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?