While the APBA National Convention was in full swing in Alpharetta, GA, the Illowa APBA League held its 2016 Spring convention in Moline, Illinois. The IAL is a 10-team league which uses the basic APBA baseball game and has been around since 1975.
Our spring convention convenes simply for the purpose of playing APBA. No All-Star games. No draft. No playoffs or World Series. And we did just that. Some of us got in upwards of thirty regular season games.
Most of us entered the weekend having already played 48 games for the 2016 season so with the weekend, this puts us at almost the halfway mark. I wish I could say I improved on my 19-29 record but I really didn’t. I can thank Dan Bunch who is making the jump to having his own team now (congrats, Dan!) for that. Dan was still co-managing his old team as his Rattlesnakes defeated my Twin City Thunderchickens five games to one.
After that, my Thunderchickens managed to go .500 for the rest of the weekend. I can break down the weekend into three trends.
Rattlesnakes: The Dearth of Offense
As noted, my series with the Rattlesnakes was the key one for my team. My dice were cold coming into the weekend. For the six game weekend, the Thunderchickens only scored eleven runs. We wasted some good pitching performances including two by Jeremy Hellickson (CY) who gave up just three runs in 15 innings and didn’t get a win to show for it.
Molly Putts: Late inning heroics
The Thunderchickens got into a groove against Don Smith’s Molly Putts Marauders. After losing the first two, our bats exploded and we started scoring runs. It got ridiculous in game 3 when we won 18-3 which included 10 straight hits. Don did the math and discovered that for the 6-game series, the Thunderchickens scored 28 runs in the 7th inning or later. Don emphasized that I didn’t even bat in the ninth in some of those games.
Bombers: Pitching, Pitching and more pitching
My series against commish Mike Bunch didn’t start out well when we got shut out by Tim Hudson (CR). By game 2 though, our pitching got into gear. Francisco Liriano pitched a no-hitter into the ninth inning. We won 2-1. The arms kept us in it as we shut out the Bombers in the next two games thanks to gems by Jon Niese and Jeremy Hellickson who got his due. The Bombers scored four runs in the last four games.
My record for the weekend? I haven’t done my stats yet but if I am correct, I went 13-17. I don’t think I had the worst record so maybe a last place standing is not in the cards for once.
As always, win or lose, a fun time was had. The All-Star weekend will scheduled sometime this fall.
