Game No. 906; 300 to go

This morning I rolled Game No. 906 of my 1942 APBA baseball replay and while it's no big landmark, it does mean I have only 300 more games to play before I complete the year. I should wrap this up by the end of January or early February, and then begin yet another replay of some other season.

It's been a good season, but I always say that during any replay. I've never done a season replay from during the 1940s; this helped teach me about that era of Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and the rest. The St. Louis Browns are a fun team to play. They find ways to win. Detroit is a frustrating crew. They find ways to lose. Both Philadelphia teams are just awful, and the Cardinals-Dodgers race to the pennant is sizing up to be a good one.

Here are the standings after Game 906, which is five games into Aug. 15, 1942.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

                     W    L    GB

New York     73   38    –

St. Louis       68   47     7

Boston          65   47    8.5

Cleveland     61   53   13.5

Detroit          58   59    18

Washington  45   65    27.5

Chicago        42   68    30.5
Philadelphia 41   76    35

NATIONAL LEAGUE

                     W    L    GB

St. Louis       76   34     –

Brooklyn      75   36    1.5

New York     59   56   19.5

Cincinnati    54   57   22.5

Pittsburgh     52   60   25

Chicago        53   62   25.5

Boston          51   70   30.5

Philadelphia 32   77   43.5

Ted Williams leads the league with 32 home runs so far. Dolph Camilli has 27 for Brooklyn and Max West hit 22 for the Boston Braves. Mort Cooper has 18 wins for the Cardinals and Denny Galehouse and Elden Auker, both of the St. Louis Browns, are tied for the American League with 15 victories each.

I have hit “the wall” a few times and the replay slowed down. I found myself looking ahead to whatever next replay I'll do. Maybe 1991, maybe 1919. I have even toyed with the idea of playing the APBA basketball game that really first introduced me to this company. While others have bemoaned how slow that game is, I played it all the time when I was in my late teens and I loved it. I may drag that out.

But for now, the focus is on completing 1942,and here are some tidbits that we, the game players, search to help progress the season.

New York Yankees: They win a lot, but they win on pitching and doubles. The big bats just aren't there. Charlie Keller leads the team with 21 home runs. Joe DiMaggio has only 9 home runs. This team reminds me of the Yankees of 2003, when Jeter told the dugout that they would beat the Red Sox in Game 7 of the AL Championship Series because the “ghosts” of Yankees past would guide team. Well, this 1942 apparently features some of those ghosts.

St. Louis Browns: In the replay, they are nine games better than in real life at this point. They are 6-11 against the Red Sox so far and and 9-9 versus the Yankees. They've beaten up on the weaker teams by going 13-5 against Philadelphia and 13-2 against the White Sox, hence their decent record.

Boston Red Sox: They lost their first 10 games in the season, but have rebounded and are streaky now. They'll go 6-2 on a run, and then lose two of three games. But they'll put it back together and run off another five or six wins in seven or eight games. Ted Williams is amazing in this replay. He's batting well over .400 (remember, I don't keep detailed stats. I know, blaspheme).

Detroit Tigers: I can't understand this team. Five of the six regular starters have 'B' ratings. (APBA grades pitchers. In the basic game, an 'A,' obviously, is the best. D is the lowest rating). Hal Newhouser has a rating of A. Each pitcher also has an above strikeout average which is reflected on the card. In a game that pretty much sums up the Tigers' season, Newhouser threw 8 innings of perfect baseball against Cleveland. Problem was, Detroit didn't score either. Newhouser opened the bottom of the ninth with two walks, got Jim Hegan on a flyout and hoped for a double play to send the game into extra innings. Instead, Oris Hockett hit a single and the Indians won on one hit.

St. Louis Cardinals: They were behind the Dodgers early on, just as in real life in 1942. They suddenly took off, winning 20 of 23 from July 4 to July 25. They passed the Brooklyn Dodgers and had a 6-game lead over them at one point. But since then, they've played .500 ball while Brooklyn has returned the favor, going 13-5 in its last 18 games. It looks like it'll be a fun finish for those two teams.

New York Giants: Mel Ott has 18 home runs and Johnny Mize has 17. It seems like whenever one hits one, the other follows. A friend of mine gave me a recording he found of the 1942 All-Star Game and in it, the announcer was discussing the virtues of rookie outfielder Willard Marshall. He's the third best long ball hitter for the Giants in my replay, and it was neat hearing the recorded broadcast about him.

Pittsburgh Pirates: The Pirates are 52-60. Without Vince DiMaggio, they'd be lucky to have won 40 games so far. He's hit 10 home runs, but seems to come through in the clutch with a lot of doubles to drive in runs. That's it for Pittsburgh. The rest of the team is mired in mediocrity. Or worse. Ken Heintzelman is the league's worst pitcher with a 1-14 mark.

So there's the recap so far. Those who don't play APBA, yet read this blog can see how replayers get caught up in the seasons. There are the nuances and quirks that pop up in every replay and it's what keeps us rolling and rolling the dice

Missing the Games

Michigan State was playing Kentucky and Kansas faced Duke the other night in college basketball. Numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5 were squaring off on television; college basketball season, of which I truly love, had officially begun.

Add to that a St. Louis Blues hockey game on cable. And throw in the fact that I had to re-write and edit a story I sold to a magazine by the following morning. My evening was set.

So why then, when a friend called and asked me to come to her house to watch a movie, did I jump at the opportunity quicker than Vladimir Tarasenko on an empty net goal chance? I shirked my responsibility to the magazine. It was a paying job and I can always use the extra money. But, more surprising, I dodged the responsibility to my sports obsession and skipped the games.

I'll pause while those who know me pick their stunned selves off the floor.

Sure. I like the girl I went to see. A lot. I'd probably go watch a documentary about air just to hang out with her. But still, I missed sports and that is somewhat surprising. I tend to not miss most big sporting events on television. I've taken the day off from work the past two years just to ensure I'd be home in time for the kickoff of the BCS National Championship football game. I've watched nearly every World Series games since 1969 and I stay up late just to see the west coast NHL playoff games in San Jose, Vancouver, Los Angeles and, when they were decent, Calgary.

But as the Spartans and Wildcats tipped off the other night and as they dropped the puck in St. Louis, I and my friend watched the HBO documentary on the 1993 slayings of three West Memphis, Ark., boys instead. The film showed the arrests, trial, appeals and eventual release of three men who were convicted. I covered that case, which gained international attention from the documentaries, from beginning to end over 19 years for three different newspapers, and viewers can even catch a glimpse of me looking all reporter like in the second of the three movies. I offered a running commentary for my friend about the characters in the case and a behind-the-scenes look at it all while we watched at her home. My babbling rantings, I'm sure, were similar to the droning of Tim McCarver during a baseball broadcast on FOX.

I've written about my sports obsession here before. My own mother used to criticize me for that, saying I could not be a good husband, let alone a decent person, because of the fanaticism I beheld toward sports when I was a kid.

Have I grown up a little? Am I reaching out to some sense of social being? Missing a Number 1 versus a Number 2, which is somewhat rare in college basketball, was big. But my skipping those games, and putting off writing that magazine article was just as monumental. (I'm not too far gone. I did do the rewrite into the wee hours of the morning and met the imposed deadline)

I've got until the first week of January when the BCS National Championship game is held to figure it all out. If I miss that one, I may need to seek professional help.

The Wall

I'm sure there is a wall every replayer hits when doing a season recreation of the APBA game. It generally comes late in the replay's progress when it's hard to get motivated to roll a game between two cellar-dwelling teams.

I've reached that wall now.

I'm at Aug. 8, 1942, in my current replay. And while it's a great season to play with Stan Musial and Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams and the surprisingly good St. Louis Browns, I find myself slowing down when I see on the schedule that the next game up is the Cleveland Indians playing the Chicago White Sox, for instance.

I think we replayers all slow down during seasons. It's a long process rolling each game. It takes a year or more to complete one season; I've been doing APBA baseball since 1998 and I've finished seven replays so far, and I play a lot of games each day. Consider that each game takes about 15-20 minutes to play, and there's anywhere from 1,200 to 2,100 games to play — depending upon the number of teams involved and how many games constitutes a full season for them — and it's easy to see how long these things take.

And I think that the enthusiasm for a baseball replay may also wane when the real baseball season concludes. I find that I've slowed down in my replay baseball now that the actual World Series is over. It seems that whatever sport is in season is a motivator for whatever game I'll play. With that in mind, I've contemplated about pausing the baseball game briefly and dragging out the APBA hockey or basketball game for a spell, just to shift gears.

But then I reconsider and roll on.

I am not an employee of APBA and, like I said here before, I'm not sure the game company even knows this blog exists. But, one of the really great things about APBA now is that they offer every single baseball season there is. And this game is so much better than other sports simulation game.

Game players often chose their seasons based upon personal likes. I bought 1987 and 1991 specifically for the reason that the Minnesota Twins won the Series in each of those years. I purchased 1919 after reading Al Stump's biography of Ty Cobb and I want to someday buy 1947 because that's the first year Jackie Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

We also buy seasons that have sentimental value. I bought 1969 because that is the first year I really, really followed baseball closely.

So, like all APBA fans, I have a closet full of seasons to play. And I have to finish one season to get to the next. I'll pick up interest again in the 1942 season — maybe by seeking nuances of certain teams or players and focusing on them when I play the less desirable teams.

I should finish this 1942 replay by February and by then, hopefully, I'll figure out what's next to play.

We may all hit walls at times during our game playing, but those walls aren't impenetrable and we forge on, motivated by the next season on our horizon, and the next one after that and then the next one again.

Love In the Spam File

Love came to me in the spam file of my e-mail.

Olga, from some Russian country that often features large factory boiler explosions, sent me a heartfelt message that expressed her desire to meet me. She said she found me on an “international dating site,” which was weird because I've never been to one of those. I can't make relationships work with people in the same state as I. Why would I venture overseas?

But love was blossoming and, because whenever that happens, people get stupid. Cupid doesn't send his arrow to the heart. He goes for the head shot. Olga's letter, though, struck a chord in my heart. Surely, Olga was feeling just the same.

In her broken, adorable English, she outlined herself. “Tell to me,” she wrote. “What you to search in women? Ken in you me, that that draws.”

What?

But I put that aside. I imagined myself teaching her more English. She could attend baseball games with me, yelling at the umpires “That was Bolshevik,” she'd say at a bad call. She'd need work using the proper words, but love is about sharing and teaching.

So, I wrote her back. “Why did you write me?”

And she responded. “I receive your letter. So it is happy.” I've not heard girls say that to me before. Ever.

Two days later, she wrote again. A boiler exploded in the factory where she works as a nurse. Apparently, it was bad; lots of people were burned, she said. I looked up on Google the name of her town to see if there was an accident. I found one. But it occurred two years ago. Rough place, I thought. Maybe I could move there and become a boiler repairman; seems like there'd be plenty of work.

She also wrote that she tended to the injured, giving me an image of a caring person who forewent any personal safety to help others. She wrote that she tried dating men in Russia, but they were “all alcoholics.”

And you think America is different? I thought.

“What to give a smile to yours face?” she wrote. “I wait for your letter and I hope, that you to not keep me waiting long.”

She signed it, “Your girlfriend, Olga.”

It was only four days after I received her first e-mail. Maybe Russian girls were quicker to develop relationships. None of that time-consuming, get-to-know-you Bolshevik with her.

I wrote her back again, opening my soul. I told her I had suffered a medical disaster and had no money. I was penniless, I wrote. And I had no family. And, since we were developing our relationship so quickly, I asked her if she could loan me some money. I'd pay her back with interest, I promised.

Olga quit writing.

I waited, checking my spam folder for her letter. So it was not happy.

Days passed. I imagined Olga working long hours, bandaging the burned at the boiler explosion that happened in 2011. But she never wrote back, and, again, I was heartbroken.

Then, just as the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano, just as hope returns to the hopeless, just as the Cubs return to last place by mid July, love came back.

“Hi, I hope my little letter finds you in good mood. My name is Olga,” the letter in my spam file read. “I wanted to get acquainted with the kind man not from Russia. In Russia it is a lot of alcoholics.”

If I respond, I'm sure Olga will write back and profess love. She'll send me a picture of her and her mother together and eventually ask me to send her money for plane tickets. She'll miss the flight and ask for more money. And she'll send more pictures.

And when I write back asking her for money, she'll disappear.

Love. It's Bolshevik!

Change For a Five?

Raise your arm up high and slap my extended, open palm if you're with me on this.

I hate the “high five” thing that is as common among fans in stadiums as swilling $10 beer, wearing since-traded player jerseys and gobbling down ballpark franks slathered with mustard and relish. Maybe it's my apprehension of coming into contact with total strangers. Maybe it's my obsessive fear with other people's germs. Maybe it's just a way to avoid a hand globbed with mustard and relish.

I got the double dose of high-fiving last week when I went to St. Louis to watch a hockey game and ended up going to Game 2 of the National League Championship Series where the Cardinals hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I sat at the top of the left field Saturday afternoon in what is known in Busch Stadium as “Big Mac Land,” named for where the steroid-ladened Mark McGwire would clout mammoth home runs during his tenure as a Cardinal. I sat six seats left of the foul pole, and was about as far from the action and as insignificant as a fan could be. My cheers went unheard. Had I a towel to swing during rallies, it would have gone unnoticed.

There was no point in high-fiving.

But they did it. Strangers raised their hands and seatmates slapped them in jubilation. An extremely obese guy in our section once raised his hand for a slap. I wanted to give him a fiver for having the energy just to lift his hefty arm.

Later that night at the St. Louis Blues hockey game, kids sitting next to me at the top of the stadium wanted to high five me after the Blues scored. I turned them down, saying that I had done nothing. The fellows down on the ice did all the work. High five them. Me? My biggest accomplishment was finding my seat that evening and not spilling the $5 bottle of water during my Sherpa-like trek up the stadium's steep steps.

As I left the hockey arena after the Blues' victory, I briefly thought about walking through the stadium concourse with my hand raised above my head just to see how many people would connect; how many would give me the high five for winning the game. But, I held back, fearing more mustard and relish could coat my palm.

I tried to find the origin of the gesture. There are two thoughts. The first theory is that former Murray State University basketball player Lamont Skeets did it between 1979 and 1984. Skeets claimed that that his father, while serving in the 1^st Battalion, 5^th Infantry, in Vietnam, would greet his soldiers with an upraised hand. Lamont first replicated that as a child when those soldiers visited his father at home, and he'd say, “Hi, Five,” to them.

He took that motion with him onto the basketball court when he played for the Murray State Racers.

A second, perhaps more widely held, belief is that the high five came from L.A. Dodgers' Glenn Burke. On Oct. 2, 1977, Dusty Baker hit a home run for the Dodgers on the last day of the season, giving him 30 for the year. As he returned to the dugout, Burke, who was waiting on deck, apparently raised his hand and Baker, not knowing what to do, slapped it. Then Burke followed with his own home run. Baker raised his hand when Burke rounded the bases and then 'fived' him when they met.

Each story has its followers, and each one may contribute to the habit I find annoying.

Slapping palms with strangers as a way to celebrate a good play, an athletic achievement, a victory, is all strange to me. Again, I did nothing. I had very little to do with any victory that day at both the baseball and hockey games. Unless you credit wins to the fact I could carry my water up the Everest-like incline while dodging errant mustard and relish bits.

Can I get a high five for that?

Alternate Reality in a Replay

I've only replayed one baseball contest with the APBA game that I actually attended.

It was the Aug. 16, 1987, game when Seattle traveled to the old Metrodome to play the Minnesota Twins. In the real game, I sat above first base in the second deck and was one of 28,006 who watched as Minnesota won, 5-1, on Frank Viola's pitching. I can't find my game replay records for the1987 I played, but I know they won in the recreated contest as well.

But it's hard to roll any games I've attended when I usually replay seasons before I was born.

I thought of this as I sat in Row R, Section 333, of the Scottrade Center in St. Louis Saturday and watched the Blues beat the New York Rangers, 5-3. As the game progressed, I considered setting up an NHL replay with APBA next year when game company puts out this season's cards.

I tend to do that, as any sports fan who plays APBA should. I get fired up for whatever season is being played and, when I go to an actual game, I really, really want to do that particular sport.

So, Saturday night as the Blues skated to their win, I thought about the alternate reality of playing a game that I actually attended. Why does the outcome differ? Obviously, the randomness of the dice roll makes a difference, as do line ups, pitching changes, errors and other variables. But there are other, weirder questions one ponders late at night: Does it create a vacuum to do a game that I've seen years before? And the even deeper ones: In the 1987 Twins' game, no one hit a home run in the game I saw. In my replay, I know Kent Hrbek hit one. So, it's something to think about. Why does a replay game differ from the actual game that much?

I could only come up with that 1987 game that I've both seen and replayed. I've been to several St. Louis Cardinals games over the years since I live within 4 hours of the stadium. I went to games in Philadelphia when I lived there briefly in the fall of 1983. I've been to a few of the St. Louis Blues' games the past several years, but I only own the 1993-94, 1998-99, 2001-02 and the 2004-05 NHL seasons with APBA. I guess I could buy newer NHL seasons and do games I've attended.

But when you replay older seasons, like the 1942 baseball season I'm engaged in now, or 1957, or 1932, or 1925. as I have played in the past, I'm not going to toss any games that I've seen in person.

I tend to steer clear of the newer seasons to replay. When I first got the baseball game in the winter of 1998, however, I did play that season. New York beat Atlanta in my World Series, 4 games to 3, and I was hooked. I was also hooked on the historical aspect of the replay process as well and I gravitated toward those older seasons. I did do 1987 because the Twins won the Series that year, and I did go to the actual Game 4 of the Series in St. Louis that year. However, in my replicated contest, Minnesota did not make the APBA Series and instead St. Louis beat Kansas City.

I'm about 65 percent finished with the 1942 season. I am now considering getting the 2013-14 NHL season next year just so I can replay a second game that I actually saw in person.

The Replay Impetus

I think I was about 8 years old when I first understood the concept of doing a replay of sorts. Since then, it's become the staple of my only hobby as I roll games daily in my APBA baseball replay.

I've done replays of numerous seasons since then with the football, basketball, hockey and baseball games that APBA has created. I once tried to figure out how many games I've played with the APBA game since I started rolling the dice as a 17-year-old. It has to be nearing 50,000 or so by now.

But the spark for all of this really began when I was that 8-year-old kid.

My parents bought me an electric football game for Christmas and I spent my days setting up the players in the offensive and defensive formations suggested in the game's instructions and clicked the switch to make them vibrate on the field. I'd play a game between the two teams that came with the set — Minnesota and Cleveland — and then, when the contest was over, I'd do it again. Aimless, repetitive, single games.

Since I lived in Minnesota at the time, I'd notice if the Vikings beat Cleveland more times than the Browns beat them, but it didn't really mean anything. I didn't compile won-lost records or even think about the head-to-head clashes much …

… until early that spring when my parents went to some event at the college where my dad taught and they brought in a babysitter to watch over me. The babysitter, a high school student who played the cello, taught me the ramifications of thinking bigger when playing the electric football game.

It almost didn't happen if not for a piece of Christmas tinsel and my curiosity. I may have been able to avoid that whole babysitting thing as a child, but I lost my parents' trust during the Christmas of 1968. They left me at home once when they made a quick dash to the college to pick something up. During their absence, I saw a television advertisement for aspirin. The announcer said the pain reliever helped during the holidays when things happened, including when tinsel fell into a Christmas light socket.

Well, I wondered, what really would happen if tinsel fell into the socket? I decided to try.

And I quickly found out what occurred. I got shocked and the breaker box in the basement blew the main fuse. When my parents returned home, they found me in total darkness, huddled next to a heater vent shivering and crying.

The babysitter concept was a natural response to that and the next time they went out, he was summoned.

I don't even remember the guy's name. I do know that later he stabbed a large hunting knife into a wooden dock. His hand was wet and it slipped down the handle and across the blade, severing the tendons in his fingers. He couldn't play the cello after that.

But one time before that accident when he babysat me, he saw the electric football game and played it with me. And he showed me how to set up a tournament. He drew brackets and seeded eight teams and we played the games. I was fascinated by it and I repeatedly played those tournaments. I'd use a ruler and carefully draw the brackets and, in my best 8-year-old printing, write in the teams.

It was the impetus for what I do now, 45 years later. The replay games are a big part of my recreational life; my hobby, my sanity-keeper. And to think, it all may never have been in my world had it not been for a piece of tinsel, electricity and my curiosity.