Newspaper columnist Doug Moe had a good answer:

I had the APBA baseball game and the Strat-O-Matic football game. They were both great. I spent hours – days, weeks, months, finally years – playing them. There was a science to it. The games used actual players and actual teams, with a player’s ability changing each year based on his statistics from the year before…

I like his ending, too:

Why I quit I can’t remember. Girls or golf, I suspect.

C’mon, Doug… Girls aren’t worth giving up APBA.

Geoffrey Giordano found this video gem and posted it to his APBA Football Facebook page.  It’s the New York Times coverage of the 2009 APBA Convention. 

YouTube link

Featured in the report are interviews with Marc Rinaldi, Lynne and Ron Seamons, Brian Demler, two-time champion Brian Wells and 2009 tournament winner, John Duke who also won his second championship. 

…and if you pay close attention, you’ll see a custom-made “Dom Provisiero” APBA card. 

Yesterday, contributor Peter Imber posted an enjoyable article for The Bleacher Report entitled “Winter Golf: I’ll Be Rolling the Dice Without Tiger”.  Imber talks about going “old school” and playing APBA Golf as a kid.

Imber writes:

  “For a table top game, APBA was the top of the line. PGA players had individual cards that were created to reflect their abilities and tendencies. In the original set of 32 there were the Big Three: Palmer, Nicklaus and Player, as well as forgotten pros like Joe Campbell, Ted Kroll and Johnny Pott.”

I admit to playing a few rounds of APBA Golf myself.  I even bought new “cards” from the APBA Journal which included Tiger Woods.  It’s a fun game though it would have been more fun had I been a golf fan and known the golfer’s strengths and weaknesses a little better. 

Nice to see the ol’ Golf game getting good press after all these years.

Just last week, John Plevka who is a columnist at the Peoria (IL) Journal Star brought the oft discussed debate of what game is best between APBA and Strat-O-Matic.  Normally, I think these arguments are fruitless since each game has their merits and you’re not going to change any die-hard fan’s mind.  However, the fact that this kind of material made it to a column of a relatively large market newspaper’s website (ok, don’t laugh, Peoria is the 3rd largest metro area in Illinois), is what’s interesting to me.

And probably good PR for both games.

Plevka is an APBA fan but his article, APBA or Strat-O-Matic?, entertains comments to the contrary.

“No Dice in APBA tourney” details the efforts of his 1956 Cincinnati Redlegs in the 2011 APBA tourney.  By the title, you can already guess how they fared. 

Despite his 4-7 record, it sounds like he had fun nonetheless. 

AWFL was just heading into their draft as Patrick wrote his column on April 1.

Is Posey the next Johnny Bench or is he the second-coming of Russell Martin, whose numbers have dipped considerably in the past two seasons?

Heyward is a specimen who could challenge the kind of numbers produced by Braves Hall of Famer Hank Aaron.

I’ll have to contact Mr Patrick and see just who AWFL chose for their #1 pick.

I’m honestly not familiar with APBA’s SuperStars Baseball Game and certainly didn’t have it back in my day.  I emulated my older brother who liked to replay the 1969 and 1970 seasons with the big boy version.  That would make me around 7 or 8.  I didn’t know all the rules perfectly and also didn’t know how to keep stats just right (fielder’s choices were somehow hits in my young mind).  But looking back, I’m impressed that I kept as detailed stats as I did.  Remember, this was back in the days before computers.  I did everything by pencil and paper.

Quick poll:  when did you all start playing the game of APBA?  I’m talking the “grown-up” version here.

Eisenhower, a bookish 62-year-old with a soft, round face and a welcoming manner, bonded over baseball with both his future wife and his father-in-law. He played APBA, a dice-driven board game, with her when they were courting; he compiled lists of the greatest players at each position with the former president. Games delight and distract in glory times and in moments of crisis.

Wow, he got Julie Nixon to play APBA with him??  My wife tried that ONCE and that was the end of that.

Father Gabe relives his days as a youngster in the 60s when he and his friends drafted players from the stock teams:

My friends and I had all the major league teams for three seasons: 1960, 1961 and 1964. We also had all star teams comprised of great players from the past, represented by their best individual seasons. Drafting from a pool of these players was heaven! We had our own Time Machine! Leo always managed to get Jackie Robinson. Ted Williams and Sandy Koufax were Bobby’s favorite players. And I had to have Babe Ruth.

Worth checking out.

Francis Rose is selling the complete collection of APBA Journals on Ebay.  The issues start in AJ’s first year of 1967 all the way to 2002, 363 in all. 

Interesting to note that the early ones aren’t distribution issues but rather Len Gaydos’ original copies.

From the Ebay description:

It is widely known that the early AJs were mimeographed, and the few that survived are usually found in difficult-to-read condition, since the mimeographed pages often run or blur over the years.  Len’s archive, however, has stayed in pristine condition, and since they are original archive editions, they don’t even have address labels on the backs from the initial issue in 1967 until Tom Heiderscheit took over in 1977.

Rose’s “Buy It Now” price is $1600 but the collection is up for auction for anyone who wants to put up a bid.