The August Turning Point

I’m reaching the last of August in my APBA baseball replay of the 1981 season and looking back at that real time in my life, I realize it was quite a defining end of summer.

In a span of a week or so in that final week of August, I was barred from returning to a medical facility where my ailing father was recuperating, my mother was recovering in another hospital after having knee replacement surgery, I talked a police officer out of arresting a friend’s father for public drunkenness by promising to take care of him and I was preparing for my last semester of college.

I had also turned 21 a few months earlier and in those days that was the age when you could begin buying beer. The temptation of youthful alcoholic indulgence was prevalent that summer as well.

Looking back, I guess it was the time I began learning how to deal with things on my own and not rely on others. It was a valuable lesson that I used once the safety net of parents, family and others were no longer available.

The Minnesota Twins were mired in last place in baseball that year, so there was no solace there. Pat Benatar was singin’ “Fire and Ice” then and Joey Scarbury entered into one hit wonder realm with his theme to the “Greatest American Hero” show. No help there, either.

It was the first time I was really alone. My father, who passed away six years later, wasn’t doing well and my mother, who went in for her first knee surgery, decided to put him in a nursing home/rehabilitative care center while she went through her procedure. I drove the 40 miles to see him one day in Thayer, Mo., and, after I was stunned at the condition he was in, flailed out at the director in shock and fear. He ended up calling my mother, who was recovering in her own hospital bed, and said I was a “problem” and was no longer allowed there.

I returned home and later that week was with a friend who’s father was picked up for drinking in public. I went to the local police station at 2 a.m. and convinced the arresting officer I would take him home and ensure he would not drive so to avoid him spending a night in the slammer. The cop agreed to my conditions and, for the first time, I felt like I was treated like an adult.

Weird times back then. Both my parents were gone for that week and I was supervising myself. It was a point of separating the youngster that I had been and the adult I needed to become.

And like I’ve said so many times here already, the APBA game was the connecting thread through it all. The games were still there, waiting for me to escape in them when I had time.  College was looming ahead and I wouldn’t have much time, but the escape was available when I needed it.

Looking back at August 1981, I did need that escape.

What a Way To Start

My father was never a curmudgeon or even a somewhat negative person. In fact, he tried to instill a positive attitude in me when I was growing up and he exemplified that by never complaining about his long illness that eventually took him from me.

But there was one day in the year that he would put all that goodness aside. It was a day when disappointment reigned and there was an understanding that not all was always going to go well.

That day was always New Year’s Day and it really came to fruition by the evening when the Rose Bowl game was ending.

Yes, it was hard maintaining a positive attitude that day when all your football teams lost, seemingly year after year. And it was worse when, as a child in the 1970s, I always rooted for the Big 10 teams.

Back then, there were usually only five bowl games on New Year’s Day. There wasn’t the myriad of contests in those days. No Petco Dog Food Bowl, or Kohler Toilet Bowl, or Interchanging Logo Here Bowl. There were only the four majors: Orange, Cotton, Sugar and Rose bowls. And maybe the Gator Bowl earlier that day to whet the football appetite.

My dad earned his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin and he and my mother often went to games in Madison. They left me, at the time a toddler, behind and it was a move that still miffs me. Even then I wanted to see the games. Later, we moved to Minnesota, so I became a Gopher fan.

So, it only stood to reason we’d be Big 10 fans having lived in the conference’s turf.

We also rooted mostly for the northern most team when the bowl games ensued. Back then the SEC wasn’t the NFL’s developmental league, so the games that often pitted the Big 10 with the SEC teams should have been more evenly contested.

That wasn’t the case usually, though. By kickoff of the Rose Bowl, if one of our four teams won the previous games, we’d be faring well. 

Sadly, the time I really watched the Rose Bowls with my father was in the 1970s, when the Big 10 teams lost most of those games. I remember Michigan missing a last second field goal once, and Charles White scoring a late fourth quarter touchdown for USC to beat the Wolverines. Ohio State beat USC in 1974, the only time in that decade that a Big 10 team won.

As a huge sports fan, my father put in perspective. “What a way to start off the year,” he say as we turned off the television when the game ended.

The rest of the year went well and my dad returned to his optimistic self. But there was always that day.

My father has been gone for 25 years now. I still watch the Rose Bowl each year, as much a tribute to him as the fact that I inherited his sports obsession. 

This year, the same result. Wisconsin lost to Stanford. Last year, the Badgers lost by seven and the year before that they fell by two points.

Disappointment is common on New Year’s Day,

What a way to start off the year.

APBA New Year

It’s that time of year again where we look back on our successes and, in my case at least, realize that, alas, they weren’t all that good.

But the new year beckons and it’s a time for creating changes, for making improvements and for achieving new goals. At least for a few days it is.

I used to make all those standard New Year’s Resolutions that everyone does and then breaks because normal habits set back in. I’ve continually done the Lose Weight Resolution, but generally break it soon into the year in some feeding binge that includes Pepsis, ice cream, greasy potato chips and ashamed guilt.

That usually happens by the half time of the Rose Bowl game on Jan. 1, so, granted, it is a short-lived resolution.

I’ve also resolved to make more money each year, too. I try and freelance write for magazines, but after a litany of rejections from magazines I say a curse word that rhymes with the buck I’m trying to grab.

Being a better person, eating right, helping others are all formidable resolutions, but they go against my genetics. How can you change 52 years of experience merely by firmly declaring one day, “By golly, I’m going do it this time.”?

Yeah, those improvements ain’t goin’ happen in 2013.

So, instead, I am going to focus on more attainable platitudes. That’s not to say I’m making it easier. (I once went out with a girl and during that first-date fact-finding mission, she found out I set high goals in my writing at work and was often disappointed I didn’t reach them. “Why don’t you just lower your goals?” she asked, which rankled me. Immediately, popping into my head was “I did. I’m going out with you.” But, fortunately, I kept that opinion to myself. Note to myself: A good resolution is to think before speaking).

So, my resolutions for 2013 will involve mainly sports and the APBA game I play and write about here.

I resolve to learn more about sports in 2013. I can say, “Sure, Nebraska will be good in football next year.” But I need to know why. I need to back it up and I want to sound knowledgeable enough to be on Fox Sports Southwest. (Originally, I thought about ESPN, but maybe I am lowering my goals.).

I resolve to not hate the National Hockey League when it returns to play sometime in the next decade. I am one of only three Arkansans who love hockey, and the lockout has really hurt. I am sure I’ll act like some jilted high school girl grabbing back her on again, off again boyfriend when the season resumes.

I resolve to be more aware that there are more than the four major sports out there. I’ll try and watch tennis and bowling and that fighting thing in a cage a bit more. But I won’t accept soccer. I’d break that resolution to watch soccer sooner than I would break the Lose Weight Resolution.

And, I resolve to continue playing APBA at the pace I’m doing. I have several seasons yet to do and each take time. I’ll wrap up this 1981 baseball season I’m on sometime in April and then tackle 1942. Then there’s many more ahead.

So, APBA fans, enjoy the New Year and, if you make resolutions, put thought into them and make those that are both challenging and reachable. But, if you’re like me, those healthy ones will be busted by mid afternoon on Jan. 1.

Christmas Magic

APBA first came to me on Christmas of 1977 tucked among the shirts, socks, a pair of shoes and other presents, wrapped in the large box it came in from the company.

I was 17 and I was pretty sure my parents bought me the 1976 football season. I had requested it, promoting the game during the fall and talking about it all during the 1977 NFL season. It cost $18.75, a steep price for a kid in the days before video games, but I constantly told them I would get my money’s worth.

Two years earlier, they bought me a Sherco II dice replay baseball game that replaced the raucous electric baseball game I had. The APBA football game, I reasoned, would replace the equally loud electric football game I played with each fall and winter.

So, I expected the game that Christmas, but, as was the case with my folks, they always saved the best present, the headliner, for last and I had to go through the myriad of other gifts first. Clothing, a box of Lifesavers, pens and notebooks for school, a book or two — all appreciated, but, alas, set aside in anticipation of the big gift.

When my parents finally slid the large box out from under the tree, I was sure it was the APBA football game. But I had to see it to believe it.

I opened it, and there it was. In my hands were the game cards for the players I watched on television each week. Each card was packed in the player’s team envelopes. I looked at the stars of the day — Roger Staubach for the Cowboys, Bert Jones with the Colts, Terry Bradshaw in Pittsburgh — and I knew this was something special.

It was a complex game to learn, and I remember spending that Christmas day and night reading the instructions and playing a practice game. School was on Christmas break so I stayed up into the wee hours that night learning the game.

The seed was planted.

Two years later, my parents bought me the NBA version of the game. Most longtime APBA players never liked the game, criticizing it for its extremely slow pace of play. But I loved it and for the next 14 years it was the main game I played.

Now, 35 years later I still stay up late playing the game. This time it’s baseball. I was a late bloomer by getting into APBA baseball in 1998, 21 years after I was first introduced to the company. Most people begin with baseball. I had to do it backwards.

I am widowed now and have no children. My parents are long gone and I never had any siblings. The magic of Christmas is no longer a possibility for me. In fact, this year I’m working on Christmas Day at my newspaper. My assignments are to cover the possibility of ice and snow the following day and to write about others who are working that day.

But the magic of the game lives on as I continue to roll. I hope somewhere out there a wrapped present under a Christmas tree contains an APBA game for some  youngster. And, after he sifts through the shirts and other presents, he opens the APBA box and begins a lifelong journey of his own magic.

A Year Into the 1981 Replay

As the final dice roll of the Aug. 18, 1981, APBA replay baseball game between St. Louis and San Diego tumbled on the mouse pad tonight and I recorded the last out, it ended my first year of replaying this season.

A year ago today, I began rolling the 1981 season and embarked on a venture that the replay gamers take every time they begin a project.

It is a long venture, one that is drawn out for months upon months, game upon game, dice roll upon roll.

I’ve played 1,543 games in the year’s time. That averages to 4.2 games when you divide it by 366 days (I’m including the Leap Year Day of 2012). I don’t know how it compares to other people’s replay schedules; it may be more than an average daily amount for many people.  On the same hand, it may be slow. I average playing a real day’s slate of games in about four days. A four-to-one ratio is not a great pace to knock out the games quickly.

But I plod on, determined to finish the season.

And this one is a bit different. In the real 1981 season the games were disrupted by a player’s strike in June, resulting in the loss of 50-60 games per team. It was followed by a goofy playoff format akin to minor league baseball where the league winner of the first half of the season played the league winner of the second half to move onto the World Series.

In APBA, there was no strike. The games are played as scheduled. So that makes the season longer for me. Throw in the fact that I don’t do rain outs and every team plays its full schedule of 162 games.

A lot has happened in the real world this past year while I played the fictional season. As a news reporter, I covered a lingering drought in this state for many months. I wrote about several trials, detailed several murders and other crimes in my coverage area and scribed numerous decisions made by city and county leaders. Life moves on. And the progression of real life is mirrored somewhat by the progression of the 1981 replay days.

I keep a small desk flip calendar on the table where I play the APBA games. But rather than keep it current with the present day’s date, I set it to whatever day I’m playing the season. So, the calendar will stay on Aug. 18, 1981, until I finish that day’s slate and move on to the next day.

I still have 563 games remaining to complete the 1981 season. If I maintain my 4.2-game a day pace, I’ll wrap this up in 134 days. So, by mid April I’ll have finished this season and gear up for the next one.

It’s never ending, this obsession with the game. And the pace I keep means one of two things to me. Either I possess the dedication and the determination to complete seasons (I’ve finished six seasons so far since 1998 when I started playing the baseball games), or I totally don’t have a life.

What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

A friend of mine asked what began as an innocuous question about the frequency of my APBA game playing regimen.

She had read some of my previous posts here about the zen of this game and she knew I was obsessed with the dice rolling hobby and the historical knowledge it provides.

But she didn’t know how often I played and that was the basis of her query. 

“So, do you only play the games on the weekend?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, somewhat surprised by her supposition. “I play every day. I roll four or five games each day.”

She paused and then continued on to the next subject. But I knew what would have come next. I’ve been there before. There are some who think this game is child’s play and a waste of time and that I should be doing something better with my time. In the past, I’ve had former girlfriends tell me that had I spent as much energy on, say, writing a book or curing cancer as I do on the game, I’d be rich.

Notice, these are “former” girlfriends I’m talking about. They didn’t get the peace the game brings and the feeling of accomplishment it gives when you complete a season. And if they don’t get that, they ain’t for me.

Of course on the inverse, had I spent more time solving the world’s problems than juggling the 1981 Minnesota Twins’ anemic batting lineup or scheduling the rotation of the Dodgers’ 1964 pitching staff, I may have become rich and been able to keep any  one of those exes from gaining the moniker “former.”

But this game is important in my routine of life. And the fact that I play it nearly every day may ease the problems I have for not being rich and not winning the Nobel Prize for fixin’ diseases. At least it brings a sense of satisfaction and soothes the fact that, nay, I’m not going to be able to afford a new car every other year.

“You need to get out more,” the same friend who questioned my game-playing schedule once said. And I thought, “What are you talking about? I go places every night.” I’m at several ballparks nightly while playing the games. If Delta gave out frequent flyer miles for the stops I’ve made while replaying the 1981 season alone, I’d be able to fly to the moon and back for free.

Other than when I was sick earlier this year, or on the rare occasion  if I have a very early morning news assignment, I grab the dice each day.

And it’s become a part of my daily habit. Wake up, roll two or three games, go to work, come home, eat, roll two or three games, go to bed, lather, rinse, repeat.

When things change, it affects me. Today, for example, I fell behind while writing a seemingly endless barrage of news and stayed at work late. There were three murders in the area and I had to chronicle each one. When I finished writing one, a police department would issue a news release on a second killing. That done, a third release would appear, all while I watched the clock. I felt like yelling out, “Stop getting whacked! I’ve got games scheduled for tonight.”

But, like most days, I made it home and eventually drifted back to the room where the game lies and got in a few games.

Tomorrow, it’ll be the same. And, although I’m not spending my time curing cancer, at least I’m not out there killing folks.

1981 Update at Game No. 1,500

The APBA replay games keep rolling; one by one the season progresses. It’s a slow process when you look at the big picture — the entire season. But there are also accomplishments the replayer revels in when surpassing certain marks and I hit another tonight.

With the completion of the Aug. 15, 1981, game of the New York Yankees at Detroit, I rolled game number 1,500 in my 1981 baseball replay. I have 10 days left before I’ll reach a year in playing this season, so I’m averaging about four games a day. Not bad, I think, when I consider I lost a week of games when I flirted with pneumonia earlier this year and I work at a place that seems to ramp up production quotas and stress as the year progresses.

The season so far has been a good one, and while I play 1981, I often think back on that year for me personally. It was somewhat of a turning point for me, one of many in life’s travels, I guess, but that year made an impression on in many ways. And this game provides a mechanism for me to look back and reflect on life 31 years ago.

As I’ve said here before, I’ve ignore the actual baseball strike that plagued the middle of the 1981 season. All is perfect in APBA. No strikes, no lockouts, no player discord, no rainouts. Every game intended to be played that year will be played.

All is perfect in APBA.

All, except for the Minnesota Twins, which endured a horrific 26-game losing streak in the replay, and now the Yankees,which are in a seven-game losing streak of their own.

Here are my standings after game 1,500 was just rolled.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

EAST        W L WEST W L

Detroit 70 46 Kansas City 74 40

New York 69 47 California 71 46

Milwaukee68 47 Chicago 62 53

Baltimore  65 51 Oakland 60 57

Boston 56 59 Texas 55 61

Cleveland  52 63 Seattle 37 79

Toronto 41 76 Minnesota 30 85

NATIONAL LEAGUE

EAST W L WEST W L

Montreal 79 35 Los Angeles 78 36

Phil’phia 67 48 Cincinnati     68 48

St. Louis 61 54 Houston 66 48

Pittsbrgh 52 64 Atlanta 48 67

Chicago 44 72 San Fran. 48 68

New York42 73 San Diego 37 77