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.