazing pace.

The two teams were tied for first at 59-29 when they met in Ebbets field on July 18. In the real season, Brooklyn and St. Louis each one won game in the three –game set and were tied in the third contest, 3-3, after nine innings.

This was APBA, however, and there are no rainouts or games called due to darkness in APBA.

Here’s how the games went.

July 18, 1947

St. Louis 3 Brooklyn 0

Murry  ‘Dick’ Dickson raised his record to 11-4 for the Cards, limiting Brooklyn to only three hits in the third, fourth and sixth innings. St. Louis led 1-0 after Terry Moore drove in Red Schoendienst with a single. There was no scoring through eight as Dickson and Hal Gregg battled. In the ninth inning, though, Stan Musial teed off on reliever Clyde King, clubbing a two-run home run, his 19^th of the year. That win put the Cardinals up by one game over the Dodgers.

July 19, 1947

St. Louis 8 Brooklyn 0

The Cards shut out the Dodgers again as pitcher Red Munger gave up only one hit to Pee Wee Reese in the fifth inning. St. Louis had a balanced attack with Ron Northey hitting his 12^th home run of the year and driving in three runs in the game. Musial added three RBIs, too, with a double and single. Vic Lombardi took the loss, giving up six runs in six innings. Brooklyn closer Hugh Casey, who has been playing poorly of late, gave up the Cards’ final two runs in the ninth.

July 20, 1947

St. Louis 13 Brooklyn 2

The Dodgers finally scored in the fifth inning, but it was far from enough. The Cardinals held Brooklyn scoreless for 22 consecutive innings before Jackie Robinson doubled off Harry “The Cat” Breechan and to score Ed Stanky. Pete Reiser then hit a triple to drive in Robinson that briefly tied the game, 2-2. But the Cardinals scored four in the sixth, four in the seventh and three in the eighth to bomb the Bums. Musial hit a grand slam in the seventh, his 20^th homer of the season. Harry Taylor took the loss for Brooklyn.

By series end, St. Louis had a 62-29 record, compared to Brooklyn’s 59-32.  

It seemed the series took a lot out of both teams. After the three-game set, the Dodgers have gone 2-3, taking two of four against Cincinnati and losing to the woeful Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-2. St. Louis has gone 2-2 after sweeping Brooklyn, losing two out of three at home versus the New York Giants and then winning the first of a four –game set hosting Boston.

In the real 1947 season, Brooklyn won the National League by five games over the Cardinals. In my replay, the Dodgers trail the Cards 3.5 games now with 58 games left. The two teams face off nine more times, including an upcoming three-game series in St. Louis on July 29. Because of a work furlough due to the virus, I’ve had more time to roll games at a quicker pace. I’ve just reached games for July 26 and should be playing the Dodgers-Cardinals series within a week or so. Maybe the Dodgers can return the favor and sweep St. Louis, making the race tighter again. Or maybe the Cardinals will continue their dominance and increase their lead.

It’s why we roll these games.

The APBA Chair

It was a fine chair, as chairs go. It served its purpose for nearly 30 years and it was the only chair I used when rolling games in every APBA replay I did at home.

But like all things do, it had to come to an end and last week we bade farewell to the APBA chair in a ceremony unfitting to the royalty it proclaimed.

It was an office chair, a spindle set on rollers with a navy blue seat and back. I had gotten it when we furnished a weekly newspaper my wife and I owned back in the early 1990s. We had an industrial carpeted office area and I could roll around easily. I’m sure in moments of levity at that newspaper employees used the other roller desk chairs and had races with each other. But my chair also served during serious times as well. I wrote scores of stories about poor city management, the local police union battling for higher wages, all of our weekly police reports, my weekly column and other tales in that chair. I also wrote stories about the original trial for two of the three charged in the slayings of three West Memphis, Ark., eight-year-olds that was later referred internationally as the West Memphis 3 case. And I began my freelancing careers with the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette while sitting in that chair. The Democrat-Gazette gig resulted in a full-time job of nearly 20 years.

When we sold the newspaper and I left the job, I took the chair with me and placed it in my home office and what Holly now calls the “baseball room.” It’s where I began rolling the 1998 APBA baseball, my first replay. And it’s where I rolled nine subsequent full replays, half of the 1925 season and now about 60 percent of the 1947 season I’m currently doing.

By its end, the chair was in pretty rough shape. Both arms were slanted away from the chair; the seat itself was sagging, too. Holding up my fat ass for 30 years took its toll. One set of wheels didn’t work right and the seat had some stains – probably from the Pepsis I guzzle during games and, at one point after my wife passed away in 2006 of kidney failure, the Jim Beam bourbon and Dewars scotch I drank to escape for a bit.

APBA players all have their gaming places. I’ve seen some photographs on the APBA Facebook page and I’ve been pretty impressed. Many decorate the walls behind the game site with baseball and other sports photographs, hats and assorted memorabilia. There’s the necessary light, table space for the game and writing stats and the computer if the person plays the PC version of the game. But there’s always the chair in the photograph. It’s the throne of the APBA kingdom.

I had decided to get rid of the chair a few years ago and even placed it in the garage in preparation for hauling it to the curb on trash day. But after a moment of guilt and nostalgia, I rolled it back in and realized that it was a lot harder parting with the chair than I thought. I accepted the flayed arms and the small back “support” that was always off-center. When I tried rolling away from the desk after a game, it was like pushing a block.

Holly, my Illinois sweetie, got a chair from a local store when she moved here four years ago with the purpose of using it herself. But she liked a different chair instead and this one sat in a corner for a while.

Finally, last Thursday – trash night in the subdivision where we live – I took the chair back to the garage and placed it by the garbage can where I’d put it in after we filled it with the weekly refuse. Seconds later, and I’m not making this up, one of two feral cats who hang out at our home sauntered into the garage, sniffed the wheels and spindle and promptly raised his tail and doused it all with cat pee. Holly said he was “marking the chair" and making it his. I said other choice words and added that I took ownership of the chair for almost three decades and not once- that I recall- did I pee on it.

But it was a sign. The chair would not return to the baseball room now. I hefted it into the trash can and rolled it out to the curb. Its wobbly back support stuck jauntily out of the can’s top.

I was sitting in the new chair the next day when the trash truck rolled through and I watched as the truck’s mechanical arm raised the can and dumped its contents into the back. The chair was gone.

My new chair will take adjusting to. It’s smaller and the arms are a bit confining. Sometimes when I lean to the right, the arm presses on the car keys in my pocket and pushes the alarm button. I hear the car bleating in the garage and I have to stand up to turn it off with the keys.

But it rolls well and the back is comfortable and there’s no cat pee on it. Maybe it’ll be the new APBA chair for the next 30 years.

Two Games

It was raining earlier today but the sun is out now, shining through the window blinds in the “baseball room” where I write things and roll my APBA baseball replays.

Outside, a small girl rides her bike down the paved street. Her wheels are pink as are the flapping tassels on the handlebars. The neighbor across from me is mowing his yard and barn swallows have returned to the nest birds built under the overhang at the entrance to my home several years ago. Based upon the endless squawking, the mockingbirds who have a nest of their own in a nearby tree, must feel it necessary to update the swallows on all the day’s news.

It’s peaceful here in the baseball room. It’s a good time to roll a few games and forget about the pandemic that is killing thousands and dominating the evening newscasts and the constant buzzing news alerts on my phone.

Two games I played today in my 1947 season replay have helped and it’s yet another reason why we play the APBA games.

Even though the first game was a meaningless contest between the National League-worst Pittsburgh Pirates and the disappointing New York Giants, it turned into a great game. It was a replay of the July 14, 1947, game in the Polo Grounds. The players combined for eight home runs, including Ralph Kiner’s league-leading 33^rd.

Bill “Hoss” Cox opened the scoring with a two-run homer in the second inning, giving the Pirates a rare lead.  But the Giants responded quickly and Jack “Lucky” Lohrke hit the first of his game’s two home runs in the bottom of the second to tie the game. Pittsburgh scored a lone run in the top half of the third, but Bobby “Giants Win the Pennant” Thompson popped his 14^th home run of the season in the Giants’ third to give New York a 4-3 lead.

Kiner hit his blast in the fifth and three batters later, Jimmy Bloodworth knocked his 11^th dinger of the year and Pittsburgh had a comfortable 7-4 lead. The Pirates tacked on three more runs on home runs by Frankie Gustine in the sixth inning and catcher Clyde Kluttz in the ninth. Lohrke hit his second of the game in the eighth, but the Giants, which lead the majors with 106 home runs, ran out of gas and only scratched a single in the bottom of the ninth before Pirates hurler Jim Bagby shut them down. Lohrke, fittingly, popped out with two outs to end the game.

The second game was much more of a defensive battle. National League-leading St. Louis Cardinals visited Philadelphia, sending their ace Harry “The Cat” Breechen up against Phillies pitcher Dutch Leonard. Philadelphia scored two in the first inning as Del Ennis drove in Harry Walker with a double and then Johnny Wyrostek blopped a single to Cards’ left fielder Enos Slaughter.

Both pitchers settled in for the next five innings; Breechen and Leonard each surrendered only two hits. But then Phillies third baseman Lee “Jeep” Handley lashed a double to plate Wyrostek and Philadelphia held a 3-0 lead.

The Cardinals won 13 of their last 15 games and swept a doubleheader against the Phillies on July 13, to regain first place in the National League over the Brooklyn Dodgers, so the fact that they were losing and, even more so, their bats were silent in this game was surprising.

In the top of the eighth, though, the Cards mounted a rally. Whitey Kurowsky scored on a sacrifice fly by Ervin “Four Sack” Dusak (the nicknames in 1947 were pretty creative, hence why I add them here) and then Marty “Slats” Marion scored when Red Schoendienst hit his own sacrifice fly.

The Phillies held onto their 3-2 lead into the top of the ninth and I debated about pulling Leonard for a reliever. I thought, though, of Leonard, a seasoned veteran of 14 years by then and who ended his career with 191 wins, telling manager Ben Chapman to get off his mound and let him finish the game. Leonard stayed in and struck out Stan Musial and Slaughter before getting Ron Northey to pop up to Handley to end the contest. Leonard only gave up three hits in his complete game.

These were two pretend games in a replay of a season that really meant nothing in the context of the world outside. But it meant everything in my sunlit baseball room as the birds kept chirping and the little girl continued to peddle lazy circles outside on her bike with the pink wheels.

Kiner's Krushing Klouts

In the 1947 APBA baseball replay I’m a little over halfway through, Pittsburgh Pirates left fielder Ralph Kiner is Krushing the ball. At the All-Star break, he’s got 31 home runs and leads his closest competitor Johnny Mize of the New York Giants by 10 Klouts. He’s on pace to hit 57 home runs if he keeps up the pace.

It’s one of the more powerful displays of batting I’ve ever had in a replay. My first “replay” was the 1998 baseball season with steroid-loaded Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. I didn’t really consider it a replay, however. I played games with the 1999 schedule and, rather realizing it was a replay of a previous season, I treated it more like the current season. The following replay was the 1957 season in which the obsession for doing these full replays took over. I learned a lot about that season while rolling its games and have done so ever since for whatever season I’m doing.

I think McGwire hit something insane like 68 or 70 home runs in that 1998 replay. The most homers I've had by a player since were 53 by Oakland’s Jose Canseco in a 1991 replay. That, apparently, was also aided by steroids.

So, Kiner comes by it naturally. But while people always recalled Kiner as a slugger, he was a decent batter. Kiner's lifetime average in 10 seasons was .279, but that was somewhat lessened by his final two seasons when he played with a back injury.

In the Pirates' past 11 games in my 1947 replay, Kiner’s second season, he batted .425. He hit safely in 10 of the 11 games and had six home runs and drove in 16 runs. For the season so far, along with his 31 homers, he has 83 RBIs. In the actual season, Kiner had 21 home runs and 60 RBIs after playing 83 games (since I don’t have games rained out in my replays, teams play a full schedule and Pittsburgh’s 83^rd game came 12 days before the Pirates’ real 83^rd game). Mize, during the same 11 games, hit only one home run and had six RBIs. He did bat .357, during that stretch, though, and the two add to the enjoyment of this replay. Their ‘rivalry’ is similar to that of the one between Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio in the American League.

Kiner is in the Hall of Fame, but just barely. He was voted into the Hall in 1975, his last year of eligibility, by one vote more than the 75 percent required. He led or was tied for the home run lead for seven consecutive seasons from 1946 to 1952. He ended up with 369 homers. He was aided in that total, in part, when Pirates’ owners built a bullpen in the left field at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, cutting the distance to the seats from 406 feet to 376 feet. Kiner also played with Hank Greenberg on that 1947 team and he called the veteran first baseman the most influential person in his career.

The Pirates were cellar-dwellers during Kiner’s career. In my replay, the 1947 Bucs are 28-56 now (I played one game after the All-Star break) and are 28.5 games behind National League leader Brooklyn. Kiner earned $90,000 in 1952, his highest salary. After a less-than-stellar batting average that season, team owner Branch Rickey cut Kiner’s salary to $75,000. When Kiner complained, Rickey is credited as saying “Son, we can finish last without you.”

Kiner was traded to the Chicago Cubs during the 1953 season and then was reunited with his pal Greenberg in Cleveland in 1955 where he played one season before retiring.

Kiner was friends with Bing Crosby, who was an owner of the Pirates back then, and that union led Kiner into the Hollywood circle. He took a 17-year-old Elizabeth Taylor to a movie premier and hung out with Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball. He built a huge home in Palm Springs, Calif., and lived the life of luxury. 

After retiring, he joined the expansion team New York Mets as an announcer in 1962. He quipped that the Mets hired Kiner because he had “a lot of experience losing.” He was also known for his Casey Stengel-like sayings. He once said that Don Sutton “lost 13 games in a row without winning a ballgame” and “All of the Mets’ road wins against Los Angeles this year have been at Dodger Stadium.” He even poked at Stengel once, referencing him during a badly-played Mets’ game. “If Casey Stengel were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave,” Kiner said.

Kiner died on Feb. 6, 2014. He was the reason I began a replay of the 1950 season in March 2014 rather than tackle the 1991 season I had planned.  Kiner hit a home run in the first game I played with him and the Pirates and he ended my replay season with a National League leading 46 home runs. In his actual 1950 season, Kiner hit 47.

Ralph Kiner's 1947 APBA card

To me, this is one of the major draws of doing an APBA replay. You learn about the players and “see” them in action. Whenever Kiner’s up to bat, I watch the dice closely to see if he rolls a “66” or "11" and another Klout is on its way.

All-Star Break 1947

A day before something crashed in Roswell, N.M., on July 7, 1947, sparking debate about the existence of UFOs and little green men, the baseball season rested for its All-Star break.

I have reached that point in the 1947 APBA baseball replay I’m doing and a few teams are as mysterious as whatever the military found on the sheep pasture in southeastern New Mexico on July 8 that year. The Cincinnati Reds, for example, are a much better team in my replay than their 36-46 record indicates. In the real season, the Reds had a record of 41-41 after the same number of games played. Shortstop Ed “Eppie” Miller has 16 home runs and 80 RBIS to pace Cincinnati. Ewell Blackwell is 11-7 and could easily have won two or more games had he received run support. Pittsburgh Pirate left fielder Ralph Kiner is knocking homers out of parks that look like streaking UFOs. He’s on pace to break Babe Ruth’s 1927 season record. Kiner has 31 home runs after the Pirates 83^rd game of the season. Ruth clouted his 31^st after 93 games.

In the American League, the New York Yankees are three games worse than the actual Yankees of 1947 and trail the Boston Red Sox by 4.5 games in the replay.  In the real season, the Yanks were in first place with an eight-game lead over both the Red Sox and the Tigers when the All-Star game was played.  Joe DiMaggio has 16 home runs and 62 RBIs at the break in my replay, and is batting .328. Meanwhile, Ted Williams is playing out of this world (see what I did there?) for Boston and is one of the main catalysts for the Red Sox’ success. The “Splendid Splinter” is batting .359, has 22 home runs and an amazing 93 RBIs. Pitcher Joe “Curly” Dobson is 11-4 for Boston.

Here are the 1947 replay standings at the break.

AMERICAN LEAGUE   W     L   GB      NATIONAL LEAGUE   W    L   GB

Boston                          57   24   --             Brooklyn                      54    26    --

New York                   53   29   4.5            St. Louis                      54    26    --

Detroit                       48   34   9.5            Boston                          51    30    4
Chicago                      39   46  20             New York                     36    42   17
Cleveland                   37   45  20.5          Philadelphia               37    45   18

St. Louis                      32   46  23.5         Cincinnati                   36   46   19

Washington                30   50  26.5         Chicago                       27    53   27
Philadelphia               31   53  27.5          Pittsburgh                  28    55   27.5

Williams is ahead of DiMaggio by five home runs to lead the American League, 21-16. Jeff Heath of the St. Louis Browns has 16 at the break as well. Bobby Doerr, the Red Sox second baseman, has 68 RBIS for second place behind Williams. Joe Page of the Yankees has 10 saves to pace the American League.

In the National League, New York Giants first baseman Johnny “Big Cat” Mize has 21 home runs to trail Kiner. He also has 68 RBIs. Will Marshall has 18 homers and 56 RBIs for the Giants. The Giants are a fun team to roll their games with six players hitting 10 or more home runs. Their problem, however, is a combination of slow-footed runners and less than adequate pitching. Any time the Giants seem to get a rally going and Marshall, Mize, Walker Cooper or Sid Gordon are on base, they get thrown at second or third because of their (S) Slow ratings. Ace Larry Jansen is 7-8 in my replay.  In the real 1947 season, he went 21-5. George Koslo leads the Giants with a 9-3 record.

Brooklyn is another fun team to roll for. Ralph Branca is 12-2 for the Bums, Jeff Taylor is 11-2 – already bettering his actual season record of 10-5 – and Joe Hatten is 11-3 on the mound. One of the Dodgers who is playing well above his actual stats is Gene Hermanski. He doesn’t play that much in the replay; usually Pete Reiser is in left field. But, I’ll stick Hermanski in on occasion and he’ll play well. He leads Brooklyn with 10 home runs. In the real 1947 season, he had seven homers. He also has 31 RBIs in the replay, compared to 37 in his actual full season. Seems like Hermanski wants to play. He’s had a couple of two-home run games and he hit for the cycle against the Cardinals in a 14-9 win in a June 13 contest in the replay. Hermanski is playing, dare I say, like he’s from a different planet.  And like those who firmly believe what crashed in Roswell was an alien ship and not a military weather balloon, it’s hard to refute playing Hermanski more.

We’ve reached the break. Who will win the National League, St. Louis or Brooklyn? Can Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain put Boston in the NL picture? Will Kiner hit 61 or more home runs for the season? Can the Yankees catch the Red Sox? It, like the strange crafts that zip across the sky, is all up in the air.