35 Years of Stats

I can’t find a shovel that I know was in my backyard shed and I’ve lost clothing, a vacuum cleaner and even furniture in moves.

But for some reason unbeknown to the realm of rational thought, I’ve managed to maintain notebooks full of the statistics I kept as a child when playing my dice replay games.

I found today the stats for the very first APBA game I ever played. For Christmas in 1977, my parents bought me the 1976 NFL season to replay. It was a complex game and it took a long time to learn how to play it, let alone complete a game. 

Yet, I persevered and trudged on, rolling football games in my small bedroom of the house where I planned my life’s future as a teenager.

The first game I played was Washington at the New York Giants.  The Giants won, 40-24, despite a 97-yard kickoff return by the Redskins’ Bob Brunett. Larry Csonka scored on a 3-yard plunge and Joe Danelo kicked four field goals.

The very first play I ever rolled as an APBA player was a 13-yard run by Washington’s running back Larry Brown.

I know all this because I kept the game recaps in a red three-ring binder my father gave me. Written in black magic marker on the inside cover is “BSI-360,” a code he wrote for his classes for when he taught at Bemidji State University in northern Minnesota. The notebook sits on a shelf in a closet in my home now.

The second NFL game I rolled was, fittingly, Minnesota’s game against Dallas. I was still stinging from the actual, real-life game of  Dec. 28, 1975, when the Vikings’ lost to Dallas,17-14 in the playoffs. Roger Staubach threw a 50-yard heave to Drew Pearson as time ran out, sending the Cowboys to victory and me to a history of disappointments in sports.

In my APBA game, the Vikings won 23-16 on Chuck Foreman’s 1-yard touchdown run late in the game. Revenge is good, even if it’s not real.

And football stats are not all that I’ve saved over the years. I have the first APBA basketball game I’ve ever played. The 1978-79 San Diego Clippers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 113-112 in my game. Sidney Wicks hit the first three-point FG I’ve ever rolled.

It stumps me that I have these things. I’ve saved the record of the first APBA game I’ve ever played 35 years ago, but I've let so many other things go. 

I’ve moved a few times in my life, always tossing unwanted things during the transfers and losing other items. I’ve lost more family pictures than APBA notes.

Maybe it’s an unconscious grasp of the past and a reminder of a time when things were easier. Then, all I worried about was if I could get a game completed  on a school night before I had to go to sleep.

By no means am I a hoarder, but I have a 35-year collection of the games kept in my tiny printed handwriting. I have hundreds of pages of the stuff. 

Now, if I could find my shovel, I could scoop that collection back up and into the closet.

A Difficult Dilemma

There are tough decisions we’re faced with in life that require  a lot of thought and deep concentration.

Choosing a college, accepting a job offer, getting married, figuring out how to make the monthly house mortgage and just coming up with ways to stay afloat in the sea of life are some of those selections we have to work out.

But, I’m faced with an even more difficult dilemma. Most of those other choices mentioned, well, I’ve picked wrong. I’ve always said when I come to a fork in the road, I end up grabbing a spoon. I’ve not had the most successful batting average in making wise decisions.

So, I look ahead at my difficult dilemma and, although it’s not pertinent until next spring, I give it attention now.

My tough decision: What is the next APBA baseball season that I’ll replay.

It’s a toughie.

My 1981 season replay is nearing the midway point. I’ve reached June 30, 1981, rolling more than 960 games so far. I’ve still more than 100 games to hit the exact halfway point of the season, but, as I’ve tended to do in replays past, I look forward.

Yes, I look to the future to play the past.

I began playing the baseball dice game in the winter of 1998, replaying the ‘98 season that featured the steroid-aided home run barrage of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Then, I replayed 1925 (in part), 1957 and 1974 and then 1932. I completed 1964 and 1977 before tackling 1981.

I see the undertaking of a replay as both a conquest and a means for learning more about that era’s baseball history. I lock into the season and I memorize the batting lineups for the teams and that season becomes more of a reality to me than the actual, real baseball season that’s underway while I play my fictional game.

I look ahead and am pretty certain I’ll play 1942 next. I’ve not played any from that era. As many games as I’ve played over the years, I’ve never rolled the dice for an at-bat by Joe DiMaggio.

I’ve tried to spread out the eras of the replays so I could learn more about those times.

Obviously, I don’t own every season, but I do have a good representation of most of the baseball eras. I own 1901 and 1906 for the first era, 1925 and 1932 for the early years, 1942 for that DiMaggio time. I’ve bought a lot of 1980s seasons so I could play the Minnesota Twins’ games. Sadly, the 1981 Twins in my replay are the second worst team, only ahead of Toronto. But I have other seasons with the Twins and I keep hope alive.

So, with several months still left in the 1981 replay I’m doing, I think I’m doing 1942 next. I may tackle the 1901 or 1906 after just to get a feel for that era. The year 1991 beckons as well, with the Twins’ World Series victory in real life a motivation for the replay.

And, on an entirely different level, I also own a three APBA football seasons, several hockey years and some of the basketball seasons as well. 

I figure I have to stay alive for at least 20 more years to get all the seasons I want to do completed. It’s one reason to stay alive, I guess.

Caught in the Corner of My Eye

Sometimes when I play the APBA baseball game in the small bedroom of my home that’s been converted into a computer room and a shrine to my obsession of sports, I think I see out of the corner of my eye someone passing the door.

But it’s been six years since that’s happened.

Before, it’d be my wife walking from the back bedroom to the living room or kitchen. She’d stop by to see how things were going; she might ask what the score of the game I was rolling. She didn’t care about the tally, of course. Instead, I think she was just reminding me that there was a real world as well as the APBA world I delved into.

Six years ago yesterday, she passed away after a lengthy fight with kidney failure. So now, when I play the games, there’s no one there asking about the game’s outcome. And there’s no reminder that there is another world I live in as well.

I’ve written here before that my wife was supportive of the game. A few months before she passed away, I let her roll the dice for the last play of my 1987 replay. The St. Louis Cardinals faced Kansas City in my game. She rolled an out in the ninth inning and the Cardinals won the Series. She pretended to be amused, I think.

But she also expressed some interest in my  hobby. She bought me a small case once that I could put whatever season I was playing in and travel. We spent a lot of time in hospitals in the last three years of her life and I brought the game with me. She called it my “purse,” but it was her way of teasing me.  I think she appreciated, or at least accepted, that I needed that game during the rough times.

I went through the destructive phase that survivors go through after losing loved ones. But I continued playing the baseball game — the one mainstay in an otherwise twisted up life. I replayed 1974 and 1932 and then 1977. Now, I’m about 40 percent through 1981.

I will keep playing. I’m planning on tackling the 1942 season next and then I’ve got 1901 and 1906 to think about. I’ve got years ahead of me for the games.

I’ll look for someone passing the door while I play. It won’t happen, but it’s a comforting thought of days ago when things seemed better and easier and when I toted the game in my “purse.” 

The Worst Day For Sports

Today, the day after the baseball all-star game, was the worst day of the year for sports.

It’s the day when there are no sports at all. Obviously, baseball is off today. Football hasn’t begun yet and, despite the seemingly endless  pro basketball season, there is nary a round ball game on television.

Unless you count the WBNA as a sport (and who does, really?) and the Canadian Football League,which doesn’t broadcast its games but on obscure high-numbered cable channels between the music stations and cooking shows, there’s no sports.

It’s a sad day.

But it was even sadder years ago when we didn’t have cable television. Nowadays, if all else fails, we can watch a replay of a Northwestern University football game on one cable channel, poker playing on another and the 45th replay of this year’s Home Run Derby that preceded the all-star game on ESPN.

Back years ago, we had about four television channels we were able to watch on our antenna tower. Cable television hadn’t yet snaked its way into the majority of homes and we were just pleased to watch the snowy pictures from television stations within a hundred miles or so.

Not much opportunity for sports back then, but at least we could watch the evening news and wait for the scores to flash on the screen. 

But on the Wednesday after the all-star game, there was a huge void. The local television sports broadcasts were filled with fishing reports,  area stock car racing and video of squirrels that water skied behind toy boats.

My dad realized the bleakness of the day back then and it became a tradition for him to tell me about the baseball he watched when he was a youngster. He grew up in east New Jersey and would watch the Yankees play. He’d regale me with tales of seeing Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio and Whitey Ford. It’s probably why  I became a Yankees fan.

So now, the day after baseball’s all-star game, my television set remains turned off. There’s no sports, no scores to pore over, no stats to revel in. 

I think of my father and his stories and realize that, despite a day with no sports, it’s not really that bad a day after all.

Too Sick to Play

We have degrees of sickness to evaluate how bad we really feel.

We may be too sick to go to school or work, too ill to travel, too yucky to do any physical activity. I have a friend who said he was once too sick to read.

I may have topped that the past three weeks. 

I was too sick to play APBA baseball. 

Now that’s pretty bad.

I had no energy, The act of rolling dice and writing down the game’s results were too taxing and instead I lay on my couch and moped and waited for better days.

It began with a combination of things that confused what was really happening. Within two days, I breathed in smoke from the city’s inane smoke testing of its sewer lines and I took new medication for a deteriorated disc I’ve suffered for years. Some of the side effects of the smoke inhalation and the medicine included weakness, fatigue, aches and loss of appetite.

The same side effects, coincidentally, as those associated with pneumonia.

After a week of going to work and then crawling home, I went to the doctor where he diagnosed me with the early stages of pneumonia. He gave me a heavy antibiotic and urged me to stay home for the rest of the week.

I did, sleeping and watching mindless television during my recovery.

The APBA dice lay untouched, sadly.

When I was a kid, I feigned sickness to skip school and stay home and play my APBA football and basketball games at times. I also missed work once years ago just to wait for the mailman to bring me the APBA hockey game I had ordered.

But now, with a week off of work, I couldn’t take advantage of the free time to roll a few games of the 1981 baseball season replay I’ve engaged.

Finally, as I began to feel better, I played a game or two a day. I normally toss about five games a day  — two or three in the morning before work and two before bed. It’s a daily event when I feel well.

I’m feeling well enough, now, to resume the five-a-day pace, but I missed several days of game-playing and I’m behind in the replay.

It’s a pretty bad when the simple act of rolling dice is too much exertion. The game was in my mind, but not in the realm of recuperation these past two weeks. 

No more sickness, please. I’ve got games to roll.

The Divinity of Baseball

My wife was a very spiritual person before she passed away, but the religious fervor never caught in me and, while I would whoop and jump and howl at sports events akin to a Pentecostal revival attendee, I’d pretty much sit taciturn in church.

Maybe it’s because I was raised a Methodist and was taught to keep my spirituality close to the vest, much like people hide alcoholism, criminal tendencies and being a fan of the designated hitter.

Or maybe it’s because, despite her spirit-filled way and prayers for health, my wife died after a lengthy illness. Maybe I saw that the hand-waving fanaticism wasn’t worth the effort. It wasn’t going to work. What happens just happens and I had no part in its outcome. I couldn’t keep her healthy despite the prayers.

But, when she was alive, she tried to convince me to be closer to Thee and her walk with the Lord gave her Godly patience to deal with me. She had a photograph — well, actually it was an artist’s rendering — of Jesus on the bedroom wall. I’d walk by it and point, saying, “Jesus Christ,” in a voice more reserved for angry surprise. I thought it was funny. She didn’t.

Her patience with me continued; she was tolerant of my sports obsession and even encouraged it. 

My wife was good friends with the wife of the local college baseball coach. The coach played for the Minnesota Twins in 1964 and met the heroes of my youth — Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison and rookie Tony Oliva. By association, the coach became my hero.

So, one day, while at the church we attended, the minister instructed us to greet our pew neighbors and tell them how good life was. My wife nudged me and pointed to the coach. “Go over there and welcome him,” she said. “He’d appreciate it.”

While the rest of the congregation crowed about glorious days and salvation, I shyly edged to the coach. He looked at me suspiciously and then offered his hand. I was at a loss of word. My Methodist upbringing forebade me from publicly blessing him or speaking in tongues.

Instead, I said the first thing that came to mind. “How does the infield look this year?” I asked.

I think he was relieved at the question and answered it easily.

A friendship developed and we spent time together. We’d go fishing and he would talk about those old Twins’ days and, later when he was playing with the Yankees’ minor league team in Columbus, throwing grounders to Mickey  Mantle in spring training.

God had to be involved in getting that friendship arranged.

So, while some may think I was being sacrilegious, talking sports in a church while the rest of the gang was being jolly for Jehovah, I think God smiled on us. Sports is equated to a religion. Baseball stadiums are called “cathedrals” in hack sports writers’ columns and there’s a reason for it. Walk in any baseball stadium and you get a spiritual awakening. I’ve felt it when entering Busch Stadium in St. Louis, the old Vet in Philadelphia, the since-demolished Ray Winder Field in Little Rock, numerous school baseball fields and even the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

And if you want to get religious, the concept of baseball is divine. It’s above the human element and there’s an indescribable beauty about it. Me describing the game is similar to hearing my wife’s friends talk about their religion.

Memories of the Games

There’s a unifying theme about the memories of baseball that time can’t deny. It may be the basic foundation that makes the sport so attractive and, despite changes over the years in the way the game is presented — flashing scoreboards, the instant SABR stats available for fans at the park, the intensity of the activity between innings — the heart of the game remains the same.

A friend of mine took his family to St. Louis a few weeks ago to watch a Cardinals baseball game. It was the first game his 9-year-old daughter, a  budding baseball aficionado, had ever gone to and it was the first my friend had been to in years.

He splurged and got seats along the first base side, five rows above the dugout. He said it was like watching the game as a first base coach. The perspective was totally different than from watching on television, which presents the game, mostly, from a centerfield camera.

His wife took photographs on her digital camera and he shot video of the game. He captured San Diego Padres’ outfielder Will Venable hitting a leadoff home run on the second pitch of the game and he had video of a great stop of a hard grounder that Cardinals’ shortstop Rafael Furcal made. He also had close-ups of his favorite player, reliever Jason Motte.

His memories were preserved, albeit digitally, for generations to come on his computer.

Eighty years ago, his uncle went to a Cardinals’ game and captured memories as well. In 1932, the uncle saw the Cardinals host the Cubs on Aug. 13. We know this because my friend still has the scorecard his uncle filled out in pencil. Listed in capital letters that were printed meticulously eight decades ago were names like Frankie Frisch, James “Ripper” Collins, Ernie Orsatti and Cubs pitcher Charlie Root. Root, fans may remember, was on the mound some two months later when Babe Ruth supposedly pointed to the outfield and then whacked his home run.

Two games. Two sets of memories. 

My friend’s game saved by converting digital images into electronic impulses to be viewed on a computer screen. His uncle’s game saved in blocky pencil-written print.

But there was the interlocking point of it all. My friend brought back a packet of things from the game to show me. He had an All-Star ballot, game stats that were inserted into the program and an unblemished scorecard for the game.

He said he’d fill the scorecard out later, after he checked the game on the internet.