Replaying Games on an Impacting Day

If APBA baseball game players replay any of the seasons of when they were alive, chances are they’ll come across games on a date that had some significance in their own lives.

Maybe it’s a date that a replayer graduated school, or the date of their wedding or birth of their child. Maybe it’s their own birth date.

And sometimes it’s an event that, while it may have not seem that impacting at the time, had been one of life’s turning point and an important moment when given the advantage of hindsight.

I came across one of those days in my 1972 APBA baseball replay.

I reached June 30, 1972. And I remembered what I had done on that actual day.

It was a Friday, a day after my 12^th birthday. My aunt and uncle from Arizona visited my family in Minnesota then and we went to the Itasca State Park near our home that day. That’s where the Mississippi River begins its more than 2,300-mile journey through the heart of the country.

I know this because my father bought me a metal flip calendar that day. It’s got a drawing of the iconic tree stump at the headwaters that notifies visitors of the river’s origin. People can flip a metal box on the upright calendar that contains plates with numbers for each day.

On the bottom of the calendar is a red label I made back then with my father’s 3M label maker noting the date I got it.

It’s also the day my aunt bought me Jim Bouton’s classic book “Ball Four.” It was the white paperback with the picture of a hand holding a baseball just before throwing a knuckleball. The title is in green capital letters.

Those not acquainted with the book should immediately go out and get a copy. It’s Bouton’s diary of the 1969 season when he pitched for the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros. On one level, it’s a rollicking look – complete with cussing a plenty – at a season on an expansion team that was pretty bad. On another level, though, it was a study of why people act the way they do; it was a doctrine about challenging authority and questioning it if it seemed a tad defunct. Don’t accept life the way it is if you see discrepancies in it, Bouton says.

At 12, I didn’t realize the great significance of the book; I giggled at the curse words and enjoyed reading stories about players I watched on the baseball field.

Later, I read it more for content and now think it had a major impact on the way I grew up. Sure, I had my parents’ upbringing, but Bouton’s words made me think for my own albeit with a bit of paranoia and distrust. Now, more than 50 years later, I still own the copy and still read it with that in mind.

So, while the real games went on during that day –Minnesota hosted Kansas City down in Bloomington, Minn., Atlanta was playing a west coast game in San Diego and the Twins’ rivals the White Sox were playing Oakland – I was standing at the beginning of the Mississippi River with my book and calendar in hand.

The symbolism was real: I had just turned 12. I was leaving the safety of my grade school in Minnesota and headed for unchartered territory in seventh grade at the town’s junior high. I, like that river, was starting a new journey.

I walked down the path by the river that day. It’s odd to call it a river there because it’s more a dribble. At points, you could stand on both sides of the banks at the same time. But, like our own lives, it starts small and progresses.

Years later, I stood on the edge of the Mississippi River in Helena, Ark., watching the strength and power of it as it roared. I was a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and one of my beats was covering weather. The river had reached near-record flooding and its width was more than two miles there. Bits of houses, farm buildings and uprooted trees rushed by. I thought back to the headwaters where it began, and where I got both my book and calendar.

I rolled the games for June 30, 1972, this week. In my replay, the Twins beat Kansas City, 6-2. San Diego crushed the Braves, 13-3, and Oakland and Chicago split a doubleheader.

I still have the calendar. I keep it on the table where I roll my games and keep it set to whatever day I’m on in the replay instead of the acutal date. I also have my first copy of “Ball Four,” along with two other copies. I just read it again early last month.

It’s one of the interesting things about doing replays in the years we’ve lived. We recreate games of the past and bring back memories of those days.

APBA Cat

Last April, one of the stray cats who would come to our house each evening for the bowl of food we’d leave out slinked into the garage in very apparent distress.

He was having difficulty breathing and was listless. Because my wife and I like animals much better than humans, we put the cat, who was too weak to refuse, into the cat carrier and took him to the veterinarian.

After inspecting him, the vet said the cat had heartworms and his lung capacity was very limited. It was a bad diagnosis. When he was asked him how long the cat had, the veterinarian said we should make him comfortable. He only had about a month to live, he said.

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My wife named him Elvis because he’d saunter into our backyard at nightfall, stop for whatever food we left out for him, get his pettings from us and then stroll out of the back and go to wherever he’d go to next. You could almost hear him going, “Thank you. Thank you very much,” after he ate his food.

Sometimes, he’d miss a day and we were worried he was either hit by a car or injured in some cat fight. But he’d return a day later and seemed okay. Once, during a rare Arkansas snow storm, we left our garage door opened a crack so he could ride out the cold weather. We placed an electric pet heating pad on the floor and stuffed a nylon cat cube with blankets and pillows. He failed to show up then and for at least a week we didn’t see him.

Elvis finally returned, but he had lost a lot of weight; we hoped he got out of the storm in some shelter in either someone else's garage or at least in a warm, safe place.

And once, when he was staying in our garage, another cat attacked him and cut open his leg. I chased off the cat, but Elvis was hurt. We kept him the garage again to recuperate.

But then last April was the worst. The veterinarian gave us some medication and wished us good luck. We fully expected Elvis wouldn’t make it through the spring.

Now, a year later, Elvis is still with us and doing much better. He plays with the three other cats we have. Two are feral cats. Skitty, a silver and grey cat named because she is so skittish around us, and Spooky, a black and brown kitten who showed up here on Halloween, have moved in.  We also have Squeaky, a black cat who we got in June 2019 after my wife’s mother passed away.

I think we relate with the ferals. They may be down on their luck with no family. They need help and love and we're just the ones to do that.

Elvis is a success story for us. He is a good, friendly cat who loves his pampered indoor life now and likes routines. At night, Holly and will take him and Squeaky out into the yard, each on leashes, so they can smell the smells and get a feel of the outside life. I know we look like the neighborhood crazy people walking cats around on leashes, but they enjoy it.

When I roll my APBA games in what Holly calls the “baseball room,” Elvis jumps onto a chair behind mine, curls up and then goes to sleep.

And today, Elvis achieved another title. He officially became an APBA Cat. While I rolled the June 18, 1972, replay game between San Diego and Pittsburgh, Elvis stepped onto the window sill by the APBA game desk and then jumped onto the playing field.

The game was delayed on account of cat. He got down eventually and I had to rearrange the players’ cards and make sure he didn’t knock the dice away.  Years ago when I was single, I had a cat who would jump onto the table and steal the dice. Her name was May and I lost her in January 2015. If you go my Goodreads page, you’ll see my profile photo is of her looking at an APBA card of Milt May.

So, Elvis is now deemed an APBA cat. I’m sure many of the APBA players know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve seen picture of players posting their cat delays on the APBA Facebook page and they make me smile.

A year ago, we weren’t sure if Elvis would be with us much longer. Today, a year after that prognosis, Elvis is fine. He runs with the other cats, has a hearty appetite and jumps. And, he is now an APBA Cat as well.

Happy Birthday, Mom: A Mother's APBA Influence

Today, April 23, would have been my mother’s birthday and as I roll the games in my 1972 ABPA baseball replay, I have her to thank for getting me into this game.

She passed away in early 1998 of sudden heart failure, although I guess any heart failure is sudden and not prolonged when you think about it.

I came late in my mother’s life. She was 45 years old when I was born and she called me a “Miracle Baby.” I think that was a polite 1960s term for “whoops.” And I read that after a mother reaches 40 years in age, the chances for mental deficiencies in a baby’s life increased dramatically. I think I am living proof of that.

So, with that all in mind, here are two stories of a mother’s impact in a game hobby that I’ve been playing for nearly half a century now.

The first is how I got into the APBA realm in the first place. I had done other games, like most sports fans, dabbling with the simpler games. In 1975, I got a Sherco II baseball game that provided a formula for figuring out players’ game ratings based on their stats. It was a decent game for me at the age of 15, but I tired of the simplistic way it set up fielding and wind effects.

I needed something more challenging and by the age of 17, I set my goal on the APBA football game. My father was a huge supporter of that idea. I had the electric football game, along with the electric baseball game, and the constant clicking noise of the electric switch and the “whirring” of the motor probably drove my folks crazy after a while. I think my dad loved the idea of a quiet, peaceful game for a change.

So, with my dad’s blessing, my mom okayed that purchase since she was the family comptroller of moneys and on Christmas Day of  1977 they pulled from under the Christmas tree the heavy box that contained the football game.  The following year, they bought me the 1976-77 APBA basketball game and away I went, stepping into the APBA journey that I’ve been on since.

Had my mother, who saw the effects of the Great Depression on her parents, said we had to save money and could not afford the game, who knows what I would have done. A life of crime? I was, after all, destined for a career in journalism.

The second story comes when I was an adult. I was enrolled in a PhD program in English at Texas Tech University in 1991. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted that degree, but instead the girl I was seeing at the time was accepted there and I had to follow her.

It was doomed from the start. In addition to really hating my classes – the only time I really understood what was going on was when a grad assistant and I drank a huge pitcher of beer for lunch before going blitzed to an English literature critical analysis class – the girl I was enamored with burned out on me. She found another guy and dumped me. In Lubbock, for cryin’ out loud.

I opted to drop out of school. I called my mom and told her of the failure. And I asked her to order the 1990-91 APBA basketball season for me. I think she realized the heartache I was feeling and didn’t ask questions about it.

She didn’t press, but instead said I could come home.

The game would be there for me when I returned home, she said. Maybe she knew the peace that comes with the APBA games – even the plodding, never-ending basketball contests. I wrapped up life in Lubbock over two weeks, dropping my teaching load, fighting with financial aid and packing my stuff. I also began writing out team schedules for that basketball season and that gave me hope. I was leaving a girl I thought I had a connection with, but I was shedding the constant studying of early American literature, theory of composition and that damn analysis class for more APBA games.

I left for home between Games 2 and 3 of the 1991 World Series so I wouldn’t miss my team, the Minnesota Twins beating the Atlanta Braves. I pulled out of Lubbock at about 5:30 a.m.; the girl stood in the parking to see me off—more probably to ensure I was finally gone.

I made it home in north central Arkansas late that afternoon. There, on the kitchen table by the entry, was the package with the red APBA logo easily seen. I was home.

Obviously, there are so many more things a mother does for one’s life. But if not for her, I’d not be rolling games these past 46 years and thinking ahead, always thinking ahead, of the next replay.

So, what would have been her birthday, thanks, Mom. Maybe you’re watching me roll all these games over the years. And if you’ve got any pull with the big guy up there, maybe you could put in a good word for my Twins in this 1972 replay I’m on.

1972 Replay Update: June 1

I’ve reached June 1 in my 1972 APBA baseball replay and, as the case with any replay done of a season during which I was alive, I think about where I was at that time.

As I’ve said in the beginning of this replay, 1972 was a transitional year for me and baseball helped keep at least one constant in my world then. I was a sixth grader in Bemidji, Minn., and attended a laboratory elementary school on the campus of the local college. I had gone there all six years of my education and I had made friends.

My dad taught at Bemidji State University and I’d walk home from school, cutting through the campus and meeting him at his office. We’d then go home together, making the two-block stroll up 14^th Street to Bixby Avenue.

On June 1, 1972, I was almost finished with sixth grade. In Minnesota, at least back then, we’d go to school through the first week or so of June before ending for summer break. We’d return after Labor Day in September.

Obviously, I don’t remember the exact day back then, but I’m sure I was filled with some anticipation of summer, but also with a little fear of going to junior high in an entirely different realm than what I was used to.

And that’s where baseball came in to help. On that day in 1972, my Minnesota Twins were only a game and a half out of first place behind Oakland in the real season. Detroit was half a game in front of Baltimore to lead the American League East and the New York Mets and Los Angeles led their divisions in the National League. (Remember, the 1972 real season began late because of a player’s strike).

In APBA, there are no strikes and I am playing the original schedule. There are no rainouts in my replay world as well, so every team plays a full 162 games.

That said, here’s how the season has gone so far.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

WEST                         W        L          GB

Oakland                     30       17        --

Minnesota                 26        21        4

Kansas City               23        25        7.5

Chicago                      21        26        9

California                  22        27        9

Texas                          12        38       19.5

 

EAST                          W        L          GB

New York                  30       19        --

Detroit                       28       17        --

Baltimore                  27        21        2.5

Cleveland                  25        20       3

Boston                       23        23        5.5

Milwaukee                16        29        12

 

Leaders:

Home runs: Mayberry, KC, 12; Darwin, Minn., 11; Grich, Bal., 11.

Wins: G.Perry, 10-1, Cle.; 9-2, Hunter, Oak.; Lolich, Det. 9-3

Saves: Lyle, NYY, 7; Allen, Cal., 6; Sanders, Mil., 6

Strikeouts: Ryan, Cal., 106; Lolich, Det. 97; Bradley, Chi., 89

 

The season started out pretty bland. Most of the teams were playing around .500 ball and no one, other than the Yankees, seemed to stand out in the American League.

The Yankees have been a surprise in the East. It’s mostly because of their pitching. Mel Stottlemyre has six shutouts. Other Yankees’ pitchers have a combined four shutouts. A third of New York’s wins, 10 of 30, involved games in which opponents never crossed the plate. The big bats aren’t really part of the team. Bobby Murcer leads the Yankees with nine home runs. Catcher Thurman Munson is second on the team with only four.

Cleveland has also been a surprise. Gaylord Perry has been amazing, winning 10 of his 11 decisions. The Indian bats aren’t all that great, either. Greg Nettles leads the Tribe with six home runs. All other Indians have combined to hit 23 home runs.

In the West, Minnesota opened quickly and just as in the real 1972 season, they took an early lead. But a 13-2 run by Oakland at the end of May gave the As the division lead. Reggie Jackson has been a disappointment so far, and I guess APBA replayers see that often. Stars that should stand out sometimes don’t produce. Jackson has only six home runs for the season. Two came in the ninth inning of a game against Minnesota in which Oakland won, 21-1. In the real 1972 season, Jackson had 10 home runs by June 1.

Texas is just plain bad. They were 3-3 on April 6. Then, they fell apart, suffering losing streaks of seven, 11, six and seven games. In between the streaks, they only won five games. A 5-31 record won’t get you out of last place.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

EAST              W        L          GB

Pittsburgh     34        15        --

Chicago          28       20       5.5

Phil’phia        27        23        7.5

St. Louis        26        22        7.5

New York      22        26        11.5

Montreal       20       28       13.5

 

WEST             W        L          GB

Houston        29        23        --

Los Angeles  25        25        3

Cincinnati     24        25        3.5

Atlanta           23        27        5

San Diego      21        32        8.5

San Fran        20       33        9.5

 

Leaders:

Home runs; Stargell, Pitt., 16; Aaron, Atl., 14; Kingman, SF, 12.

Wins: Wise, Stl., 8-1; Carlton, Phl., 8-3; Jenkins, Chi., 8-4

Saves: McGraw, NYM, 9; Giusti, Pitt., 8; Marshall, Mtl. 7

Strikeouts: Carlton, Phl., 125; Seaver, NYM, 82; Wilson, Hou., 77

Pittsburgh is definitely the team to beat in the National League so far. With Blass, Moose, Briles, Ellis and Kison as their starters, I don’t see any long losing streak ahead for the Pirates. And relievers Dave Giusti and Ramon Hernandez (both A (Y) pitchers) have combined for 12 saves.

Cincinnati, on the other hand, is the NL’s disappointing team. Catcher Johnny Bench has 10 home runs, but the rest of the team seems weak at bat. From May 3 to May 21, the Reds won only three out of 19 games.

San Francisco is an odd team to play. Their batters bomb the long ball with Bobby Bonds, Dave Kingman, Ken Henderson, Willie McCovey and Dave Rader. But their pitchers bomb on the mound. Sam McDowell is 2-8 and Juan Marichal is 3-7.

The Cubs bolted into second place by winning 13 in a row. Five were shutout games, including a 20-0 whitewashing of Montreal. They followed that game with another shutout of the Expos and then a 1-0 win over St. Louis.

June 1972 starts now and as I roll games for this month, I’ll be thinking of my time back then, playing whiffle ball with my best friend in his back yard on Callahan Street, of riding bikes to Diamond Point Park and of staying out late, enjoying the cool of the Minnesota evenings while the Twins were playing on television.

I Am a Dinosaur

I was turned down for a job recently because I didn’t have enough technical skills.

The job was a marketing and public relations director for a local business and it sounded interesting. I applied with the hopes of getting it, being able to be paid to write things and to earn a better weekly check than I am getting now.

But, alas, when the employers found out I didn’t know how to do Power Point and I wasn’t all that fond of Facebook and other social media, I didn’t make the final cut. I should have seen it coming because the employer found out I was a reporter, she asked me more about my thoughts on the West Memphis 3 murder mystery than what I could do for the business.

At first I was depressed about it. The increase in pay would have been nice. We have saved three stray cats in the neighborhood and the vet and food bills are always high. A change of job scenery would have been nice, too.

I am a dinosaur. I’m old and trapped in the ways of yore. A friend of mine is an editor at an Arkansas paper and he talks about his pagination process of putting the paper to bed each day. When I was starting in newspaper so many years ago, I typed on a real typewriter, like those reporters you see wearing fedoras and clacking out stories in smoke-filled newsrooms. Pagination? I used to print copy out on typing paper, cut it, run the strips through a waxer and stick it on dummy sheets that replicated the final page.

Later, when I became a bureau reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette all I had to learn how to push a couple of keys on the laptop to send my stories to the Little Rock office. Still, I had issues and our computer tech people told me I was considered job security for them since I was pretty illiterate in the world of computing.

So, I was saddened. Looking back, I don’t know why I applied. Obviously, technology is part of a public relations job. You have to get the word out about the business as quickly as you can, but I don’t know the difference between a jpeg and a farm pig and I have to get my wife to help me post pictures on Facebook on the infrequent times I do.

I could probably get a job as the town crier, hawking out news from street while wearing a three-cornered hat and knickers, but there aren’t many jobs like that around anymore.

Yes, I am extinct. Technology has passed me by. I’m sitting on the information highway, trying to bum a ride with the young speedsters.

I turned to my APBA 1972 baseball season replay game to drown out my sorrows. One of my favorite players as a kid, Willie Stargell, was leading the majors in home runs in my replay. The Minnesota Twins, the team I learned baseball when I lived in Minnesota in 1972, was doing pretty well and most of the teams had developed playing personalities. I could easily get lost in a few games and forget my worthlessness.

And I realized then, that APBA does cater to dinosaurs like me. There’s the computerized version, but I prefer rolling dice and using the game cards the company prints.

I never got into the video game things; I was awful at them. Before my first wife passed away, my stepson played Mortal Kombat with me and took glee in beating the stuffing out of me every time because I couldn’t tell which buttons to push. I also showed my ineptness when a friend tried to get me to play some Nintendo space game. I’d usually get fried by a laser before the first round of aliens settled in for the battle.

Nope, it’s the basics for me. Give me a red and white dice, two teams of carded players and away I go.

I sought comfort in a game that’s created for people like me who were depressed because I’m not technologically savvy.

The depression passed. I mean, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. But the game has helped. It’s one thing that I can enjoy and excel at without worrying about computer stuff and Power Points and all that.

So, for all you dice and cards APBA players, who, like me, aren’t zipping down the info highway, embrace your dinosaur.

Just don’t expect a hug back if your dinosaur’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Their tiny arms wouldn’t be able to reach around you, you know.

Cubs Win ... and Win... and Win

 

During the first month’s games of my 1972 APBA baseball replay, it seemed like the teams were replicating the bell curve of statistics. There were a few teams on the winning end – Pittsburgh and the New York Yankees were winning far more frequently than the other teams. And there were the outliers on the other end – Milwaukee and Texas were on a race to see which team would lose 100 games first.

And the rest of the teams all hovered around each other. Most were within two to four games of playing .500.

I wasn’t all that enthused at first. I mean, 1972 was the first real baseball season I became totally aware. I was 11, living in northern Minnesota and watching and reading as much as I could about the Twins then. I learned how to compile ERA and batting averages and I could see that, despite a good start, the Twins were probably destined for a near .500 season themselves.

So, when I began rolling 1972, I was hoping for a stroll down nostalgia lane with teams like Oakland and Detroit and Cincinnati really taking off. Instead, I got mediocrity.

Until May 1972 rolled around.

And the Cubs.

Chicago has won 12 games in a row from May 18 to May 30 in the replay. They’ve moved from fifth place, only a tad ahead of Montreal, to second place. They’re still seven games behind Pittsburgh, but the streak is on-going. The Cubs play two more at home against St. Louis and then start a nine-game road swing against San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles, before heading home  to face the same teams nine more times.

Then, on June 23, 1972, the Cubs host Pittsburgh in a three-game set and then play them again at the end of the month in the Pirates’ stadium.

The Cubs have been amazing during this streak. They’ve outscored their opponents 89-14 and pitchers tossed five shutouts during the run, including a 20-0 shellacking of Montreal. The pitchers have hurled an incredible 0.92 earned run average in the 12 games.

The team has batted .320, with Glenn Beckert leading them with a .381 average. Billy Williams has five home runs and 13 RBIs during the streak and is batting .320.

Even Ron Santos, the slowest of the slow, is hitting .341. Prior to this streak, it seemed Santos, who is given the “S” for slow (should have been “GS” for glacier slow) would get on base and then be constantly caught at second or third when the next batter got a hit. If he ever hit a triple in a game, the ivy on Wrigley’s wall would have grown six inches before he slid into the base. Once when Santos hit a double, the grounds crew had to run a folding chair out there for him to sit and catch his breath. Chicago officials are talking with the commissioner to see if they can get Santos a moped or Segway to putter to bases with.

Yeah, Santos is slow.

But in these 12 games, he’s not been caught on base at all.

Long streaks are not that common for me in APBA replays. I’ve had a few teams win 10 in a row and the Minnesota Twins lost more than 20 in a 1977 replay. But I’m pretty sure this 12-game winning stretch has to be the longest I can recall. And it’s not over. Yet.

Burt Hooton is scheduled to start the next games for the Cubs against Cardinal’s pitcher Johnny Cumberland. Cumberland is carded as a “D,” the worst rating given for pitchers based upon their performance. Hooton is a “B” with a “Y” rating for strikeouts, which gives him a chance to record more strikeouts than other pitchers based upon his real-life performance in the 1972 season.

It’ll be a while before I can get to that game. Because of work and life, my replay has slowed down a bit. Maybe this upcoming game-- and the Houston-Cincinnati clash ahead—can speed my rate of play a bit.

This is one of the neat things about the APBA game. It may seem plodding to some to do a complete replay, rolling all the games for every team, but there is always something that’s happening, something to marvel over and something to look ahead to.

 

Anniversaries

I assume it’s a safe guess that most of the APBA players have been playing the sports replay for a while now. We probably began rolling the dice and holding the cards at an early age and the game stayed with us as we grew over the years.

And I suspect many of us began the APBA voyage after receiving the game as a Christmas gift from our parents.

I had two APBA anniversaries last week, including one on Christmas Day in 1977 that got me started. (Actually, there’s a third anniversary—I began this blog on Jan. 1, 2012. Hard to believe I’ve been doing this for 11 years now.)

My parents bought me the football game that year. I probably began backwards; most people first play the basic baseball game as a kid and graduate to the football and other game offerings of APBA. I was indoctrinated into the world of the large red dice and small white dice, the player cards with dice roll results printed on them and the counting of each play as a measure of time keeping with the football version.

That night on Christmas, I played my first game with Washington and the New York Giants. I’m sure I didn’t do it right that time. The rules were difficult and detailed. This wasn’t the Pop Tarts card baseball or the electric football games I used to play. I remember the Giants won the game, something like 41-34, and Larry Brown ran back a kickoff for 100 yards for the Redskins.

A year later, I received the APBA basketball game – a game that received much criticism because of its complex and plodding style of play. I played a streamlined version that consisted mostly of shooting, rebounding and figuring out assists with a detailed dice system. I loved the game and it’s what made me a dedicated APBA fan for life.

Just the other day I also observed another APBA anniversary. I began playing the baseball game on Dec. 28, 1998. I was seduced by the steroid-aided home run race that season by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and returned to being a fan after the 1994 season-ending strike drove me away. I got the game to replicate that season’s fun.

I’ve been rolling some baseball season now for 24 years and I’ve been with APBA for 45 years.

I am sure there are scores of other APBA players who can boast much longer anniversaries of 50 and even 60 years.

And that’s the point of this game that I mention frequently. What other game has stayed with us for so long? It’s the draw of the APBA game and I think it’s what keeps us coming back to the company to get more seasons. We can live our past by rolling seasons we remember as we continue growing older. I’m doing 1972 now and I recall the season when I turned 12 years old that summer and left the security of my northern Minnesota grade school for a larger junior high. The consistency of baseball helped me get through that transitional time.

The APBA game has been with us as we grew up. We may have put it aside when we went to college or got a job. It may have waited when we got married or had kids and it stuck with us during other life changes. I began my replay of the 1991 baseball season in August 2015. A month later, I drove to Chicago and met the woman who would become my wife. It took four years to complete that replay; usually, because I have no life, it takes about a year and a half to roll a full season replay.

But now, life has settled into a routine again and I roll games nearly every day.

Twenty-four years of rolling doesn’t seem that long. But in the years I’ve been playing the baseball game, I was hired as a bureau reporter for a statewide newspaper, covered a school shooting here that got national coverage, lost my mother and wife, got laid off at the newspaper job, dealt with my own health issues and got remarried. It’s been a lot of life in that quarter of a century and APBA has been there.

Another anniversary has passed. What’s ahead for the next year of APBA games? I see myself finishing the 1972 replay late this year and beginning another season. Maybe I’ll drag out the APBA basketball game. I could finish a game in time for the next anniversary.

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.