An APBA Replay

Old Wahoo fondly remembers the summer of 1981. At age 8, I had just finished my second season of T-Ball, playing second base for the Reds, who won a dramatic playoff for second place (clearly my Little League highlight). 

I lived for baseball. I watched every game I could - loved the Game of the Week on NBC with Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek. I was a baseball geek.

Of course, there was one major problem in 1981. A players' strike wiped out the middle part of the season, robbing six weeks of baseball from fans and causing the Cincinnati Reds to miss the playoffs despite having the best record in the National League.

But Old Wahoo's dad saved baseball that summer, at least for me, by ordering APBA Baseball, a dice board game that allowed fans to play their own ballgames and seasons with "real players" based on actual statistics. 

So during the strike, my dad and I replayed the 1980 season. My dad had played APBA as a kid, and now he was passing the fun on to me. 

Dad made up a schedule and pitching matchups for all the games, and then we dove in. Dad quickly taught me the rules - how the big, red die was the tens number, and the white die was the one - and how to use the various charts for each situation (i.e., bases empty, runner on first, etc.)

I wanted to play all the time, and soon I was playing games while Dad was at work, faithfully keeping score so we could keep season stats. 

(But Old Wahoo did skew the stats a bit. Chagrined to find out that Reggie Jackson actually struck out - a lot - I would sometimes give ol' Reggie a couple extra rolls until he came up with a roll of 66 - a home run - or at least hit a double. My dad, of course, was up to my tricks, and he would shake his head disapprovingly when I told him that Reggie had another two-homer game against the Orioles.)

We were true geeks, and I'm sure my mother and younger brother thought we were nuts. But it got us through the strike, and for baseball nuts, that was great.

Recently, the New York Times had an article about the annual APBA baseball tournament, and it took me back to the games with my dad. (The Times' baseball blog, Bats, also had a post about a 1956 APBA replay.)

With the fantasy sports boom, with all the technological challenges, it's hard to believe that the board game is still around at all. APBA has a computer game - my dad bought it, of course - but the traditional tabletop format remains its trademark.

Thanks to APBA, my dad and I bonded. My brother and I played catch with Dad after his work, and when it got dark, we played APBA.

It was the best.