The Big Dead Machine

I’m only about 25 percent through my APBA replay of the 1972 baseball season. Although there are many games left to play, if the first quarter is any indication of how the season will turn out, it’s going to be the weirdest one I’ve done yet.

Only Pittsburgh is leading the division that the team won in the real season 50 years ago. The Pirates, fueled by Willie Stargell’s lead-leading 12 home runs and pitchers Doc Ellis’ 5-0 record and Steve Blass’ 6-1 record, are the best team in my replay. At 26-11, they lead the National League East by 3.5 games.

In the American League East, New York and Cleveland are tied for first place. Actual division winner Detroit is in third, trailing by 3.5 games.

Minnesota surprisingly leads the American League West by two games over Oakland and four games over Kansas City.

The National League West is the strangest by far. Cincinnati, the winner of the real pennant of 1972 and National League World Series representative are awful. At 17-22, they are mired in fourth place, tied with lowly Atlanta. Houston is in first place with a 22-19 mark.

The Reds began well, appearing to be the mirror image of the real team which shared the best record in baseball with Pittsburgh in the real season. They opened winning 10 of their first 13 games.

But then the Big Red Machine threw a rod and came to a grinding halt. They’ve lost 15 of their last 17 games and were outscored 78 runs to 42. Most of the loses came to weaker teams, too. In a series that seemed to at first foreshadow a possible National League playoff, Pittsburgh beat the Reds two out of three games. Ok, the Bucs are the best team and losing two to them is understandable. But then the bottom dropped out.

Cincy lost two to the Cubs and were swept in a four-game set with St. Louis. San Francisco, which is in last place in the West, won three of four against the Reds and San Diego, which is battling the Giants for the cellar dweller crown, has won two against the Reds. The two play a double-header next in San Diego and then the Reds host Atlanta and the Padres in Cincinnati before heading to Houston for a four-game series.

So, why is Cincinnati playing so badly? APBA produces its game cards based on the real results of each player’s season. If Pete Rose bloops a lot of singles during a season, chances are he’ll get a “7” or two on his card, which is a guaranteed base hit regardless of the pitcher (in most situations). Johnny Bench led the league with 40 home runs in 1972, so his card reflects that with several “1s,” which are indicative of a home run.

But here’s where the game gets interesting and what makes APBA not just a simple dice-rolling game that only reflects statistics. Everyone who’s played this game has seen the oddities. Someone gets “hot” and defies the statistical logic of his card. For example, I benched Frank Robinson of the Los Angeles Dodgers for a few games after he was pretty unproductive. I brought him back and he hit three home runs in a game against Philadelphia. He hit homers in the next three games, giving him six in a four-game run.

I’ve used Deron Johnson in as a pinch hitter for the Phillies in two consecutive games and he hit a home run in each.

The Reds now are the inverse of that. During the 17-game stretch, Pete Rose, who led the Reds with a .307 batting average in the real 1972 season, hit .220. Johnny Bench went 12 for 54 at bats for a .222 average.  Cincinnati batted .251 as a team during the real season. In these last 17 games, the Reds hit .209. Their opponents hit .278.

Again, it’s very early in the season. Maybe the dice will turn around for the Reds. That upcoming four-game stand with the Astros could be an indicator of how things will go. The Reds could get back into the race or bury themselves even deeper.

APBA Thanksgiving, Take 44

I’ve spent a lot of Thanksgiving days in different places over the years, but there’s always been a tradition that made the holiday seem, as unsettling as it was, somewhat normal by the day’s end.

After my first wife passed away in 2006, I had no family at all. It led to my various places on the holidays; with no family, there was no real home base to anchor me on special days. Since her passing, I spent a couple of Thanksgivings at the Memphis airport shuttling friends back and forth to their destinations.

Once, I ate a festive meal at the West Memphis, Ark., Burger King. I don’t think the pilgrims’ mythical first feast consisted of pulling cheese off a paper wrapper that once enshrouded a flame-broiled slab of door mat, but it was the thought that counted, I guess.

One year I cooked a turkey for my cat and I, and for another holiday I made a traditional fare of melted Kraft cheese dip with the tomatoes and peppers spiked with hamburger. After digesting that it was a Stanksgiving, if you get my drift.

And because I worked at a daily newspaper until 2017, I often worked on the holiday so other reporters could be home with their families. I’d cover some community dinner at a tornado-stricken town and then head back to the news bureau to write the story and eat a frozen burrito or chicken salad sandwich from whatever convenience store was open.

Six years ago, Holly, my wife now, moved down here and we had our first Thanksgiving dinner together. Last year, she traveled to see her aunt in Chicago on the holiday and I ended up at a VFW legion post with a co-worker for lunch.

This year, she’s home and we’re cooking a small turkey for dinner tonight.

Despite all the variations I’ve gone through for the holidays, there is always a constant. It’s the APBA game we play. It’s been that way now for 44 Thanksgiving holidays.

I began playing the sports replay game in 1977 when my parents got me the football game for Christmas. The following year, when my high school was out for the holiday, I spent Thanksgiving evening rolling games. The game added to the joy of being out of school. Back then, I had a gooseneck lamp attached to my bed and it would illuminate the game I rolled atop the bed. It was simple, but it was perfect. What better way to spend a holiday evening than to play with our favorite game.

After high school, I’d return home from college and roll games during the holiday break. Later, when I first began my career in newspapers, I’d make it home to see my parents again during the Thanksgiving holiday and get in a few games.

Last year, after eating at the VFW post, I drove home and dove into my 1965 baseball replay. This year, I’ve got Texas heading to Kansas City and the St. Louis hosting Pittsburgh in the 1972 baseball replay I’m working on now.

I think a lot of the APBA players do the same thing during the holiday. Maybe after a hectic day full of relatives, rolling a game or two is a way to relax. Maybe playing the games is way to forget about the loneliness of not having a family. You always read about how holiday depression fills hospital emergency rooms. Perhaps the game alleviates that depression for some.

Maybe it’s a way to return to the magic of the holidays we all felt as kids; the APBA game serves as the link to those days. We all change as we get older, but the game remains the same and we can even replay seasons when we were kids and the magic meant more then. I’m doing 1972 now. I turned 12 that year when the seasonal magic had yet to be tarnished by life.

Whether you’re in a huge house with lots of family celebrating the season or watching friends fly off to their own families from the Memphis airport, whether you’re eating a Whopper or a chicken salad sandwich that had an expiration date from the previous presidential administration, be thankful for our APBA game. To me, the game is more a holiday fare than the food and family camaraderie.

And, as we in the game community say each year, “APBA Thanksgiving, everyone.”

Bad Cell Service? Call Julie

I’ve had pretty bad cell phone service at my home for the past year or so and, because we have no cable or internet hookup either, it impairs our ability to get online as well.

That’s one of the reasons why I’ve not written many blogs for a while. It’s frustrating trying to acquire a “hotspot” on my phone for internet service only to discover it’s only a “tepidspot” or “lukewarmspot.” So, instead, when I’m rambunctious, I load up the laptop and head to a nearby hotel, park in the lot and try to pirate their free wi-fi.

I’ve also gone to a hospital across the highway from the hotel, the downtown library and at the county courthouse where I work to get online at times. But in the summer, it’s pretty hot to sit in a car while filing the blogs and in the winter, it’s chilly. There’s also that lurker image of a guy sitting in a parking lot. The laptop is in my lap at those times, hence the name “laptop” and it’s below the window line. People who pass by only see me fiddling with something in my lap. I won’t go further with that picture.

We used to have decent wi-fi with our phones. Not to name companies, but we changed services to something akin to “Bust Mobile.” It used to be Virgin Mobile, but I guess that company felt they screwed so many over with the billings, they no longer qualified for that name and merged with the other company.

We live near an airport and my stepson, who is far smarter than I, thinks that maybe the airport blocks the phones' 5G signal so it won’t interfere with airplane operations. I’m not sure. All I know is that when a plane flies overhead, the television signal washes out and we miss the final question on “Jeopardy!”

In addition to not being able to file things online, not having phone service is creating a large problem with tracking the arrival times of the Amtrak train my wife takes to visit her aunt. There is an automated service you can call and “Julie,” a recorded voice that supposedly can understand words, tells me when trains will arrive at the station where I pick Holly up. It’s important to know those times.

Amtrak is generally late and it earns my title of “Damntrak” because of that habit. I tend to get to the station at least 45 minutes early just in case of any issues that could delay me such as wrecks, a flat tire, trains blocking crossings and other mayhem.

The train shows up around 12:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. at the Walnut Ridge, Ark., station. Based on the denizens I’ve met there while waiting for the train to arrive in the past, I sure don’t want Holly to have to wait for me to get there.

Once, I was waiting in the depot reading a book about the 1972-74 Oakland As. A guy came in and asked me what I was reading. I told him and he said I was too young to remember that. Despite me saying I was old enough to recall the team, he stared blankly ahead and said God just told him I had many years left and I wasn’t as old as I thought.

There’s always someone there with a financial crisis in need of money or cigarettes. Since I have neither, lately I just sit in the car and wait for the train.

And this is where Julie is so important.

This is a recent conversation I had with the poor phone connection:

JULIE: … if you want to know a train status, say “Train Status.”

ME: Train Status.

JULIE: I think you said “you want to buy a ticket.”

ME: (Louder) Train Status!

JULIE: Okay. Do you know the number of your train?

ME: Twenty-two.

JULIE: I think you said “forty-four.”

ME: How did you get a “four” sound from “two?”

JULIE: I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I’ll transfer you to a representative.”

And then there’s the usual, “We are experiencing high call volume at this time, please hold for the next representative.”

Meanwhile, the train continues lumbering down the track toward its destination.

There are times when it gets personal.

JULIE: What station is the train arriving?

ME: Walnut Ridge, Arkansas. (By now yelling and over-pronouncing each word.)

JULIE: I think you said “Modesto, California.”

ME: Your mother thinks you’re ugly and your pets don’t like you.

JULIE: You’re fat and you don’t have any money.

I’ve not been late yet to pick up my wife. Once, on a night when Daylight Savings occurred, Amtrak failed to adjust for the time and kept saying the train would arrive at 1:33 a.m. Then, at about midnight, Julie made the time change and said the train would roll into Walnut Ridge at 12:30 a.m. I made it there with about 5 minutes to spare that time.

So, we continue struggling with the phone service. I don’t write as many blogs as I had and I worry about being late at the station. Holly is making another trip to see her aunt soon and I’ll be yelling at Julie again.

I guess I could go to the hotel on the night of my wife's return, sit in the parking lot for a while and file blogs and call Julie.

1972 Important Dates, Scene 1

I came across one of the dates that is significant to me while rolling the 1972 APBA baseball replay. It’s something that occurs when we do replays of seasons that we were alive for.

I recently began playing the games for April 23, 1972, realizing that day was my mother’s birthday 50 years ago. I was 11 years old back then and the day fell on a Sunday. I’m sure we did something to celebrate, but as a sixth-grade kid with a limited allowance, I know I didn’t lavish her with gifts. Instead, my dad probably gave her some things and said it was from both of us.

So, I thought of her as I rolled the games for that date half a century later. Detroit beat Cleveland, 3-1, in the opening game for April 23, 1972. I know the season didn’t start on time because of a strike; I used the original schedule rather than the one created after the work stoppage was settled.

 New York beat Boston, 6-4, in 11 innings and Kansas City took Chicago, 6-2.

Then, Oakland clubbed Minnesota, 21-1, in a game the As scored 12 times in the ninth inning and Reggie Jackson hit two home runs and drove in five in the inning.

I grew up in Minnesota and my mom probably would have laughed at that game if I told her about it. She wasn’t a sports fan, but I credit her and my father for getting me into the APBA world. Sadly, she passed away in January 1998. I didn’t begin playing APBA baseball until Dec. 28, 1998. But, she was the one who wrapped my first APBA game – the football game – and she and my father gave it to meas the headliner gift for Christmas in 1978.

She’d tolerate me doing game recaps of my football contests – mostly the Vikings games --  back then and, a year later, my basketball games when they got me the APBA basketball set. And she would glance at the television and momentarily watch the games when my father had them on.

She once told me my sports obsession would hinder me from being a good husband if my wife didn’t enjoy sports. I told her that my obsession came from my father who…was her husband.

So, she didn’t hear of any of my APBA baseball conquests and as the games for April 23, 1972, played through and I moved to April 24, 1972, I thought of the other dates that are ahead. My dad’s birthday was in early June. I graduated sixth grade in June of that year and in September went to the junior high school in my Minnesota town. My father, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease two years earlier, began that fall what would be the next to last year of his teaching career at Bemidji State University.

I guess the APBA replays we do of seasons when we were alive are cause for looking back. I’m sure I’ll play Twins games that my father and I watched that season. The Twins weren’t that good that year and I guarantee we suffered many an evening when rivals Kansas City or Chicago or Baltimore may have beaten them.

The other night, I watched the Twilight Zone episode “Walking Distance,” which, in my opinion, is perhaps the greatest episode of any television program in history. In it, Martin Sloan, a New York advertising executive, stops near Homewood to get his car serviced. He grew up in that town so, as the mechanic works on the car, he walks into Homewood.

He finds he has been transported back some 25 years earlier and even sees himself as a child. He goes to his home and tries to convince his parents that he is their son grown up.

In a very emotional scene near the end, Martin’s father approaches him after the young Martin has fallen off a merry-go-round and hurts his leg. The father, who found the older Martin’s wallet and discovers money with dates a quarter of a century later from that year, believes Martin is his son of the future.

But he dispels advice. “You don’t belong here,” he told Martin. “This is [the younger] Martin’s summer. Don’t look back, he said. Look forward for new things.

Martin agrees, but as he walks back to his car, there’ a pronounced limp—the injury his younger self received from the fall. He may look to the future, but the limp is a reminder of his past.

I think of that show as I roll the 1972 replay, too. As I’ve gotten older, I do tend to look back, reveling in the good old days of playing whiffle ball in my best friend’s yard and walking to my grade school in the frigid 20-below temperatures Minnesota could produce. It was a time of less stress and it was free from the responsibilities of adulthood.

As Martin’s father said, though, I can’t always be looking behind me. These season replays do have a tendency to make me do that, especially now when a majority of my path is behind me.

But, there’s also the chance for looking forward in these replays. In the real 1972 baseball season, Oakland and Cincinnati played in the World Series. Maybe some other teams will make it; so far in this replay, the New York Yankees look unbeatable and Pittsburgh and Houston may have a say in the National League race.

And finally, this shows the depth of the APBA game. It’s a simple game that uses dice and player cards to recreate the seasons. But what other game can bring about these memories of life and cause the deep thinking of days gone by?

1972 Begins

Starting an APBA baseball replay takes some work. I write each team’s 162-game schedule on lined paper; for my 1972 replay I just began, it takes 24 pages. Then, I create pages for batters and pitchers to keep up with home runs, wins, losses and saves and, in this season, strikeouts.

I pull schedules from the website Retrosheet, which provides a day-by-day list of games. These are the games set before the season and because there was a strike at the beginning of the actual 1972 season, my schedule is not reflective of the real one the teams played back then. Like I always say, in ABPA there are no strikes and no rainouts. I play a full 162-game schedule for every team (or 154 game for each team in replays prior to 1961).

It takes some time to prepare a new season.

But then, I tossed that first roll of the iconic red and white dice and all the paperwork is worth it.

In my case with the 1972 season, that first roll was a “32” and Houston Astros’ leadoff batter Roger Metzger flied out to Cincinnati Reds right fielder Cesar Geronimo. Fittingly, the first hit for my 1972 replay came from Pete Rose in the bottom of the first.

The Reds won Game No. 1 of 1,944 for the season, 2-1, when, with one out in the bottom of the ninth, Dave Concepcion hit a sacrifice fly to score Tony Perez.

And so, the season begins. The journey takes off. I logged the score on the Astros’ and Reds’ pages, recorded Jack Billingham’s six strikeouts for Cincinnati and Don Wilson’s 11 for Houston and then set the lineups for the second game, California at Minnesota.

There’s a sense of the voyage you get when you see those team pages. The scores beside the 162 games are all blank now, but you know they’ll start to fill up as the games progress. Two months into this 1972 replay, most of the teams have played 15 or so games. The score ares being tallied and written in. The season moves along.

And, despite only having played about 10 percent of the season, it’s showing promise to be yet another fantastic replay. So far, it has a mix of good pitching and decent batting. For example, I had four shutout games in a row, then John Mayberry hit two home runs for Kansas City and they beat Texas, 6-5. 

In Game No. 111, Nolan Ryan tossed a no-hitter for California, blanking the Rangers, 4-0, and Bobby Darwin hit three home runs for the Twins in Game No. 142.

One of the more offensive games I’ve had in a long while occurred in Game No. 176. Minnesota took a 1-0 lead into the second against Oakland at the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minn. But, like in the real season, the Twins’ wheels fell off. Sal Bando and Gene Tenace hit homers in the second and third innings and Oakland scored three more in the sixth to take a 9-1 lead. But the carnage wasn’t over. Reggie Jackson came to the plate with two on in the ninth inning. I noted, in the play-by-play accounts that I sometimes do in my mind during game, that Jackson hadn’t hit a home run yet this season. I spoke too soon. He clouted one out. Then, in the same inning, he hit a three-run shot, driving in a total of five runs in the inning and helping Oakland to a 12-run ninth. The Twins lost, 21-1. Me and my big mouth.

And on the inverse yet again, showing the diversity of this season, Greg Luzinski of the Phillies struck out three times in a row with the bases loaded.

Again, it’s too early to speculate, but Houston and Cincinnati appear headed for a long National League West Division run, as are Pittsburgh and St. Louis in the NL East. So far, Minnesota leads the American League West, just as they did early on in the real season, and New York, bolstered by Mel Stottlemyre’s four shutouts in four starts, is in first in the AL East.

There’s also a personal level with this replay as I reflect back 50 years (hard to believe 1972 is half a century ago). I was in the final months of my sixth grade year at the laboratory school at Bemidji State University in northern Minnesota. By June, I was out of the safety of my grade school and on to the horrors of a much larger junior high school. I was just becoming aware, really aware, of baseball and its statistics. My father gave me a slide ruler (kids, that’s a mathematical tool that predated calculators! You’d line up numbers on various rules to get percentages and other math equations) and I figured out how to do Earned Run Averages and batting averages.

As the uneasiness of leaving my grade school class increased, the games of the 1972 season, especially those of the Twins, helped soothe some of those fears.

So, in addition to an APBA replay, this season is also a trip full of memories and a reminder of how baseball always seems to help the travels of life.

 

Buzz

The only thing that covered up the incessant whine of 500 mosquitoes in our car at 3:30 a.m. at the Walnut Ridge, Ark., Amtrak station was the roar of the freight trains that blasted through.

We drove to the depot so my wife could catch the train to see her aunt in northern Illinois. We’ve done that several times and, in earning the name “Damntrack,” the train was late, as usual. It’s supposed to roll into the quiet northeastern Arkansas town around 1:40 a.m., horn a-blastin’, bells a-clangin.’ This time it was more than two hours late.

Generally, the departure is a sad thing. Holly steps into the train, I stand on the platform and watch as the train glides away, whisking away my wife for a week or two. The train horn bleats its forlorn sound as it heads out and eventually, the silence of the rural area returns and I slink back the car and make the trip home alone.

This time, it was a bit different.

When we pulled into the station’s parking lot, we noticed it was lit much better than before. The city sprung for more lights after complaints that the darkened station looked more like a spot to buy illegal drugs or to be murdered.

The lighting was a nice touch until Holly got out of the car and left the door open. A mass of mosquitoes already attracted by the brightness outside swarmed into the car. I guess they saw my fat ass as a buffet.

We still had a while before the train arrived. The Amtrak phone app indicated it would roll in at 4:14 a.m. We could either sit in the depot, which was also covered with the winged bloodsuckers or remain in the car. We chose the car and I started it, put the air conditioner on high and drove out of the station and down the road with the windows open, hoping to blow the ‘skeeters out.

We returned to the station, got Holly’s bags and waited in the depot for the train. Holly, of course, looked dainty brushing an errant bug from her. I looked like a deranged person trying to dance and keep time with the driving beat of Beck’s song “E-Pro” while swatting at the mosquitoes. Look the song up. You’ll get the image.

The train finally rolled in, Holly got on it and left. I was at the station alone and in the stillness of the night I could hear the steady ‘buzz’ of the mosquitoes. There must have been more than a million doing circles under the sodium vapor lights. Others sat on the white windowsills and doors, attracted by the light colors, and waited for any living thing to move so they could feast. It was a smaller version of the scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s move “The Birds.” All I needed was an old phone booth to be trapped in and nearby children frantically running from a playground to complete the movie scene.

I returned to the car, already missing my wife, and prepared for the lonely trip home.

I thought the earlier drive would have blown the bugs out. Instead, it hurled them to the rear window bay where they waited for me to return. When I got back into the car, they formed a giant cartoon arrow and headed for me. Again, I rolled the windows down and drove fast.

And here’s a note I forgot to mention. City workers were replacing sewer lines on the east side of town; as we drove in, we could smell the rank scent of sewer gas and whatever is in the lines – a handful of Taco Bell burritos, perhaps? I took a different way back, but still drove into the work zone, this time with the windows open.

At 4:30 a.m., half-tired and battling mosquitoes, I didn’t appreciate the stench. It smelled like someone set an outhouse on fire and then tried to douse the blazes by pouring a vat of skunk diarrhea on them. It had the ambience of the Number 3 restroom stall at the Love’s Truck Stop off the I-57 Exit 308  in Kanakee, Ill. Six hundred miles of hard driving, coffee and pork rinds can replicate that smell.

So, how does this tie in with APBA? Well, with Holly gone, I had planned to roll quite a few games this weekend on the 1972 baseball season replay I just began. It was going to rain, so I couldn’t mow the yard and I didn’t have any pressing deadlines for stories I write for my magazines. I had all the time to play the game.

Instead, I was groggy from lack of sleep Saturday, the day after our train station adventure. And that afternoon, I had to go to the store to get cat food. It was pouring rain and as I sat in the store parking lot for the rain to abate, I heard that horrific sound: The stirrings of mosquitoes waking and buzzing. I bolted out of the car and into the rain storm deeming that getting soaked was better than getting malaria. Later, I spent more time trying to get the critters out of the car.

They’re still in the car, I know. I also know that when I get into the car to drive somewhere to pirate wi-fi to file this blog, the mosquitoes will be with me, wings whining in unison as they prepare to feast on me yet again.

1972

Even for an old guy like me, it’s hard to grasp that 1972 was 50 years ago.

It was a busy year in news and culture then and as a child destined for a career in journalism, I paid attention closely to those events.

The war in Vietnam raged on. Astronauts stepped on the moon two more times as Apollos 16 and 17 landed on the lunar surface and it coincided nicely with the release of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”  The Watergate break-ins occurred in Washington, D.C., that summer, creating a lasting distrust of all politicians, and in September, 11 Israeli athletes were killed by terrorists during the Olympics in Munich, Germany.

The first “Godfather” movie was screened and possibly one of the worst songs ever recorded, America’s “Horse With No Name,” hit the radio. But one of the better ballads of all time also graced the airwaves that year when Eric Clapton serenaded us with “Layla.”

Nineteen seventy-two was also a transitional year for me, an 11-year-old kid living in northern Minnesota when the baseball season began that year. I was wrapping up sixth grade, about to leave my lab elementary school on the campus of Bemidji State University for the big time of junior high.

That year was a pivotal year, going from the peace and serenity of childhood to the stress of living a more regulated life.

Baseball, I found, was a great help during that changing year. I had a hard time adjusting to the bustle of junior high. I was a very nerdy, shy kid who fit in with my elementary school and suddenly, in September 1972, I was thrust into the big time. My first class was held in the adjoining high school building and as a scared nerd that was a daunting adventure.  The only common thing I had left from my more peaceful earlier years was watching the Twins on television. I clung to that baseball season like a shipwrecked passenger clutches a life preserver.

And now, half a century later, I’m replaying the 1972 baseball season with the APBA baseball cards and dice game. For those uninitiated with it, the game uses cards for each player who played in the 1972 season. Rather than the pictured cards that were popular in gum packs back then, these cards have numbers on them that replicate their actual production at the plate. If a player hit plenty of home runs, his card would reflect that with the iconic “1” on the card, indicating a homer. If he struck out often, as did Reggie Jackson or Bobby Darwin on my Twins’ team did, he’d get plenty of dreaded “13s,” reflecting whiffs. Players roll dice and they correspond the results with the numbers on the cards to play the game.

I realize the actual 1972 season was delayed by a strike. I’m going to ignore the strike for my replay and play out the full season as originally scheduled. Like I’ve said before in APBA replays, there are no strikes and no rainouts in my APBA replays.

To further this, the other day I was digging in a closet in search of some old books and came across the paperback Major League Baseball 1972 published by Pocket Books that I bought years ago. It was a preview book of the season, complete with rosters, lineups, schedules and predictions. It had to be a sign I was about to replay the right season. The book predicted Baltimore would face Oakland for the American League title and Pittsburgh and Los Angeles would clash for the National League. It also contains an advertisement offering I could buy a year of Sports Illustrated for $7.90.

So, this replay will be a journey of memories. Readers, be warned I’ll probably ramble on about the old days in upcoming blogs, of remembering some of the stars like Harmon Killebrew and Willie Stargell –who’s batting hitch we all imitated when playing backyard Whiffle ball – and of moments with friends and life back then. I guess that’s what we do when we get older.

Back then, I was playing “replays” of sorts, clanking the magnetic ball on the metal electric baseball game I had, creating batting orders for all American League teams (remember, I lived in Twinsland and didn’t follow the National League) and keeping the standings that I had become obsessed over. I’d read closely the standings in the Minneapolis Tribune (before the merger with the Star) and watch as the Twins took an early lead in the American League West Division before finishing third.

I guess that’s what most of us APBA players do when replaying a season we were alive for. We look back and remember those days. Nineteen seventy-two began with me walking the three blocks from Bixby Avenue to my grade school and ended with me dreading returning to junior high school where they picked on the nerds with little mercy.

Thank goodness for baseball that year. 

Now , if I can only get that stinkin’ “Horse With No Name” song out of my head.

1965 APBA Replay World Series

Over the years, I’ve purchased each of the Minnesota Twins’ World Series APBA card seasons in hopes of replicating the real feat and guiding my favorite team to the championship.

The first one I rolled was 1987. It was an emotional season for me. My father passed away in March 1987 about the time the Twins opened their spring training. I watched as the season progressed and when the Twins beat St. Louis in seven games to win the Series, I had hoped my father was somehow watching.

I wanted to replicate that feeling with the APBA game. Instead, in my replay, Kansas City ran away with the American League West division.

Later, I replayed the 1991 season, again hoping for a Twins win. I started that season in August 2015, about a month before I met Holly –who would become my wife. She lived near Chicago, so I spent a lot of weekends making the 547-mile trip to see her. The 1991 season became secondary and, as a result, took nearly four years to complete.

This time, the Twins made it to the Series, but lost to Pittsburgh in seven games.

So, when I began 1965, I realized it was my last chance to see if the Twins could repeat the real season.

The Twins began the season slowly, but then took off and won the American League pennant by six games over Detroit. They were going to my 1965 replay World Series against Cincinnati, who beat Pittsburgh in a three-game playoff for the National League flag.

Here are the results of that World Series.

Game 1 Minnesota 13 Cincinnati 6

Zolio Versalles hit two home runs for the Twins and Jim Kaat went eight innings before giving up a three-run homer to Deron Johnson, forcing a nervous manager Sam Mele to summon Bill Pleis to get the final three outs. Bob Allison and Jimmy Hall also hit dingers for the Twins.

Game 2 Minnesota 10 Cincinnati 7

The bats came out again at the Met in Bloomington, Minn. But they didn’t arrive until Cincinnati took a 7-1 lead in the fifth inning. Versalles hit his third home run of the Series and the Twins scored five runs in the bottom of the eighth.

 Despite leading the National League with 21 saves, Reds’ reliever Billy McCool couldn’t pick up the save and Cincinnati left Minnesota with a two-game deficit.

Game 3 Cincinnati 8 Minnesota 2

Tommy Harper drove in five runs with a home run and a double and Pete Rose added two RBIs and the Reds’ starter Jim Maloney, fresh from a no-hitter in the National League playoffs, struck out 14 Twins.

Game 4 Cincinnati 8 Minnesota 7

In a seesaw battle, the Reds led after the first, 3-0, but then the Twin scored four in the second and two more in the third when Rich Rollins hit a home run. But Camilo Pascual gave up four runs in Cincinnati’s sixth inning.

The Reds scored a needed insurance run in the eighth when Harper hit a double, stole third and then scored on a groundout.  Catcher Earl Battey hit a double in the top of the ninth and Mele sent in Joe Nossek as a pinch runner for the catcher. He scored when pinch hitter Andy Kosco blooped a single, but then Versalles, who had already gone hitless in four previous at-bats, popped to end the game.

The two were tied, two games apiece.

Game 5 Minnesota 8 Cincinnati 0

Versalles hit two more home runs, his fourth and fifth in the Series and Harmon Killebrew and Allison added their own clouts in the rout. Reds ace Sammy Ellis lasted 4.3 innings before Dick Sisler swallowed a handful of Rolaids and motioned to the bullpen. Jim Kaat gave up only three hits in the complete game win.

In a first for me, Versalles hit into a triple play in the eighth inning. I’ve now done 13 season replays. I guess Lucky 13 meant it was time for the TP. Twins now lead three games to two and are heading back to Minnesota.

Game 6 Minnesota 7 Cincinnati 5

The teams were tied 2-2 after two before Allison hit a two-run single, giving the Twins a 5-2 lead after three innings.  Cincinnati added a run on a Vada Pinson home run in the fifth, but Minnesota scored twice more in the seventh when Battey drove in Tony Oliva with a single and Maloney balked in Killebrew on third. The Twins led 7-3 in the top of the ninth.

Harper led the ninth off with a home run off Twins’ reliever Johnny Klippstein and Rose walked. Pinson popped up, but Frank Robinson hit a single and Tony Perez gained a walk, loading the bases. Johnson hit a sacrifice fly to cut the Twins’ lead to 7-5.  Then, with two outs, catcher Johnny Edwards grounded to Versalles who threw it to Killebrew on first and the Twins won, four games to two.

Allison won the Series MVP, batting an astonishing .571 with three home runs and 10 RBIs. Versalles had five homers and 10 RBIs as well, batting .310. As a team, the Twins batted .303.

Robinson continued his woeful ways for the Reds batting only .120 for the Series.

After three tries, I was able to see a Twins’ World Series victory.

There’s always that odd feeling after completing a season replay. I put the 1965 season cards in a box and stuck them in an old record cabinet of my dad’s that I use for my APBA card collection. There’s that sense of sense of sadness, in a way. You spend a year and a half with the cards, rolling at night and on weekend and thinking of the games while at work sometimes. Then it’s done.

But, then I took out the APBA box of the 1972 season, wrote down schedules and team pages and set up pitching lineups for the next season’s replay.

1965 NL Playoff Series : Reds vs. Pirates

I’ve learned to expect the unexpected while doing my APBA replay of the 1965 baseball season and I wasn’t disappointed in the three-game playoff for the National League pennant that resulted when Pittsburgh and Cincinnati tied at season’s end.

It’s really been that kind of season. It was only fitting that one playoff game featured a no-hitter and another that lasted 15 innings before a home run by one the premier stars of the game helped end it.

The Reds and Pirates each compiled 97-65 regular season records, forcing the playoff series. The San Francisco Giants finished two games back and St. Louis, which led the league for much of the season, ended three games behind. Pittsburgh won its last five games of the season and the Reds took three out of four games in San Francisco to create the tie. (I plan to do a season recap blog in a few days with team records and some statistics and observations.)

Here are the results of the playoff series. The winner would travel to Bloomington, Minn., to face the Twins in the World Series.

Game 1- Cincinnati 5 Pittsburgh 0

Reds pitcher Jim Maloney tossed a no-hitter in Pittsburgh, walking two and striking out 11.  Catcher Johnny Edwards and shortstop Leo Cardenas, the seventh and eighth batters in the Cincinnati lineup each hit home runs for the win. Frank Robinson, the MVP in the National League in my replay, went a dismal o for 4, a foreshadowing of things to come.

Maloney had a perfect game through six and a third innings before walking Manny Mota and then Willie Stargell in the seventh. He then struck out five of the last seven batters to end the game.

Game 2 – Pittsburgh 11 Cincinnati 9, 15 innings

This was the opposite of Game 1. The teams combined for 29 hits and 20 runs. There were four home runs, including two by reserve Reds’ catcher Don Pavelitch. Gordon Coleman and Willie Stargell also hit homers.

The Pirates scored three in the top of the first against Reds hurler Joe Nuxhall. But Cincinnati responded with six runs in the bottom of the inning and the hit parade was on. Both teams scored single runs in the second inning and by the sixth inning, Cincinnati led, 8-5. Pittsburgh tied it in the seventh with hits by pinch hitter Jerry Lynch, Roberto Clemente, Stargell and Donn Clendenon.

The Reds regained the lead on a sacrifice fly by Robinson in the bottom of the seventh, one of the few things he did in the series. But in the top of the ninth, Stargell hit a sacrifice fly with one out to drive in Bill Virdon and Pirates reliever Al McBean mowed down the Reds in the ninth to preserve the tie. Six innings later, Stargell hit his homerun off Reds’ fifth reliever Jim Duffalo and Gene Alley drove in Clendenon for the second run. Don Schwall gave up a double to Robinson in the bottom of the 15^th, Robinson’s only hit in seven plate appearances for the game, but then got the next three Reds for the save and to give Pittsburgh a 1-1 tie in the series.

Game 3 Cincinnati 7 Pittsburgh 4

Pittsburgh opened the first with Virdon’s double, Clemente’s triple and Stargell’s single to take a 2-0 lead and stun the Cincinnati crowd at Crosley Field.

But the Reds roared back, plating four on four hits and a sacrifice fly. Vern Law lasted six innings before manager Harry “The Hat” Walker pulled him and brought in a young Wilbur Wood in relief. Meanwhile, Joey Jay went seven innings, before being relieved with a 7-3 lead. Pittsburgh scored once more in the top of the eighth, but Bob Bailey grounded into a double play in the top of the ninth and Virdon struck out to give the Reds the pennant.

Despite his team winning, Robinson had an anemic bat, hitting .154 for the series. Vada Pinson batted .429 and drove in five runs and shared the playoff MVP honors with Maloney.

Stargell went six for 12 for a .500 batting average  and drove in four RBIs for the Bucs in the losing cause.

The Reds will travel to Minnesota for the first two games of the 1965 World Series. Will Robinson come out of his slump? Will Minnesota capitalize on the Twins’ long-ball hitters? Which pitching unit will fare better?

Stay tuned. The Series recap is next.

October Games

Going into the last three days of the 1965 baseball season I am replaying with APBA, there was a chance for a four-way tie for first place in the National League.  Cincinnati led with a 95-64 record on Sept. 30 and Pittsburgh and San Francisco were each a game behind with records of 94-65. St. Louis, which had led the league for much of the season, but faltered late, was in fourth place with a 93-66 record.

Minnesota had already clinched the American League and ended up beating out Detroit by six games, so the focus at the end of this season was strictly on the National League.

It came down to the last game of the season.

Here’s a rundown of the games of October.

Oct. 1

Pittsburgh 7 Chicago 2 – The Pirates hit four home runs, including Willie Stargell’s 39^th, and Bucs pitcher Bob Veale picked up the win with 10 strikeouts.

St. Louis 4 Houston 3- Tim McCarver hit a leadoff home run in the ninth inning to give the Cardinals a needed win. Bob Gibson went the distance on the mound for St. Louis, giving up only 5 hits. Two, though were home runs to Rusty Staub, his 23^rd, and Joe Morgan, his 16^th.

San Francisco 14 Cincinnati 4 – The Giants took a 10-0 lead by the sixth inning and pitcher Juan Marichal was perfect through the first five innings. Backup outfielder Ken Henderson hit a home run and drove in four for San Francisco.

After the day’s games, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and San Francisco all shared 95-65 records. St. Louis was a game behind at 94-66.

Oct. 2

Houston 1 St. Louis 0 – The Astros knocked the Cardinals out of the race when Walt Bond blooped a single in the sixth, scoring Morgan, for the game's only run.

Pittsburgh 7 Chicago 0 – Vern Law gave up only four hits and Stargell drove in four runs in the Buc’s victory.

Cincinnati 3 San Francisco 2 –Tony Perez hit a seventh-inning home run to give the Reds their 3-2 lead. Reliever Billy McCool picked up his 21^st save, despite having Giants runners on third in the eighth and ninth innings.

Cincinnati and Pittsburgh were tied with 96-65 records and San Francisco was a game behind at 95-66.

Oct. 3

The last day of the season.  If Cincinnati beat the Giants and the hapless Cubs defeated Pittsburgh, the Reds would claim the National League crown. If San Francisco won and the Pirates lost, there’d be a three-way tie. And if Pittsburgh won and the Giants won, Pittsburgh would take the pennant.

Cincinnati 5 San Francisco 0 – Frank Robinson hit his 43^rd home run of the season and Sammy Ellis earned his 24^th win. Willie Mays, who ended the season with a league-leading 49 homers and Willie McCovey, who had 44 home runs, went a combined 0-7 in the game.

Pittsburgh 6 Chicago 0 – Donn Clendenon hit two home runs and drove in four runs and the Pirates ended up tied with the Reds with 97-65 records.

I’ll have a three-game playoff next with the opening game in Pittsburgh and the next two in Cincinnati.

I always say this during a replay season, but this one has to be the best one I’ve done in my 24 years of APBA baseball. My favorite team, the Minnesota Twins, won the American League, there was great pitching (Sam McDowell of Cleveland led the majors with 355 strikeouts and  Vern Law of Pittsburgh and Marcelino Lopez of California each had two no-hitters) and great hitting (Leon “Daddy Wags” Wagner of Cleveland led the American League with 46 home runs. It seemed Wagner caught on fire at the end of the season, bashing 12 in September and October.)

Next up is the National League playoff with the winner facing the Twins in the 1965 World Series.

 

 

Chance for a four-way tie?

As I near the end of the 1965 APBA baseball replay, rolling games for the last five days of the season, there’s a chance there could be a four-way tie for the National League.

Break out the rule books for settling this kind of situation; in the words of my wife when she comes across anything out of the ordinary, “I’ve never seen such a thing.”

It could happen. Right now, with three games remaining to play for the slate of contests for Sept. 29, 1965, here are the standings:

                        W        L    GB

Cincinnati     94       64    --

San Fran        94        64    --

Pittsburgh     93        65    1

St. Louis        92        66    2

Los Angeles, the actual National League winner in the real season, never scored enough runs during the season to dominate and are 86-72, eight games out and guaranteed a fifth-place finish.

The American League was settled on Sept. 26 when Minnesota beat Washington and Detroit lost the second game of a doubleheader to Cleveland, 1-0.

Pittsburgh plays the New York Mets at Shea Stadium for the last game I’ve got scheduled for Sept. 29, and then they host the Cubs for three games to wrap up the Pirates’ season.

St. Louis travels to Houston for four games.

And the big series: Cincinnati is at San Francisco for their last four games.

Here’s how it could end up with a four-way tie.  If Cincinnati and San Francisco split their series, each winning two games, they’ll have identical 96-66 records. If Pittsburgh takes two out of three against Chicago, they’ll end up with a 96-66 record and if the Cardinals sweep the four-game set in Houston, they’ll also have a 96-66 record.

The best chance to avoid the logjam is if the Reds or the Giants take three out of four. But then, if the Pirates sweep the Cubs, there’ll still be a two-way tie for first.

Of course, if San Francisco or Cincinnati sweeps the four games, any talk of any ties is over.

So, it’s been that kind of season all year long. St. Louis led the National League for much of the season. On June 30, they were one game ahead of San Francisco, 5.5 games ahead of the Reds and 8.5 in front of Pittsburgh. But the Cards fell out of first in August, going 14-16, while Cincinnati went 19-9.

San Francisco took the lead in September with an 18-11 mark for the month, fueled by ace pitcher Juan Marichal, who has gone 10-1 in his last 12 starts, and outfielder Willie Mays, who leads the majors with 49 home runs. Willie McCovey also has 43 homers for the Giants.

I still have 34 games to play in the regular season. One of the deals my wife and I have is that she gets to roll the last inning of a season. She did it when I finished 1991 and, because she’s a sports fan and gets the lure of APBA, she’ll roll again to finish 1965. The problem, though, is she’s visiting her aunt in northern Illinois and won’t be back until the end of the week. Obviously, rolling 34 games in five days would be a chore with my job and the freelance writing I do. But there’s a part of me that wants to stay up late tossin’ the games to see how they come out.

And, we really haven’t determined if Holly’s end-of-season roll is for the end of the regular season or the World Series. Because she’s supportive of my obsessive APBA hobby, I’ll do my due diligence and wait for her return to roll that last Giants-Reds game.

I’ll have to figure out how we’ll roll the games if there’s a four-way tie.

My Dad

It would have been my father’s birthday last week had he been alive. But even though he’s been gone more than half my life, I still think of him and his influences on me.

And now with Father’s Day approaching, that hollowed, empty holiday for those with no parents, it’s time to reflect yet again.

I’ve written about my dad here before, but as I roll the games in my APBA replays – especially the 1965 season I’m doing because we were both alive in 1965 – I wish more and more that he was still here so he could give me perspectives on the seasons.

I felt that also when I replayed the 1947 season. By that year, my father was as sports obsessed as I am now. He grew up in New Jersey and was a huge New York Yankees fan. There was a chance that he could have even heard the last years few of Babe Ruth’s career on the radio at times.  I knew he saw Yogi Berra at games at Yankee Stadium and his favorite player was Joe DiMaggio.

It was my dad who got me into APBA, actually. 

I had been doing the evolution of sports games that we all did. This will age me, but I had a set of baseball, football, basketball and bowling games put out by Pop Tarts. The game, inserted in the box between the pastries, used a deck of cards. The player turned over the cards, using the results printed on the game sheet to play. It was the precursor to APBA, I guess.

Like so many others, I then gravitated to electric baseball and football when I was 7 or 8. My parents got me an electric baseball set for Christmas 1969 and I began doing season “replays” then. The baseball game utilized a magnetic ball and a plastic spring-loaded bat. There was also a spring “arm” mounted atop the centerfield bleachers you could use to throw to bases. The game consisted of loud whacking noises of the bat hitting the metal ball, the arm throwing the ball and the whirring of the game when you turned it on, sending runners vibrating around the basepaths.

That game alone probably was the catalyst for APBA. The noise had to have driven my dad bonkers at night.

So, in 1977, he got me the APBA football game for Christmas. And away I went. I’d toss the dice by hand rather than with the yellow dice shakers that came with the game to spare the clacking noise late at night when I played games.

My dad would come into my room and ask how the games were going. A year later, I got the basketball game and he’d do the same.

Of course, everyone thinks their father was a genius, but I think mine really was. He was a music teacher at Bemidji State University in Minnesota, and he could pick up any instrument, figure it out and begin playing it shortly after. He wrote two books about music theory and history and he loved learning new things. He was an avid reader of classic science fiction and I remember a time when he tried to explain various dimensions to me. I sat blankly as he tried to define what a fourth dimension was.

But despite his vast intelligence, he also laughed at farts and that, I felt, rounded him out totally.

Unfortunately, the only genetic hand-me-down I got from my dad was the affinity for fart jokes.

He died in 1987 after battling Parkinson’s. It was in March, around the time the Minnesota Twins opened spring training of their first World Series winning season. I wrote about dealing with my father’s passing and how that season helped me with the grief for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2017 for the 30^th anniversary of the Series victory. I received a lot of messages from the newspaper’s readers who worked with my dad, confirming my thoughts that he was pretty special.

Now, as I near the end of the 1965 replay I’ve been doing, I miss my father even more after 35 years of him being gone. It’d be nice to talk to him about how Mickey Mantle and Harmon Killebrew are doing in my replay and how he remembered them in his days.

As I get older, I am becoming more a fan of the history of baseball. I’ll check out most of the library’s books on baseball to read. My dad, I realize, was a library of his own of the older days of sports.

A lot of APBA players probably got their start with their fathers. And now, as Father’s Day is next week, you should take time to talk with your dad about baseball if he’s still alive (demographically, many APBA players are older themselves and their parents may have passed on as well). Roll a game with him.

You’ll be glad you did.

 

Fall 1965, Update: Sept. 21

It’s the first day of Fall 1965 in my APBA baseball replay, if you consider the traditional date for the changing of seasons. If you’re more into the meteorological calendar, the actual day that Fall started that year, the Autumnal Equinox, came a day earlier on the 20^th.

Either way, to enact a seasonal metaphor for this replay, the Cincinnati Red are falling like maple leaves on a windy day, the Los Angeles Dodgers all but need to be raked into a bag and left on the curb and the Pittsburgh Pirates have suddenly shown hope like the last blast of warm air before winter approaches.

This one, APBA players, is heading into a fantastic finish.

Here are the National League standings for Sept. 21, 1965.

San Francisco       90     60    --

Pittsburgh             90     63   1.5

Cincinnati             89     62   1.5

St. Louis                88     63   2.5

Los Angeles          83     68   7.5

Philadelphia         76     75   14.5

Milwaukee            75     76   15.5

Chicago                 67     85   24

Houston               59     93    32.5

New York             40    112    51

The American League is down to two teams in the pennant race. Minnesota, with a league best record of 95-57, leads the Detroit Tigers and their 91-61 record by four games. The two teams won’t face each other for the rest of the season and Detroit has a seemingly easier schedule for their last 10 games. They play the Indians, White Sox and Senators while the Twins end their season with games against the hot Orioles, the Senators and the Angels.

Cincinnati began its fall by being swept by the lowly Mets. A trip home to face the Astros seemed like a potential winning salve, but instead the Reds shockingly lost both games of a doubleheader to Houston and since Sept. 1 have gone 7-13. Meanwhile, the Pirates, riding on Willie Stargell’s bat, went 16-3 during the same time.

San Francisco has taken the NL lead by going 16-7. Giant’s outfielder Willie Mays is making a strong case for the MVP award by hitting 10 of his league-leading 47 home runs so far in September. Mays batted .408 during the stretch, drove in 23 runs and scored 19 runs.

The Giants have two more games at Cincinnati before returning home for the rest of the season to host Milwaukee and St. Louis in three-game sets and then ending 1965 with four games against the Reds.

Pittsburgh appears to have the easiest schedule remaining with home and away series with both the Cubs and Mets.

I remember my first baseball replay 24 years ago. It’s hard to imagine it’s been that long ago, but I did the 1998 season, starting it on Dec. 28, 1998. Back then, I wasn’t into replays as much as I was just into rolling the games. If I recall correctly, the Yankees won the American League East by nearly 20 games and Texas crushed the West by about the same. There was no pennant race then.

This time, it could result in the closest finish I’ve ever had.

Will the Giants hang on? Will Cincinnati regain form and capitalize on Frank Robinson’s bat and their good pitching staff? Will Los Angeles somehow ever score runs and make it to the World Series like they did in the real 1965 season? Will the disappointing Milwaukee Braves play a spoiler role, facing the Giants and Dodgers in eight of their last 11 games?

This has been a fun season to replay since the start and it’s ending up as a great finish.

 

 

 

Streaks

Streaks seem to have more of an impact in baseball. Say the number “56” and baseball fans immediately know that’s the number of games of Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak.

The New York Giants won a record 26 games in a row in 1916 and 101 years later, the 2017 Cleveland Indians lost 22 straight for a streak record.

Dale Long (1956), Don Mattingly (1987) and Ken Griffey Jr. (1993) hold the record for hitting home runs in eight consecutive games and Orel Hershiser has the record for pitching 59 consecutive scoreless innings in 1988.

Streaks are part of the game and it’s no different in the APBA replays we do.

Three winning streaks have played big roles late in my 1965 baseball replay; one has changed the lead in the tight National League pennant race as I approach the final two weeks of the season.

Streak One: Baltimore Orioles

The Orioles are foreshadowing their real 1966 World Series-winning team late in my replay. The Birds, who were consistently five to 10 games below .500 during the entire season, have reeled off 14 straight wins and moved from 7^th place at the start of September 1965 to half a game out of fourth behind the Chicago White Sox.

The Orioles’ bats haven’t been on fire during this streak – the team has a combined batting average of .241 and that’s not counting the pitcher’s appearances at the plate. Outfielder Russ Snyder leads the team during this run with a batting average of .361. Brooks Robinson has batted .322 during the 14-game streak. Despite batting .222, Boog Powell (whom I called “Booger” when I was a kid because his Orioles always seemed to beat my Twins) has two grand slam homers during the streak and third-string catcher Charlie Lau has two home runs in six at bats. The Orioles have seemed to capitalize on hitting at the right time because the hits don’t come that often.

Pitching, though, has been their mainstay. Dave McNally has three wins and a 1.39 ERA in the 14 games and Wally Bunker has pitched two complete game shutouts.

Streak Two: Pittsburgh Pirates

The Pirates won nine in a row before falling to Cincinnati, 8-3, on Sept. 12, 1965. They’ve since reeled off four more wins and host the Phillies next. They opened their winning run with a three-game sweep in Milwaukee and then took another three games in Cincinnati against the NL-leading Reds. They beat St. Louis 5-4 in 12 innings before returning to Pittsburgh where the Reds took them in the third game of the series. Pittsburgh has since swept the Cardinals and won their first game of a three-game set hosting Philadelphia.

Willie Stargell is the key in this streak. In the 14 games the Pirates went 13-1, he’s hit nine home runs and hit safely in all nine of the games of the Bucs’ first streak. The team is also clutch in extra innings. Before the streak(s), the Pirates were 3-6 in extra inning games. They won the three games that went 10, 12 and 13 innings in their two streaks.

Streak Three: New York Mets

The New York Mets are an ugly team. Currently, they are 38-111 for a grandiose winning percentage of .255. But for a three-game set in Shea Stadium from Sept. 14 to Sept. 16, 1965, they were world beaters.

The Mets, who opened the season on a 12-game losing streak and have lost at least four games in a row 13 times this season (including losing streaks of 12, 11, 9 and 8 games), beat the Reds in all three of their games.

In the first game, Ron Swoboda drove in Roy McMillan on a sacrifice fly in the fourth inning and pitcher Tom Parsons gave up only four hits in the 1-0 shutout. Reds pitcher Sammy Ellis, who is a contender for the NL Cy Young, struck out nine in his losing effort and dropped to 21-6.

In the second game, the Mets shut out the Reds again. Let me say that again. The Mets actually shut out the Reds in two straight games. This time, Johnny Lewis drove in Swoboda on a sacrifice fly in the second and Ed Kranepool scored on a passed ball by Reds catcher in the sixth inning. Ace Mets pitcher Al Jackson, desperately trying to avoid a 20-loss season, improved his record to 8-18.

And in the third game, New York held on to beat Cincinnati, 6-5. The Reds led 3-0 in the third and it felt like a usual Mets game. But the Mets scored one run in the bottom of the third and then four in the fourth on a conveyor belt of singles, a walk, a batter hit by a pitch and a sacrifice fly. Swoboda singled in his second RBI in the eight to give the Mets a 6-4 lead. Dee Johnson hit a home run for the Reds in the eight to cut the lead by one and crusty pitcher Roger Craig struck out pinch hitter Art Shamsky and Tommy Harper before getting Pete Rose on a popup to end the game.

The three losses for the Reds, coupled with a four-game sweep of the Astros by San Francisco (another streak), propelled the Giants into first place in the close National League.

With the streaks, the NL now looks like this: 1. San Francisco, 88-59; 2. Cincinnati 88-60; 3. Pittsburgh 88-62; 4. St. Louis 85-62, 5. Los Angeles 83-64.

The season wraps up in about two weeks. My wife is away on a visit with her aunt now, so the games come more frequently. I have my own personal streak going now, playing games in 17 consecutive days. (I used to play games every day for a year or so, but I was single and had no other life then).

Will there be more streaks? As the season closes, a three- or four-game winning streak could change everything.