13
October

Webcam APBA: Next best thing to FTF

I’ve written about this before on The Baseball Zealot but the idea of using video Skype is catching on in the Illowa APBA League.  At least among some of us. 

Don’t get me wrong.  The IAL prides itself for being a face-to-face league.  Considering we have managers that live hours apart (even one that lives three states away), we manage to play at least 90% of our games face-to-face thanks to some creative scheduling. 

But sometimes our hectic personal schedules just can’t accommodate travel for a nine game series.  In such cases, hooking up over a webcam via a service such as Skype is pretty close the next best thing to being face-to-face.  Thanks goes to Teddy Ballgame for suggesting the idea earlier this year when he couldn’t make our spring convention.  He asked if anyone had a webcam they just connect up with him that way to play his series. 

Well, I didn’t have a working webcam but I was game so I purchased one to see how well it would work.  It’s not the same as face-to-face but like I said, it’s the next best thing. 

It’s better than the alternatives:

  • playing by mail (ick)
  • playing by phone (been there)
  • having someone else play your series (no thanks)

That was back in May.  I had another chance to use video Skype to play a league series.  Last weekend, my Twin City Thunderchickens had to face the Green Rock Bombers managed by our league commissioner Mike B.  It was a nine game series we had to play for October.  Living four hours apart and no time in our schedule to travel to each other’s house to play, we elected to use Skype. 

Mike and I were able to get our games in over the weekend. We decided to break up our nine game series into two days, playing four on Saturday and five on Sunday.  Saturday, we did have some network issues and kicked us off twice off in a time span of 2 or 3 hours but getting re-connected was no problem.

 

mb

Our Fearless Leader

 

If you’re interested in doing anything like this, all that’s required is:

  • a high-speed Internet connection
  • a decent webcam you can buy or order from anywhere (I have the Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks and it works fine)
  • an account with Skype which is free

Yes, things have certainly changed from I started playing APBA…. mostly for the better.   I wouldn’t want to play ALL my league games this way.  I enjoy the comraderie of the get-togethers too much.  But this beats playing by mail by a long shot. 

PS we beat the Bombers 5 games to 4

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13
October

APBA releases 2008 carded player list

Recently the APBA Game Company released their list of carded players for their 2008 baseball season.

Listed under Kansas City is “Joey G]” who is most certainly Joey Gathright.

If you want an Excel version of the list, you can download it here (zipped).  Thanks to Mike Bunch, our hard working commish in the Illowa APBA League for importing the list.

According to our league rules, to determine how many rookie draft picks each team gets each year, we uses a hard usage limit (125 at bats for hitters, 20 G or 30 IP for pitchers).  If a players doesn’t go over that limit, he is eligible to be dropped in favor of a rookie pick.

That said, there are some players (in our league’s case, two) who go over the limit yet still don’t get a card.  One case, reliever Jorge Julio slipped under the wire with 27 games and 30 IP.  But Julio won’t be getting a card next year anyway much to the delight of his owner in our league.  He’ll be replacing him with a rookie in our winter draft.

Julio’s absence in next year set is helped by the fact he spent time with two teams.

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12
October

Interested in telling us about your league?

Are you a member of an APBA League that you would like the rest of the APBA community to know about?  Are you interested in networking with others with similar leagues?

Let us know about your league.  Whether it be baseball, football, hockey or basketball.  Whether it be basic game, advanced or computer.  Face-to-face or mail… we want to hear all the details!

Take a few minutes and type in a few details about the APBA league you are in and The APBA Blog will write up a profile on your league and post it on our site.

As the numbers grow, we’ll create a directory of APBA Leagues accessible to all APBA fans everywhere.

Interested?  You can start here at the League entry form.

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12
October

Welcome to the first post of The APBA Blog

Hello APBA fans,

The authors of The APBA Blog (all who are long time fans of the great game of APBA) are excited to bring you this new forum to you!  We have a lot of plans for the site.

Our blog would like to hit as many topics of APBA tabletop gaming as we can.  APBA Leagues as well as replays.  Current seasons not too mention historical  seasons.  We’ll try to hit the gamut.

And of course, we’ll try to be timely with any APBA-related news, helpful info not to mention our insight into issues, tips and analysis on the game of APBA.  We just want promote the game of APBA that we’ve played since we’ve played since we were kids.

Let me encourage you to be part of the blog.  Feel free to comment on articles.  We would love to hear what you have to say.  The commenting process is simple (just click on the “Comment” link below).  In addition, if you are in an APBA League, we’d love to tell everyone about it. Finally, if there is something, YOU would like to see talked about on The APBA Blog, send us an email and let’s talk about it.

The APBA Blog has begun.

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