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.”