Last weekend, the Illowa APBA League convened in a rural setting near Cambridge, Illinois its 46th annual All-Star Game. In atypically comfortable fashion, the Country Gents defeated the City Boys 6-1.
Was there an exciting event like “The Dickie Thon Game” in 1984 (details here)? There was, kinda.
Similar to the 1984 game which took place at the same lake house when Mike Bunch rolled the game-tying AND game-winning homers, this year Mike rolled a 66-1 on Harrison Bader which turned out to be the game winner!
The event went slightly unnoticed as Bader’s dinger occurred in the 7th inning and the 2-1 game was far from over. Ronald Acuna drove in one more run in the 7th. In the 8th inning, Mike’s son, Dan Bunch rolled a homer on catcher Salvador Perez sealing the game.
Final score:
Country Gents 7 City Boys 1
Here’s a link to the All-Star game scoresheet
Congrats to the Gents’ manager Marcus Bunch and the rest of my Country Gents crew!
IAL standings in flux
Plenty of games were played before and after the All-Star Game. During our league get-togethers, we normally play five six-game series. There were some very interesting results.
Rob Moore’s Highlanders who were in last place as of August had a bang-up weekend. They beat my Thunderchickens 4 games to 2. They even got some revenge against Harrison Bader and the Mike Bunch’s Green Rock Bomber by sweeping them 6-0. Rumor has it, they went 17-7 with one series to go.
And then there’s Dan Bunch and his Colona Hustlers. Dan had been having one of the best seasons in recent history. Coming into the weekend, his Hustlers were 64-28. He and I had a 9-game August catch-up series to play on Thursday. Truth be told, I would have accepted two or three wins against this powerhouse. After four games, were 3-1 and I figured that was about what we were going to get. Then Dan’s dice got cold. We won four of the last five to win the series 5 games to 4. Dan’s luck didn’t change as he lost several more series during the weekend. Dennis Jennings and his Global Glaciers most likely have taken the top spot.
I can imagine the standings will be very different once we get the newsletter.
As for me, my Thunderchickens held their own. Aside from the 5-4 series against the Hustlers, we went 12-12 before everyone went home. I still had six games left against my friend Brando who lives in Montana. It was still early in the evening Saturday so he and I played over the phone. We tried to play the six-game series. After splitting the first two games, game 3 took a while. We finally won it when Joey Wendle won it for me in the 25th inning! We figured that was enough APBA for the night.
More on that game in a later article.
More photos from the Illowa APBA League 2021 All-Star weekend. I’ve placed them in my “People playing APBA” photo gallery.
As always, it was great to see everyone! It was definitely a unique atmosphere and different from our usual hotel fare. I heard from a couple of the “City Boys” that they have never slept better. There is something about the quiet country air.
