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.