1965 Comebacks

I had three comeback games in a row while rolling the 1965 APBA baseball season replay I’m doing the other night, and there could be a fourth if you consider the hapless New York Mets breaking up a no-hitter in the eighth inning as a “comeback” of sorts.

It’s what makes this game so entertaining. Since I began playing baseball replays in 1998 (I began my APBA journey with the football game in 1977 and followed it with the basketball and hockey games before getting into baseball), I’ve played more than 22,000 games. Each time we roll the dice for a game, something can happen.

 I was replaying games for July 23, 1965, when the comebacks began rolling in.

Game 949: Chicago at Detroit

The Sox built a 6-0 lead by the second inning on a flurry of singles off Tigers starter Orlando Pena. In fact, all 13 of Chicago’s hits in the game were singles. The Tigers cut it to 6-3 by the seventh with hits by Jim Northrup and catcher Bill Freehan and a homer from Norm Cash. In the bottom of the seventh, the Tigers narrowed it to 6-5 after a two-run home run by shortstop Ray Oyler. Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Detroit tied it at 6 with Cash’s second home run, his 19^th of the season, off White Sox reliever Eddie Fisher.

Tigers reliever Terrance Fox shut down Chicago in the 10^th and then picked up the win when Freehan knocked in Oyler, who had doubled with one out.

Game 950: St. Louis at Los Angeles

The National League has been surprising in my replay and the teams facing each other in this game have been the epitome of oddities. St. Louis is the best team in baseball and the Dodgers, which won the actual 1965 World Series, are struggling and are nine games behind the Cardinals. The San Francisco Giants are only 2.5 games behind and Cincinnati trails the Redbirds by four games.

Each game in late July is important as the pennant race heats up.

Dodgers pitcher Nick Willhite held the Cardinals hitless through six and a third innings, but Los Angeles could only score once in the fifth on a fielder’s choice.  Bill White broke up the no-hitter in the seventh, but then Willhite struck out Ken Boyer and got Tony Francona to ground out, ending that inning.

In the top of the eight, trailing 1-0, Lou Brock got the only extra base hit of the game, slapping a double off Willhite and scoring Tim McCarver and Phil Gagliano. Hal Woodeshick closed out the bottom of the ninth, sealing the Cards’ win, 2-1.

Game 951: Milwaukee at San Francisco

San Francisco built a 6-0 lead over the Braves by the sixth inning in Giants’ pitcher Mashi Murakami’s first start of the season. But the Braves, which have compiled a disappointing 41-52 record, came back. Frank Bolling doubled in two runs and Woody Woodward plated Bolling with one out in the seventh. With Woodward on third and Felipe Alou on first, outfielder Mack Jones knocked one out of Candlestick and the Braves and Giants were tied at six.

But it wasn’t a complete comeback. The game went into extra innings and the Giants won when Hal Lanier hit a two-out single and Jim Hart scored for the 7-6 win.

Game 952: Philadelphia at New York

Without a doubt, the 1965 New York Mets are the worst team I’ve ever rolled in a replay. As indicated by their 19-79 record, they find many ways to lose. The Mets opened the season by losing their first 12 games and have since had losing streaks of 11, 10, eight (twice) and six games. Three of the starters have each lost 13 games. Galen Cisco leads the team with 14 losses.

So, it wasn’t a surprise when the Philadelphia Phillies scored five runs in the third and pitcher Ray Culp held the Mets hitless through seven and a third innings. By then, they had built a 9-0 lead. But there was a comeback. Sort of; Mets’ style.

Johnny Lewis hit a home run in the bottom of the eighth for New York’s first hit and first run. Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Ron Hunt hit a double and Chuck Hiller rolled a “7” for a single and drove Hunt in for the Mets’ second run.  Roy McMillan then grounded into a double play and Ed Kranepool ground out to end the game. Philadelphia won, 9-2, but the Mets have to find anything they can to celebrate and scoring two runs is something for them. There are no cheers in Shea Stadium, only jeers.

Three games. Three comebacks of sorts.

Each game we roll has the potential to be a classic. I had three really good ones in a row.

Anniversaries

This has been a week of anniversaries for me that haven’t provided the best memories.

Four years ago today, Oct. 24, 2017, I was laid off from the newspaper where I worked as a reporter for nearly 20 years. News writing was all I knew how to do and suddenly I was dumped. It was disorienting.

And 30 years ago Thursday, Oct. 21, 1991, I quit my pursuit of a PhD in English at Texas Tech University, left Lubbock in the wee hours of the morning and headed to my mother’s house some 13 hours away to regroup. A girl I was seeing back then in Arkansas was accepted into a master’s program at Texas Tech and urged me to go with her. I bluffed my way into the English program and went with her.

She said she wanted to get married. She did. But to another guy.  She was a vegetarian; he was the son of a huge cattle farmer. I didn’t see it working out based on their dining preferences alone, but who was I to question their growing romance? (Sure I was bitter. I envisioned her strolling down the aisle of their outdoor Texas wedding and stepping in a steaming cow pie left by ol’ Bessie.)

Two times I was dumped. Twice I was told I wasn’t needed.

But this isn’t a tale of me whining about life and lost chances and all. It’s a story about how sports and how a sports replay game that involves cards and dice came to the rescue like they always do.

I knew I was in trouble at Texas Tech before the girl pulled the chain. I was struggling in the program; my advisor told me I wrote too “journalistic” and gave me a “C” on a thesis I wrote entitled “A Psychoanalysis of Psychoanalysis of ‘A Scarlet Letter.’” If you had to read that title twice, join the club. We were studying various styles of literary criticism and we had to select a method to critique a criticism of a classic novel. A “C” in PhD school is akin to an “F minus” in undergraduate class.

I had as much a chance of earning a PhD there as I had of winning the girl’s heart back despite me not owning even one cow.

Meanwhile, as all this was falling apart, the Minnesota Twins were working their way through the post season playoffs. I grew up in Minnesota and have been a fervent Twins’ fan since I learned what baseball was.

I watched the playoff series against Toronto at a golf course bar in west Lubbock, in my tiny dorm room I shared with an 18-year-old kid and, once, on a coin-operated television set at the Lubbock airport while I waited for the girl’s parents to fly in for a visit before our relationship imploded.

I also ordered an APBA game and had the company deliver it to my mother’s home when I knew I was leaving school. I ordered the 1990-91 basketball season (I know, most APBA fans hated that game for its slow, plodding play, but I loved it.) While other students studied for exams the last week I was there, I began setting up schedules and rosters for the season to play when I got home. It helped me get through that lame duck last week of school there.

The Twins won their contest over Toronto and then faced Atlanta in the World Series. I actually dropped out of Texas Tech between Games 2 and 3 so not to miss a game and drove home. I watched the rest of the Series at my mother’s home. I had planned to move into an apartment after Game 6, a Sunday, and begin a new job, thinking Atlanta would take the Series. But Kirby Puckett hit that 11^th inning home run and there was a Game 7. I stayed at my mother’s to watch Jack Morris pitch a gem, giving the Twins their second World Series crown in four years.

I moved the next day and that night, in the new apartment, that sense of disorientation took over again. A week earlier I was in Lubbock. Now, I was in a small apartment in Jonesboro, Ark., working at a weekly newspaper.

I took out the APBA basketball game, set it up on a kitchen table and began rolling games. The sense of loss faded as Michael Jordan hit his fade away jumpers and Charles Barkley bulled his way around the court and Hakeem Olajuwon grabbed rebounds galore.

My life may have changed drastically then, but the APBA game I grew up with, the one I was introduced to in 1977, was basically the same. It was the anchor in an otherwise unsettling time.

In 2017, I was riding high. I was doing well at my newspaper job. Holly had moved down from Chicago to be here and life was fun – until I went to my bureau office on Oct. 24, 2017, and saw my editor waiting outside for me.

He told me he was sorry, but I had been laid off along with 25 others at the paper. The publisher had other plans, he said, that didn’t include covering the beat I had since 1998. After the initial shock wore off, I was bitter again and hoped maybe Bessie had one more plop left in her to place at the entrance to the publisher’s office.

I called Holly to tell her I was coming home. I turned over my company cell phone and laptop to the editor and felt like I had spiraled out of orbit.

But, again, the game came to the rescue. I was doing a replay of the 1991 (ironically) baseball season. That night, while I began thinking of looking for another job, I rolled a few games and for a moment, the fear subsided.

That’s not to say I used the game as an escape and to avoid my responsibilities. Instead, the game helped focus me and take my mind off of being panicked.

I eventually got a job with the daily newspaper in town, the same paper I competed with for stories for the past 20 years. And I kept rolling the games.

It all worked out. Holly married me despite me being me. I finished the 1991 replay and am now working at the county prosecuting attorney’s office where every day is the same. I miss news coverage at times, but I also appreciate I’ll be home at the same time each night. It makes it easier to schedule games in the 1965 APBA baseball season I’m doing now

Two troubling times. Two times sports and the APBA game we love helped out. I’ve said it so many times before, but most of us were indoctrinated into the game as children and it’s made the voyage with us into adulthood. It’s one of the few constants in a life that’s constantly changing.

The game was good for me and it kept me from really hunting down Bessie for any revenge cow pies.

What's Next?

I’ve reached that point in a replay where I look forward and think about what the next replay I’ll do. It’s not that I’m bored with the current project, but instead like to wonder what’s ahead.

I’ve recently passed the halfway mark of my 1965 APBA baseball replay. It’s probably one of the best seasons I’ve done in the 23 years I’ve been rolling the APBA baseball dice. I know I say this every time I do a replay, but this time it’s really true. This season is a combination of rolling for players that I grew up with watching and reading about, and it’s been a very close race so far.

So, looking ahead is not because of the boredom of the contests. Instead, and other APBA replayers can attest to this, it’s the sense of figuring out what the next adventure is. We all have more seasons tucked away in closets and shelves than we can play in a lifetime, but that doesn’t stop us from getting more.

And there are the other sports. I have three football seasons, including the 1976 season that my parents bought me for a Christmas gift and served as my initiation into APBA. I also have five basketball seasons that, while most couldn’t stand that APBA game because of its plodding nature, I loved to play it. I also have four hockey seasons.

In a perfect world, it’d be great to replay seasons while the real seasons were going on. Yesterday, Sunday, was the first real day of the NFL season. Watching the games on television stirs the interest in playing the football games. A month from Sunday, the NHL season begins and I’m already looking at my hockey cards and wondering which would be a good season to dive into.

And there are the scores of baseball seasons I have.

I tend to get fired up for a season when reading books, too. Whenever I read Henry Aaron’s “I Had a Hammer” biography, I want to roll a season during his career. The same thing happened when I read the Willie Mays biography by James Hirsch.

Of course, reading Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four” makes me want to start the 1969 season I have.

I once read the questionable book “Cobb,” by Al Stump. After finishing it, I immediately called APBA and ordered the 1919 season.  Each time I read Leo Durocher’s “Nice Guys Finish Last,” I have the urge to play 1947.

I also have Jonathan Eig’s “Luckiest Man” biography of Lou Gehrig. When I read that again, the 1927 season will beckon me.

Again, this is no indication of any boredom or sense of monotony with the 1965 season. I rolled a doubleheader yesterday afternoon between Cleveland and California that could have been a snorefest of a series, but I enjoyed the games a lot. Instead, it’s that sense of what’s next.

There’s the lure of APBA. What other game can keep us, as adults, interested in playing forever? I began APBA when I was a youngster of 16. Now, 45 years later, I’m still rolling the games, as excited as I was when I was that 16-year-old. We create our own league, our own world, when we do replays. Maybe it’s an escape from life. Lord knows we need one.

What better way to avoid hearing about Covid-19 for a while and not having to think about making the house payment again and dealing with health issues and trying to afford life than slipping away to 1965 or 1947 or 1927?

I think that’s the success of APBA. It’s a simple game that creates such complex emotions. It’s one of the few senses of wonderment I think we still have as we continue aging.

So, San Francisco is traveling to Philadelphia tonight. Bobby Bolin is on the mound for the Giants and Jim Bunning is tossing for the Phillies and could win his 10^th game in a July 9, 1965, contest. Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, both with 23 home runs in my replay so far, will headline the game. Johnny Callison has 20 homers for the Phillies. San Francisco is only 1.5 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals for the National League lead and it’s an important game.

It’s hard to be bored with those kinds of elements in an upcoming replay game. No, the look ahead is not due to apathy of this season. Instead, it’s a way to prolong the feeling of excitement and wonderment that we had when we first began rolling these games, oh so long ago.

July 1, 1965 Replay Update

I’ve reached July 1 in my 1965 APBA baseball replay, nearing the halfway point of the season and, as is the case in most replays, there are some surprises.

The St. Louis Cardinals continue to be the best team in the league, but San Francisco put together a 21-7 record for June and is tied with the Redbirds in the National League. It’s hard to explain the Cardinals’ success. Other than Bill White’s 16 home runs, the only other player with double-digit dingers is Tim McCarver with 10. Bob Gibson is 10-6 with 114 strike outs to lead the Cardinals’ pitching staff. It seems like the Cards get key hits… singles, doubles and even a few triples at important moments to drive in a couple of runs.  I’ve found no opponent’s lead is really safe against St. Louis. They can come roaring back with a few hits.

San Francisco has it all. Juan Marichal is 11-4 with 132 strikeouts and Robert Shaw is 10-3 with 105 strikeouts to pace the Giants. Willie McCovey has 23 home runs to lead the league and Willie Mays has 20 of his own.

In the American League, the Minnesota Twins have faltered, going 13-15 in June. Detroit, which was 3.5 games behind the American League-leading Twins on June 1 are now in first place by half a game.

Here are the standings through June 30, 1965.

American      W     L             GB

Detroit           46        29        -

Minnesota     46        29        0.5

Boston           41        36        6

Chicago          39        35        6.5

California      38       36        7.5

Cleveland      37        35        7.5

New York      37        40       10

Baltimore      34        42        12.5

Washington  32        47        16

Kansas City   25        47        19.5

 

National        W        L          GB

St. Louis        50        27        -

San Fran        49        26        -

Los Angeles  47        31        3.5

Cincinnati     44        32        5.5

Pittsburgh     42        36        8.5

Phil'phia        35        38        13

Houston        35        43        15.5

Milwaukee    32        41        16

Chicago          35        45        18

New York      14        64        36.5

That’s no typo. The New York Mets have really won only 14 of their 78 games for a really bad .179 average. Four Mets pitchers have a very good chance of each losing at least 20 games for the season. John Fisher leads the Mets’ aces with only five wins.  Gary Kroll is 1-12 and there are five pitchers, mostly relievers, who have yet to win a game in 16 decisions. The Mets are truly a bad team.

Frank Howard was blasting home runs for the Washington Senators at a pace to challenger Roger Maris’ mark of 61 for the season. However, he’s cooled off. He still leads the American League with 24. Tony Conigliaro of Boston has 20 and his teammate, Carl Yazstremski has 19. Harmon Killebrew of the Twins has finally woken up and has 18 for the season.

Six American League pitchers have 10 wins. Jim Kaat of the Twins and David Wickersham of Detroit each have 10-2 records.

Sam McDowell of Cleveland leads the league with 165 strikeouts, followed by the Yankees’ Al Downing with 150.

In the National League, McCovey has his 23 home runs and Billy Williams has 22 for the Cubs. Ernie Banks and Ron Santo each have 19 home runs for the Cubs; apparently the wind is blowing out a lot in Wrigley.

Sammy Ellis has 12 wins for the Reds and Sandy Koufax leads everyone with 173 strikeouts.

Detroit and Minnesota don’t play each other again until Aug.17. The Tigers have a relatively easy July with five games against Washington and seven against the Yankees. Detroit also has seven games with the White Sox that could make the race closer if Chicago can regain what they had during the first month of the season and be competitive.

After three games with the Mets, St. Louis hosts the Giants for a three-game set on July 5-7. At the end of July, the Cards head west for six games in Los Angeles and San Francisco before returning home for four more games with the Dodgers. It should be a fun time in the National League with those games ahead.

This has been an amazing season. When I did my first replay back in 1998, most of the teams had pretty much wrapped up their divisions early. This replay looks like it could be extremely close in both divisions and will make rolling games even more fun.

Birthday 1965

Play enough APBA baseball replay games and you’re bound to roll a game on a date on which you lived.  That’s unless you roll more games from the early eras.  If you’re still alive and remember an actual day in your life that corresponds with a game played on a date in 1919, well then, good for you.

I’ve done several replays in years that I was alive. My first baseball replay was 1998. I also did seasons for 1964, 1974, 1977, 1981, 1987 and 1991.

This time, I’m rolling 1965 and I hit games the other day on the date that I turned 5. It was June 29. My family lived in Madison, Wisc. Then, I was a little over two months from starting kindergarten and, while I was still unaware of baseball at any real level, I knew who Henry Aaron was because I lived close enough to Milwaukee.

I remember my fifth birthday, too. My parents got me a Daniel Boone toy musket and a plastic container that replicated the horn-shaped flask pioneers used to carry their gunpowder.

In the days before political correctness, my friends and I ran around our West Lawn neighborhood playing cowboys and Indians. We’d shoot at anything that moved.  Birds, cats, cars and people. At first I even shot at the nuns who walked near our home each day to their nearby Catholic church until I realized you could go to hell for picking off holy people.

In my replay, the White Sox clobbered the Twins, 9-3, in the first game of June 29, 1965, Don Buford hit a grand slam off Twins’ pitcher Camille Pascual in the second inning and the game was pretty much over then.  In the real life game, Minnesota beat Chicago, 7-6, when Zoilo Versalles hit a sacrifice fly with one out in the bottom of the ninth to drive in pitcher Dave Boswell who came in as a pinch runner.

Milwaukee was in New York, pounding the hapless Mets in both my replay game of the day and in the real contest. Aaron went one for four in my game; he went two for four with a home run in the actual game. Cleveland upset Boston and San Francisco edged Los Angeles, 3-2, in 13 innings in my contests.  In the real games of that day, the Dodgers beat the Giants and the Indians scalped the Red Sox.

The games we play overlap life and it gives a chance to reflect on our own lives.  Here, 56 years later, the act of rolling a few games for that day in 1965 brought back the memories of being a child. I didn’t realize it then, of course, but my entire future lay ahead. My dad was enrolled in the University of Wisconsin pursuing a doctorate in music. A year later, we moved to northern Minnesota when he got a teaching job at Bemidji State University. It was there I learned my obsession of sports, fueled by watching Twins’ games on a Duluth television station. I began playing replays, in a sense, on an electric baseball game my parents got me for Christmas in 1969. (Wait until I do a replay of the 1969 season. Nostalgia will flow freely in this blog then!)

The date links us. On June 29, 1965, I was a 5-year-old toddler taking potshots at nuns with Daniel Boone’s musket. There were no worries, other than the approaching wonderment of going to kindergarten and if rain would limit our playing outdoors.

Now, playing more than a half century later, I’m old and a tad more cynical about life. My knees hurt all the time and I worry about making the house payment on time each month. I just got my second Covid-19 vaccination shot, the same concept as in 1965 when I received a polio vaccination. It’s hard to fathom so much time has passed since that fifth birthday.

I’m the same person, but time has changed things. I’m grown up, but there’s still a spirit of the 5-year-old inside of me at times. Playing these APBA games brings back memories of those earlier days. Days of walking to the nearby Henry Vilas Zoo, of playing  with my friends on the block and taking shots at the line of nuns as they marched along Allen Street.

Dingy Ninja

Of the four favorite television shows I have, I sure don’t fit the demographic targets of one them.

"Columbo," the 1970s detective show starring Peter Falk, is one that does fit. He, like I, wears wrinkled clothes, appear scatterbrained and is forgetful. When I was a newspaper report I would always call back a source with the obligatory, “Oh, one more question…”

I also love watching “Dateline.” I’ve covered enough murder mysteries during my news career--including one that made it on Dateline--and I enjoy the storytelling techniques the NBC correspondents use to drive the show.

And the other favorite show, “The Twilight Zone”—the older 1960s version on MeTV—is a given. I greatly appreciate the writing of the show and it, like "Columbo," reminds me of earlier, better days when I was a kid.

But one show I make a point to watch is an oddity. Each Monday, I park in front of the TV and stare at “American Ninja Warriors,” the show that features people using their strengths to navigate a hellish obstacle course of balancing while running across rolling beams and small steps, swinging on trapeze-like bars over pools of water, finger-gripping along thin edges while suspended above another pool and running up a 14-foot embanked wall.

By definition of who I am, I’m the least likely to be interested in that program. I’m old and fat. I don’t enjoy getting hot and my fingers get tired typing for long period of time. I’m sure not going to able to inch my way along a ledge with them.

The only way I’d get through that is if they’d put a harness on me and lift me with a helicopter, like you see rescue teams hoisting cattle from South Dakota blizzards.

And those outfits they wear? I think it’s illegal to stuff my fat ass into shorts in at least 27 states.

My idea of an obstacle course is pulling myself up out of the couch I’ve sunken into, weaving around our coffee table in the living room, stepping over the cat that’s stretched out on the kitchen floor and popping open the refrigerator for another Pepsi. The challenge is to do that all during a commercial break so I don’t miss another contestant’s attempt.

The athletes also focus strictly on the course. I, like our friend Columbo, am always somewhat rattled. I spend a lot of time thinking of both the day’s job and future story ideas I can freelance write to the various magazines I file for.  I fret over the light bill, not working my way over a Ferris wheel-looking thing while thousands cheer and family members on video screens make that heart-shaped motion with their hands. I’d be happy with the heart-shaped hand sign for just making the house mortgage on time. Hear that, Wells-Fargo? Oh, right, because of Covid you aren't really dealing with customers much anymore and refer them instead to the automated pay system. 

(Those who are locked into the ball and chain of Wells-Fargo Home Mortgage will get that lame reference. [When I first bought a house, I was in a three-year revolving loan with Wells-Fargo, which meant every year for three years someone with the company would revolve their hand around and slap me in the face.])

American Ninja Warriors? How about American Ninja Worrier?’

So, why do I like this show so much? Maybe it’s because of the stories each contestant has. There are vignettes portrayed for each person; most have some sad story in their past that they overcome. They are tales of hope, and we sure need that now.

Maybe it’s the enthusiasm of the two anchors, Matt Iseman and Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, when people work their way through the course. These guys make a Game Seven Stanley Cup call by Doc Emrick seem like a quiet reading in a library.

Maybe it’s because the contestants are all rooting for each other and there’s no real competition between them. After watching the rough and tumble Stanley Cup series that included more skirmishes than 10-cent beer night in a Traverse City, Mich., bar last week, it was nice to see calm people.

Maybe it’s that hope. Hope that I could even dream of being healthy enough to be an American Ninja Warrior. 

Like my wife, Holly, said when watching it the other day, she’d get to the first obstacle and say, “Nope. I’m out of here” and then wave and walk off. And she’s healthy. She can get up off the couch without making grunting noises simply by standing up! Me, with my useless knees, have to push off the couch’s arm, and have that momentarily sense of weightlessness, wondering if I’m going to continue on my upward voyage, or if I’ll plop my ass back in the chair.

It’s a bad deal when climbing down that first step of the Ninja stage on the way to the course would tucker you out.

My chances of being a Ninja are Dingy, but come Monday, I’ll still be deeply immersed in the program, and the sunken sofa watching it.

Ball Four, Fifty Years Later

Fifty years ago my aunt bought me Jim Bouton’s classic “Ball Four,” and everything changed.

Bouton’s book chronicled his 1969 season with the expansion Seattle Pilots and, after a trade late in the season, with the Houston Astros. It shocked the baseball establishment by showing what really went on in the locker rooms.

It wasn’t always the Pollyanna view of All-American boys playing the game. Instead, it portrayed the players as real. Mickey Mantle was truly a turd. Pitcher Mike Marshall was an intellectual. Coaches were often seen as dumb louts who epitomized the concept of double standard.

But it wasn’t just a baseball book. It was so much more. Although Bouton’s work contained a lot of curse words (Manager Joe Schultz used many in alternating combinations) and it may not have been deemed suitable for a kid, like me, of 11 years old, it was a training primer in life, a glimpse into how the real world worked and how there were so many personalities we’d meet along the way.

It was on July 4, 1971, when I spotted the book in a rack at the Itasca State Park gift shop between Park Rapids and Bemidji, Minn., where I lived. My aunt and uncle were visiting us from Arizona that week – a trip to coincide with my June 29 birthday and the Fourth of July—and we went to the park for the day.

The paperback book was the first one showing in the rack; others were behind it. It had a simple cover. “Jim Bouton” was in bold black letters at the top, above a larger green font “Ball Four.” Below was a simple photograph of a right hand holding a baseball in the grip of a knuckleball.

Published by Dell, the book cost $1.25.

My tattered copy of 
Ball Four from 1971

My parents objected to my want of the book. But my aunt stepped in and bought it for a late birthday present.

It was a fitting metaphor to buy the book at the Headwaters of the Mississippi River. The 2,318-mile long river begins there and makes it journey south, much like I did. Life, like the river, has its curves, currents and changes. The book, bought near the trickle of the start of that river, began my own journey that probably defined a lot of who I am.

That night, we sat on the shore of Lake Bemidji and watched fireworks. One of the displays featured the spelling of “Hello” in the sky. Each firework, when exploding, spelled a letter in smoke. The “O” faded quicker than the rest and we were left with “Hell” drifting overhead for a moment. The crowd laughed.  And I, having seen that word in “Ball Four” on the way home, along with several other words I filed in my ‘do not use in front of adults ‘ mental cabinet, felt like I was in on the joke like the adults were.

I entered sixth grade that fall. While the rest of the kids were using words like “fart blossom” and “butthead,” I was firing off zingers I gleaned from the book. 

But I also watched people more closely, learning that maybe all adults weren’t always right. Maybe they didn’t know the answers all the time. I also watched myself more closely and, in a sense, became a tad paranoid and saw myself from outside myself and through others’ eyes.

We moved to Arkansas three years later. The book, of course, came with me. In defiance of the southern culture and in honor of the book, I refrained from using the drawled out “BS” word that all the classmates used and deferred instead to the version that used the “horse” word.

Seattle pitcher Marty Pattin used that word when describing Pilot outfielder Steve Hovely’s hair in Bouton’s June 28 offering. Look it up if you want.

I remember once I left the book in my eighth grade English class when we changed classes. I was shy and tried to be invisible; coming from the north with an accent akin to characters on the movie “Fargo,” I wanted to stay quiet in the land of twang. Even though his name is pronounced “Bow-ton,” like taking a bow in front of an audience, I said it with my northern accent as “Boo-ton.”

The next class was in session when I realized my book was in that classroom. I boldly got up from the next class’ seat, told the teacher I left something and strode into English class, disrupting it and finding my book. It was that important to me.

The book’s been with me since. After I got the book, I moved about 23 times in my life. I know where “Ball Four” is at all times now. I’ve also bought the anniversary copy “Ball Four Plus Ball Five,” and a friend found a softback of the book at a used book shop and bought it for me recently.

Years later, I found Bouton’s phone number online somewhere and called his home. His wife answered the phone and nervously, I asked to speak with him. This was 1998, so he was 59. He came on and I simply thanked him for writing the book, taking the criticism that followed its publication and making me think so much differently than I had before.

I’m sure he got calls like that often. But he was polite, thanking me for the compliment and saying he had no idea how the reception of the book would be years later.

Now, 50 years later, I still use phrases from the book like the drawn out “Yeah, sure,” the Alvin Dark comment, “Take a hike, son” and  “well, it doesn’t make me a bad person,” whenever anyone criticizes something I do.

Bouton died on July 10, 2019. His book lives on, though, and every few years I pull one of the copies off the shelf and read it again. I’ve probably read it 20 times now—yeah sure--and have memorized most of it, but it is still impacting.

In the comments below, fell free to share your impressions of the book. It is a classic that all sports fans have read over and over, I’m sure.

APBA Eclipse

APBA players who replay a full baseball season know it takes a long time to complete one, rolling game by game and ensuring each team plays 162 games, or 154 in the earlier seasons before 1969.

And there comes one day during each replay that really serves as a reminder of the length of the replay and the dedication needed to do this. Mine came yesterday, June 16. It’s the same date as the day I’ve reached for the games in the 1965 baseball season I’m on.

I call it the APBA eclipse—the point when the actual date coincides with the game date of whatever season I’m doing. During my replay of the 1991 season, which took four years, I experienced an APBA eclipse three times.

I thought I’d prolong the eclipse for a day and finish out games for June 16, 1965, last night and be ready for June 17, 1965, games on the same day 56 years later. But I failed to roll any games and the APBA eclipse occurred yesterday.

When I do replays, I set up team schedules based on the games they’re set to play, not the games that they really did play. Remember, there are no rainouts in my APBA games (although the game actually does have a dice roll outcome that does result in a rained out game). I play games based on the actual days. For instance, on June 16, 1965, all 20 teams played games. So, I play each game for that day and then move on to the next day.

I began this 1965 replay on Dec. 11, 2020, and I reached Game 610 when the eclipse happened. The actual season began on April 11, 1965. Obviously, I can’t play all games on the same days they were played in the real season. Often, all teams play on the same day, so that means there will be 10 games to roll for a day. Throw in Sunday or holiday doubleheaders and there could be up to 16 games in a day. I’m lucky to roll three or four games a day, so that means it’ll take at least three or four days of rolling games to finish out an actual day’s schedule.

It sounds confusing.

Tonight, June 17, I’ll roll a few games for June 16, 1965, but I’ll never catch up to the real date again. And that’s one of the drawbacks of doing replays, I guess. There are so many seasons to experience, and there are the other sports of basketball, hockey and football I’d love to replay as well. If I were independently wealthy and retired, I may find time to get more games in. I had thought of replaying each of the sports when they were in season, but that would take years to do one season for each sport and it would kill any momentum and continuity of a season replay.

One of the more fun aspects of doing a replay is watching the teams jostle positions in the standings and seeing teams develop. In this 1965 season, one of the main story lines is the play of the St. Louis Cardinals and how San Francisco is trying to catch them. Pittsburgh beat the Cardinals the other night, dropping the Redbirds into only a game and a half lead over the Giants.

So the APBA eclipse comes and goes. I’ll continue rolling the games, maybe getting a few in each night and rolling maybe a dozen during the weekend. Work, mowing the yard, trying to keep my side job of freelance writing developing and general life take time.

During each replay there comes the APBA eclipse reminder that these replays take a while to do. But it’s well worth the time.

1965 Replay Update: June 12, 1965

I haven’t updated the 1965 APBA baseball replay I’m doing in a while. I haven’t posted any blog in a while for that matter. I’ve been busy cranking out four stories for one magazine, another for a second one I contribute to, a piece for an online site and a lengthy feature for a news service in the state.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve not been rolling the games. The pace did slow a lot; I was averaging four games a day during the first four months of my replay. That’s dwindled some, but I still manage to get a game or two in every so often.

I’ve played all games through June 12, 1965. I use the original schedule (found on Retrosheet.org) for the games and don’t have rainouts, so every team is guaranteed to play 162 games in the season as intended.

So far, the St. Louis Cardinals are the surprise team of the replay with the best record in the majors at 39-19. The Minnesota Twins started off slowly, but aided by a 22-4 run in May, they’ve jumped into the lead in the American League.

So, here’s a brief team-by-team look at a season I’m ranking as the best replay I’ve done. I know, I know, I always say the replay I am doing is the best ever, but so far, this tops ‘em all.

American League

1 Minnesota (38-20, GB --) I don’t know how the Twins are doing so well. Jimmie Hall leads the Twins with 12 home runs, followed by Killebrew’s 11. Tony Oliva has 8 and then there’s a large drop-off for power. Jim Kaat is 9-1 with 50 strikeouts, but the rest of the pitching is mediocre when it comes to whiffing batters. They began the season 7-1 and then got swept in a three-game series at Detroit and, after beating up on Cleveland, lost all games in a four-game set in Chicago to look pretty meek early on. Ahead for them are a game at Detroit and then three games at Chicago, four games at New York and three games at Cleveland before returning home to host the Tigers and the White Sox. The rest of the month could be a pivotal time for Minny.

2 Detroit (35-22 GB 2.5) Norm Cash is a front-runner for the American League MVP. He has 10 home runs and, although I’m not tracking RBIs like I did for the previous 1947 replay, Cash has hit several game-winners. Pitching is key for Detroit with Dave Wickersham leading the team with eight wins. Lolich, at 7-4, has 99 strikeouts.

3 Chicago (32-24 GB 5) The most consecutive games the White Sox have won is six and in June so far, they have gone 3-8. Floyd Robinson leads the team with five home runs. To get an idea of the lack of power they have, pitcher Tommy John has the eighth best home run record so far with one dinger.

4 Boston (30-28 GB 8) Watch out for the Red Sox. Carl Yastrezemski has 17 home runs for second place in the AL home run race. Tony Conigliaro has 13 and a young Rico Petrocelli has 11.The pitching is bleak and if the Sox can get it together, I think they could make a run for the pennant. Earl Wilson is the best hurler with a 6-5 record, indicative of the team so far. He does have 85 strikeouts.

5 California (28-31 GB 10.5) Dean Chance is tied with Kaat with nine wins for the AL pitching lead. In an oddity, Fred Newman, who has pitched in 13 games so far, has five home runs. Jim Fregosi leads the team with eight. If Newman gets in more games, he may end up leading the team in blasts.

6 Washington (29-33 GB 11) Three players have made the Senators better than expected. Frank Howard, of course, is a monster with 22 home runs. For those uninitiated with APBA’s game, players are given cards with dice roll results on them. The iconic roll of “66” generally results in a “1.” But home runs can occur with other results with men on base. It seems Howard is taking advantage of that. He’s rolled several “5s” with a man on first or second for a homer. Pete Richert is the ace with an 8-4 record and 92 strike outs and Ron Kline leads the league with nine saves.

7 Cleveland (25-29 GB 11) Ugh. Other than Sam McDowell and his AL leading 121 strikeouts, this is the least exciting team to play. The only fun with the Indians is when Max Alvis hits a home run and I can say, “Alvis has left the building.” He’s done that five times so far.

8 New York (26-33 GB 12.5) For every good, there’s a bad with the Yankees. Al Downing tossed a no-hitter against Boston and had 16 strikeouts at Kansas City. But, Jim Bouton, whom I root for because of his classic book “Ball Four,” is 0-7. Mickey Mantle has 13 home runs, but outfielder Roger Ropez has none.

9 Baltimore (24-34 GB 14) I keep waiting for the Orioles to wake up. They finished third in the real 1965 American League, but they're far from the real Birds. It may be my managing. I keep playing Boog Powell at first. He has seven home runs, but more strikeouts than he can wave a stick at. Well, despite the dumb euphemism, you get my drift. Baltimore’s longest winning streak is at four games. They promptly lost eight in a row after edging Kansas City in three games and California in the first game of a double-header before dropping those eight.

10 Kansas City (21-34 GB 15.5) Ken Harrelson’s 16 home runs are good enough for third in the AL. That’s as far as it goes with the Athletics. None of the pitchers has a winning record other than spot relievers Don Mossi and Jack Aker, who are both 1-0. They began the season promising, going 10-7. They realized who they were and have gone 11-27 since.

National League

1 St Louis (39-19 GB --) The Cardinals keep finding ways to win in come-back fashion. Lou Brock hit a homer in the bottom of the eighth to go ahead of the Braves in a recent game. Mack Jones hit a solo shot in the top of the ninth to tie it for Milwaukee and then with two outs, Tito Francona drove in Ken Boyer with a double to win it in the bottom of the night. Two nights earlier, the Cards were down 3-1 to the Reds but fought back to win it 4-3 in 12 innings when Mike Shannon singled in Curt Flood. It’s been that kind of year for them. In the real 1965 season, they finished seventh in the National League. It’ll take a collapse for them to fall that far, although …

2 San Francisco (37-21 GB 2) … the Giants have come on strong lately with Willie McCovey’s 17 and Willie Mays’ 14 home runs. Juan Marichal is 8-4 with 109 strikeouts and the Giants have gone 27-14 since April 30

3 Los Angeles (36-23 GB 3.5) The Dodgers seemed pretty weak at first and were mired in sixth place at the end of May. Since then, they’ve gone 10-2 as Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale has each won their last four starts. (Drysdale began the season with a 1-5 record. Koufax has 135 Ks to lead everyone.) Ron Perranoski leads the league with 10 saves. The Dodgers are the likely challengers, along with the Giants, to knock the Cardinals off their nest.

4 Pittsburgh (34-26 GB 6) Vern Law has no-hit the Cardinals and the Phillies and has 112 strikeouts, good for second place in the National League strikeout leaders. Willie Stargell has 14 home runs, but the Pirates are on a four-game losing streak to Houston and San Francisco – at home.

5 Cincinnati (32-25 GB 6.5) Frank Robinson leads the Reds with 14 quiet home runs. I say “Quiet” because they come at inopportune, meaningless times. In a recent game, he struck out and popped with the bases loaded. Sammy Ellis is 10-2 and Jim Maloney is 7-3 to pace Cincinnati on the mound.

6 Milwaukee (26-29 GB 11.5) This is the most disappointing team in the replay for me. Maybe it’s because I started kindergarten in Madison, Wisc., in 1965 and Henry Aaron and the Braves were the first team on my baseball consciousness. Aaron only has nine home runs in the replay and Tony Cloninger at 6-5 is the only winning pitcher for the team. Cloninger did toss a no-hitter against Philadelphia, the victim of two no-nos so far.

7 Philadelphia (27-31 GB 12) The Phillies resembled contenders at first but now look like they are doing an early version of their 1964 swan dive. They are 3-9 in their last 12 games and were swept at home in a four-game series against the Dodgers in which they were outscored 21-4.  Jim Bunning is their only hope with an 8-4 record and 97 strikeouts. Dick Allen, who hit 20 home runs in the real 1965 season, has seven so far.

8 Chicago (27-32 GB 12.5) Billy Williams leads the NL with 18 home runs. Ernie Banks has 16 and Ron Santo has 13. The Cubs started off well, then realized they were the Cubs and sunk to eighth place. Only Bob Buhl at 7-4 has a winning record for the team.

9 Houston (24-36 GB 16) Rusty Staub leads the Astros with only seven home runs, ace pitcher Bob Bruce is 2-7 and only a young Larry Dierker, at 3-3, doesn’t have a losing record. The only thing keeping Houston from being the cellar dweller is…

10 New York (10-50 GB 30) … this team. Jack Fisher leads the Mets in wins with three. He has nine loses. Al Jackson is 2-8 and Gary Kroll is 1-9. The Mets may have four 20-game losers. If they can replicate their actual 1965 record of 50-112 it will be a miracle. The only bright spot is Ron Swoboda and his 15 home runs.

So, there you have it-- a super long run-down of every team in the 1965 replay. The National League looks like a dogfight. San Francisco still has 12 games remaining in the season against the Cardinals and the Dodgers play St. Louis 13 more times.

Howard is on pace to hit 62 home runs and Koufax could reach his actual season total of 382 strikeouts.

In the 11 full season APBA replays I’ve done since rolling baseball games in 1998, only two of my World Series featured the teams that met in the actual Series of those years.  St. Louis faced New York in my replays of 1942 and 1964. Will this be a third replay that has the actual teams facing each other if Minnesota holds on and Los Angeles overtakes St. Louis? Will the Cardinals continue to defy odds and win the National League? Will Mays and McCovey power the Giants?  Will the Mets win 30 games? All these story lines are what make this season so compelling.

 

Radio Days

The other day while at work in Arkansas, I listened to the Minnesota Twins play the Detroit Tigers by tuning into an online feed of the Crookston, Minn., radio station and watching the Gameday feature on MLB.com.

I had instant season stats, albeit early in the baseball year, available and with a click of the mouse, I could see a player’s career totals. The Gameday feature showed where each pitch was located and included the ball’s speed – both at the release and when it crossed the plate. It provided a nice backdrop for a busy day.

I then realized how far it’s come in the realm of following a baseball team. I was in Arkansas, listening to a game played in Detroit. Later, I found an Illinois station and heard part of the Chicago Cubs’ game against Pittsburgh. Had I wanted to, I could have tuned in to games with Atlanta, New York, Boston and Oakland that day, too.

It was a vast difference half a century ago when I was a kid listening to Twins’ games on the static-filled AM radio I kept on a stand by my bed. I had no access to stats then, relying instead on my handy Official Major League Baseball Record Book published by Fawcett for $1.25. I had the 1972 edition that featured statistics for the 1971 season, team rosters for the 1972 season and all-time records. It was my sports Bible, my go-to source for any information.

I remember being the clichéd kid of that era, listening to late night games on that radio and using an earphone with a braided wire snuck under the covers so my parents wouldn’t know I was awake. Often, when Harmon Killebrew hit a long fly ball or when Wayne Granger was about to strike someone out to end the game and earn the save, the signal would fade into static. I’d have to wait, hoping the station would come back and I’d see how the play turned out.

The only updated stats we had were found in the Sunday newspapers, unless we wanted to clip box scores from the daily papers and calculate the batting averages and earned run averages ourselves. And I did that, keeping a three-ring notebook with box scores taped on pages corresponding with the days the games were played. It was tedious keeping up with them all, but the payoff was knowing that Twins’ third baseman Eric Soderholm was batting a woeful .180 during most of the season.

Now, we have instant access to all of that with the internet. I can immediately find out a batter’s average against right-handed and left-handed pitchers and during day and night games. OPS? OMG, it’s right there. The Gameday even shows a picture from the catcher’s point of view complete with the actual stadium, day or night skies, and any buildings and landmarks past the outfield walls. It leaves little for the imagination, eliminating my own thoughts of what stadiums looked like when I listened to Twins’ games on my little radio 50 years ago.

Is it a good thing, the advances in technology? Well, sure, knowledge is good anytime. It allows me to listen to my favorite team, despite sitting in a northeast Arkansas office building some 775 miles from Target Field. I can see how teams are doing any time of the day by checking sports websites and I can get updated immediate standings, rather than waiting for the next day’s paper to arrive with incomplete standings. (Remember the letter ‘n’ next to the west coast games indicating they were played too late to make press time?)

But I’m finding as I get older, I often look back in nostalgic ways. This isn’t some grumpy creed from an old-timer saying “We had it tough in those days, having to wait overnight for scores.” Instead, it’s just a thought of how things differ.

The Twins will play several upcoming day games. I’m sure I’ll find the Crookston radio station at work, click on MLB.com and “watch” the game. But part of me would rather be huddled under my covers as a youngster with the world still ahead of me, my braided earphone cord snaking beneath the sheets and bring the world of sports to me.

The Pepsi Kid

As much as I drink Pepsi while rolling APBA games, I should do an advertisement for the syrupy, caramel, burp-inducing pop.

I’ll generally buy a 1.2-liter bottle of the elixir under the guise of needing to quench the writing muse when I have magazine stories I need to crank out on deadline. But, I find myself drinking the Pepsi quite a bit during the games I play. There are a lot of, shall we say, brief “rain delays” by the seventh inning stretches during games when I’m hitting the bottle hard.

The advertisement would fit well while I’m playing the 1965 APBA baseball season.

VIDEO: APBA card of New York Mets’ outfielder Joe Christopher. A red and white dice lie next to it with a “4” and “1” roll. The corresponding number on Christopher’s card is a “24,” the roll for a double play.

ANNOUNCER: When playing New York Mets games, nothing makes their tasteless season a bit more palatable than a nice, cold Pepsi. When manager Casey Stengel reaches for the bullpen phone to summon a relief pitcher yet again in the sixth inning, I reach for my bottle of the refreshing soft drink

VIDEO: Shot of Washington Senator’s outfield Frank Howard’s card in the background with a glass of Pepsi in the foreground. The two APBA dice show “66,” the universal roll for a home run.

ANNOUNCER: You’ll be rolling 66s every time you open a bottle of Pepsi.

I actually remember the first Pepsi I ever had. My family was traveling from our northern Minnesota home to western Arkansas on a vacation when I was about 10. We stopped in Joplin, Mo., for the day, partly because my father had been stationed there while in the Army and wanted to see the area and partly because he had heard of the mysterious “Joplin lights” legend that had people believing in flying saucers.

We went inside a roadside dinner next to the motel and ordered food. I was craving a pop and asked for a “RC Cola,” the staple of soft drinks in northern Minnesota. The waiter looked at me like I was a Joplin light.

“What about a Canada Dry ginger ale?” I asked.

Again, the look.

He picked up on my northern accent. His name was “Tom,” based on the nametag on his shirt. How I remember that after 50 years, I have no idea. I can’t remember to tie my shoes half the time and there are days when I get in the car to go to work and realize I forgot my keys. Maybe it was because I had a friend named “Tom” who lived next door to me back then.

“Son,” Tom said in a southern drawl. “We’re in the south. We don’t have any of those Yankee drinks. How ‘bout a Pepsi?”

And so it began.

I got a second one and Tom called me the “Pepsi Kid.”

“Pretty good stuff, isn’t it?” he said. And I agreed.

Now, half a century later my kidneys probably look like some decrepit sponge under the kitchen cabinet and my liver may have the consistency of a brick, but I keep chugging Pepsi. Thanks, Tom.

I once quit drinking it for a year in 1997  just to see what would happen. I lost about 30 pounds during that time, but I missed the flavor. I used to travel with my first wife to craft shows before she passed away 15 years ago. She’d sell women’s hair wrap things we made and I’d spend long hours sitting in convention centers or booths or under tents at shows.  (Once I sat in a mule pen at the Nashville, Tenn., fairgrounds where they held a craft show.)

We were in Jackson, Tenn., one hot afternoon and I put my book down, got up from my chair and asked for change. It had been a year since I had a drink and the craving, the addiction, became unbearable. I walked to a pop machine in a near trance, fed the change slot and pushed the button for “Pepsi.” Somewhere, a chorus of angels sang.

It was one of the best Pepsis ever.

I wrote about my addiction to the drink and the Jackson, Tenn., experience in a column I had at a weekly newspaper. I equated to falling off the wagon like an alcoholic and waking up in an alley, covered in syrup and goo, bottle caps strewn around me.

It wasn’t that flattering of a column, but the local Pepsi bottling plant loved it. They sent me coupons for several crates of Pepsi and a nice tee-shirt. Sadly, the shirt was too small for me – probably because I had quaffed so many Pepsis. It was a Medium. I wanted to call the plant and ask them if they had one in a size Circus Tent, but I was a bit embarrassed. Instead, I just drank away my sorrows with more Pepsi.

I’ve now turned my wife, Holly, into a Pepsi fan. She’ll pour some of the drink from my 1.25-liter bottle into a coffee cup and then put a sandwich bag over it to save it. She may take a drink and then place it into the refrigerator, returning to it later. Later? I’d drink a coffee cup-worth of the stuff in one gulp.

There’s a window ledge by the desk where I write my articles and roll the APBA games. I keep the bottles of pop on the ledge within easy grasp. But as I look now, there’s only an empty bottle.

The two saddest things in life are an empty prescription bottle of Tramadol for pain and an empty bottle of Pepsi.

Looks like I’ll have to make a run to the grocery store to get another round of drinks.

It’ll make the 1965 NY Mets games I play a bit more tasteful.

A Lack of Vision

Looking at baseball cards issued for the 1965 season, I noticed a lot of players wore glasses and while most of the spectacled looked like accountants from a large 1950s firm, at least they could see.

My baseball career was cut short because I wouldn’t wear my glasses at an early age for fear of ridicule. I didn’t realize then that my lack of corrected vision was actually more grounds for poking fun at me than the way I looked had I been wearing the glasses. If I had paid attention to those baseball stars who wore them, I’d probably not have shunned them and done better on the diamond.

There were some good four-eyed players who are in my 1965 APBA replay now. Perhaps the best was Dick Allen, the slugging third baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies. Denny McLain, the Detroit Tigers pitcher who, three years later won 30 games, had glasses.  Frank Howard, another home run fiend, sported glasses while playing with the Washington Senators. Two Sens’ pitchers that year, Howie Koplitz and Frank Kreutzer, also wore them. Two of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Bill Virdon and Bob Veale, also had corrective lenses. And the Twins saw 1965 American League MVP Zolio Versalles wear them, along with third baseman Rich Rollins.

I knew my vision was bad while in first grade at my northern Minnesota elementary school. The school was on the campus of a college where my father taught; it was called the “lab school” and college students often used us grade schoolers in various tests involving education and then some. (I remember once a bizarre class tested us to see if anyone had Extra Sensory Perception. They held up cards and we had to “feel” what symbol was on each card.)

Once, in the early fall of my first grade year, college students lined us up for eye exams. The testers held a large wooden block with the letter “E” on it. They would turn it and we were to tell them which way the “E” was pointing. I knew I was in trouble when I squinted and said “What block?”

I got glasses soon after, but I was embarrassed to wear them. I was pretty much a nerd anyway. Glasses just made it worse, I thought. Looking back now and realizing just how bad my vision was then, it’s a wonder I could play the waffle ball games and shoot baskets with my friend, let alone finding my way back home later.  I did okay, but still, there were the embarrassing moments when I should have just put the glasses on. Once, while at the lake home of a girl I liked from Grand Rapids, Minn., I thought I saw a ball on the floor. I picked it up with the intent of tossing it to her. Rather than a ball, though, I discovered upon closer inspection that it was a chunk of red meat they had given to their dog. It was coated in dog drool and when I quickly dropped it in shock, the girl and her parents laughed at me. They went back to Grand Rapids at the end of that summer and I never saw her again – both figuratively in a relationship sense and in reality in a really poor vision sense.

I tried out for Little League baseball without the glasses when I was 10 or so. During batting practice, the coach lobbed easy pitches to check our swings. When it was my turn, I hefted the bat, swinging it like a seasoned pro. I stepped up, dug in and waited for the pitch.

"Son, you’re facing the wrong way,” the coach said. I turned around to face the pitcher’s mound and began flailing at pitches I thought were near me.

“He swings at all the bad pitches and lets the good ones go by,” another kid said of me. Others made fun of me, criticizing my swing and general appearance. I wanted to tell them that only my vision was affected. My hearing was perfect.

I played in one Little League game before my lack of vision got the best of me. I was stationed in the outfield where the coach presumed no one would hit a ball. Unfortunately, some kid laid into one and sent the ball my way. I looked skyward, hoping to see the ball. I couldn’t spot it and when it made the sickening landing “thud” some 10 feet behind me, I knew I was doomed. The coach screamed at me and took me off the field. I ducked my head in embarrassment and then snuck off the field and went home. Despite the others having good vision, no one seemed to notice me leave.

I wear contact lenses now; I got rid of the glasses in 1976 while in high school. But I’m sure I still can’t hit a baseball. Learning to swing blindly during my formative years didn’t help.

When I roll games in my 1965 APBA replay now, I think of those players who wore glasses and probably had the last laugh at any of the kids who may have made fun of them. Frank Howard must be seeing the ball very well; he has 17 home runs in 45 games in my replay and is on pace for 61 home runs. Rollins, while not known for his slugging, hit one out for the Twins the other day in my replay to keep Minnesota in first place in the American League.

So, the lesson here is: wear your glasses. Don’t worry about how you look. Even if you don’t end up playing baseball in the big leagues, wearing glasses will keep you from picking up dog drool-infested food.

Who Cleans the Confetti and Other Sports Questions

My wife is quite the sports fan, knowing teams and players and understanding the nuances of the games, but there are some limitations and that’s what makes watching them with her an interesting venture.

For example, when we watched the Chicago Cubs dispatch the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2016 National League Championship series, Holly noticed Dodger third baseman wearing a large blue protective glove while waiting to bat. “Why is he wearing that oven mitt?” she asked.

Then when some of the batters swung weighted bats while on deck in the same series, she thought the weights looked like erasers. Perhaps they were. The Cubs may have used them to erase Los Angeles’ 2 games to 1 lead and take the next three games to make it to the World Series.

And, as we watched football games on television, on first glimpse, Holly considered if the padded down markers were actually large vacuum cleaners used to clean up confetti after Super Bowls and National Championship games. She wondered who would clean the celebratory mess after the games were over and thought big vacuum cleaners could do the trick. (Just this season, she amended that and thought people should drive large leaf-cleaning Zamboni-type machines to clear the field. Maybe they do.)

She’s questioned why extra points in football contests are worth only one point while field goals, some kicked only a few yards longer than an extra point, are worthy of three points. She’ll root for teams with prettier uniforms and more appealing and nicer names. It’s much more esthetic, say, to root for a Washington Husky than a USC Trojan or a Kentucky Wildcat.

But despite that, sports have been part of our lives since we first got together. Within two weeks of us first talking by telephone in the summer of 2015, I called her to give her the play-by-play of Cubs’ pitcher Jake Arrieta’s no-hitter against the Dodgers. She couldn’t get the game on her television and heard about Arrieta’s feat.

And there’s more: The following season, we watched the Cubs embark on their 2016 World Series run, catching their first home game of the season on a television set in a Waukegan, Ill., laundromat while we washed large quilts.  She’d ask me how the Cubs were doing during the season and when the playoffs began she was a fixture in front of the television whenever Chicago played.

When we made the long drives from Arkansas to north Chicago, to pass the time, I’d say cities and she’d offer team names. I was stunned when she knew Ottawa’s hockey team is called the Senators. She even knew San Jose’s hockey team.

Still, there are those moments. We missed much of the first half of the 2016 Super Bowl because we were in a Gurnee, Ill., convenience store looking for fingernail polish rather than parked in front of a television set. And I didn’t watch the 2021 NBA All-Star game – although, I had no interest in watching it anyway – because Oprah was interviewing the royal Harry and Meghan and that was must-see TV at our home that night.

The sports thoughts carry over to APBA as well when Holly would roll some games for the Cubs in my replays. Chicago was pretty bad in that replay. Once, she helped roll a Cubs game in which they were getting pounded. By the seventh inning, she thought the APBA-carded Cubs players should quit the game, go back in their envelopes and “call it a day.” She also questioned why I’d pull pitchers and bring in relievers during APBA games.

“Because their arms are tired,” I said.

“They’re not real players,” she said. “These are virtual arms. They can’t really get tired.”

So, it is an adventure watching sports with her. We’ll fill out the brackets for the upcoming NCAA basketball tournament and chances are she’ll beat me like she has in the past. If there was a team named the “Chipmunks” she’d probably root for them to make it to the finals based only on the cuteness of the name. Meanwhile, I analyze stats and trends and try to figure out point spreads only to have my bracket destroyed by the Sweet 16 round.

And when the 2021 basketball champion is crowned and the stadium dumps the confetti on the court, I will wonder who cleans up the mess.

 

Getting Older

I don’t like interleague play in baseball and I’m not a big fan of the designated hitter.  I still consider Henry Aaron the home run king and I liked the era when relief pitchers went two or three innings for the save, rather than facing only one or batters now as “specialists.”

 Whenever I heard the song, “We Are Family,” I immediately think of the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates and I know who Gene Tenace, Tom House and Roland Office were and the teams they played for.

I wouldn’t have known who the singer “Bad Bunny” was if he bit me and stole my carrot until I watched Saturday Night Live the other week. In fact, I’ve not really liked Saturday Night Live since John Belushi left the show.

I feel all this because I am old. I know this for a fact because I was reminded of it the other day while standing in line at the pharmacy. The cashier asks customers for their birthdates before giving them their medicine as a way of identifying them. A woman in front of me said she was born in 1995. 1995! By that year, I had lived in six states, earned a master’ degree in communication, held 11 jobs and was well versed in the concept that life isn’t all fun and games and it doesn’t turn out like you had hoped.

The pharmacy cashier noticed my look and asked me about it, and when I told her I was old, being born in 1960, she laughed and said I wasn’t that old.

“I’ll tell you how old I am,” said, “I’m getting this medication.” I pointed to the bottle she was bagging of generic Flomax, the pill that helps guy’s have, well, a max in their flow when going to the bathroom.

“It’s not just for older people,” she said. “It’s for kidney stones and other things.”

I’ll give her that. I’ve had a kidney infection issue since 2016 that’s not really age-related. But my age surfaced when I realized I was excited about getting the medication and couldn’t wait until I could refill my Tramadol for the insistent pain I always have.

I know I’m not that old. Yet. There are always others out there who, when hearing my age, say, “Oh, you’re still young.” Those who say that are way older than I am. Eventually, I’ll be the one saying that to 60-year-olds.

Age is a state of mind for the most part. Sure, there are the aches and pains that come with aging. When I get up off the floor from playing with the cat, my knees sing two arias from Puccini’s opera “La Boheme.” But I’m still young at heart, as they say, and I have a hard time believing I am as old as I am, at least mentally.

But age and the experiences that come with being this old have a large part in defining who I am now. I listen to music popular when I was a kid – Fleetwood Mac, U2, Joe Cocker – and I have no idea who today’s musicians and entertainers are. I’ve found myself watching the old television program “Columbo” on MeTV on Sundays because it brings back memories of living in youthful times.

And that’s why, I think, we all play the APBA games. I’m really enjoying replaying the 1965 baseball season, more so than other replays of seasons when I wasn’t alive. I was barely conscious of baseball in 1965, but I do remember Henry Aaron and Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle when I was a lad of 5 years old that year.

It’s a way to grasp on our youth by doing these seasons. And the interesting thing about APBA is that most of us began playing it when we were kids. We’ve all done replays of seasons we lived through. I’ve got 1972 on tap to play which was one of the most pivotal and important seasons that made me a huge baseball fan. I remember as a kid growing up in northern Minnesota watching the Twins on television with the names of Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Rich Rollins and Jim Kaat becoming part of our normal vocabulary.

I can name the starting lineup of the 1965 San Francisco Giants, but I can’t name three players on the 2021 Giants’ team.  Part of that is because the pandemic we’re enduring took the heart out of baseball and all sports. The other part is that 1965 was more a part of my learning years than now.

The APBA game is a way to keep us more young at heart and a way, I venture, to deal with our own mortality. In 50 years, when I’m gone, hopefully there’ll be someone my age rolling games for the 2021 season and fondly remembering his or her youth.