This is a guest post from friend and writer Walter Hunt from back east. Walt is a member of the Transcontinental Baseball League and actually gets paid for his written work. He also edits The TBL Baseball Annual for his league.
I have played APBA since 1970. It’s a pleasant pastime that supports my love of baseball, a form of nostalgia that lets those who have passed on have another chance at greatness, and those who are now old be young again.
An APBA card has a certain charm to those who have played the game for a long time. It’s an open book: speed and power and ability to make contact, fielding and baserunning. I play the Master Game (since 1978), which adds complexity but also imparts depth, and I’m fond of the additions and modifications that my competitive leagues (including TBL) have introduced – particularly the pitching grade system, which I find superior to the original MG one. All of this is not for everyone, and there is an attractiveness to the simple, basic game: far be it for me to disparage anyone who likes the game just as it is (or was).
I’m currently working on a project that I picked up during the pandemic, primarily to give me a chance to look at the older seasons that I acquired over time (many during the close out sales that APBA held before leaving Lancaster PA some years ago). I don’t have the time or energy for full-season replays; I did one of 1962, every game, during a busy time in my life: I finished it, 17 years after I started it, and I don’t think I’d do it again. I also find BBW lifeless and not to my liking, and it doesn’t really run on a Mac anyway.
This project is a draft league, 10 teams (based on the 16 MLB ones of the time). It started with 1943, and 1944 is now nearly done. 1945 will commence this fall. Each team plays in-division 8 times and out of division 6 times, for a total of 4×8+5×6 or 62 games. It’s about 40% of a season, and there are no really bad teams. With a protection draft and new player draft it means no one has to be the St. Louis Browns for a decade. It’s enough for real stats to get compiled.
Recently I played a game that was extremely evocative, like a drama taking place right in front of me – pure APBA, and pure baseball. It was interesting enough that I thought I’d write it up. In the narrative below I’ve noted a few “APBA rolls” in red so that APBA players would see the back and forth in game terms, but the descriptions are intended to be of a baseball game, late summer, 1944.
The workers from the 11-to-7 shift at U. S. Rubber were in the stands, enjoying a hot dog and a beer, sometimes with the spouse and kids, sometimes alone; it was a good day out and cheap at the price, though since the war that wasn’t as much of a problem. A lot of the stars were off in uniform, which was as it should be: the President hadn’t spared the pros from service, so the level of play wasn’t what it used to be – but when it was over they’d be back, and meanwhile it was baseball, as much a part of summer as brass bands and ice cream.
The local team in Indianapolis wasn’t having much of a year, hovering around .500 with not much of the season to go. But they were still fun to watch: Snuffy Stirnweiss had moved over from shortstop to second base and was having a career season, and with Bob Elliott, Tommy Holmes and Buck McCormick there was a pretty potent offense. Pitching . . . well, that was something else. Jack Kramer was having a fine rookie season, and The Cat, Harry Brecheen, had held the visiting (and still champion) Omaha Comets to just four hits yesterday.
The boys in the press box, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking guys who traveled with the team and belted out exciting accounts in the papers and on the radio (whether the game was exciting or not) thought that there was a chance – a chance! – for the club to climb over Louisville and Martinsburg and, yes, Columbus too, to take the Southern Division and take on Providence in the Series. The Grays were running away with the Northern Division, 8½ ahead of their closest rival: that would be over by Labor Day for sure. So every game counted.
It was Emmett O’Neill today (Grade 7 C-62 HR+13) for Indy, and he started out strong, 1-2-3 in the first. In the home half, Snuffy took a Jim Tobin breaking ball and drove it to the deepest part of Victory Field – the cavernous depths in center, where it almost got away from Hersh Martin – and wound up with a stand-up triple. Tommy Holmes drove him in with a single. They gave it back in the second on a Culberson error, and then dropped another run in the fourth. Both times O’Neill walked someone who came around to score. There was a two-spot in the fifth but Omaha got it back in the sixth on Tobin’s sac fly. Stirnweiss knocked a two out single in the 7th, driving in Al Lopez, but after stealing second was stranded there. McKechnie went to Andy Carter, the big lefty, to close it out.
But it was not to be: Olmo, pinch-hitting for Tobin, singled, then George Myatt took a soft toss off the shoulder, and Martin drove Olmo in from second and sent Myatt to third. Vince DiMaggio lifted a soft fly to left, and speedy Myatt scored the go ahead run. Carter picked Martin off first, but the damage was done.
Since he’d pinch-hit for Joe Heving (Grade 14* C+0 HR+43), Omaha manager Jimmy Dykes sent Bud Byerly (Grade 12* C-35 HR+13) out; one of the press flacks overheard him say, “just give me three outs.”
Nothing doing. A single by Lopez and a perfect sacrifice bunt from Skeeter Newsome put the tying run on second for pinch-hitter Howie Schultz, who took Byerly’s first pitch to the left-field wall to tie the game. Dykes took no chances, calling for an intentional walk to Stirnweiss; Byerly, to the home crowd’s disappointment, retired Elliott and Holmes to send the game to extra innings.
Some of the 7-to-3 shift were in the ballpark now, getting more than they expected as the hot afternoon wore on. Indianapolis turned to Johnny Humphries (Grade 8 C+11 HR-13) to extend the game. Evidently Omaha was tired out; other than a two-out single to Hal Wagner in the 10th (followed by a Holmes misplay that sent him to second base (Error number 16, Fielding 2) there wasn’t much happening. Byerly left for a pinch-hitter and was replaced by Woody Wheaton (Grade 10* C-51 HR+31), a converted outfielder. Dykes didn’t look too optimistic, but the kid – well, he was 29 and a rookie, so “kid” – struck out Lopez and Newsome, and retired pinch-hitter Hank Camelli on a soft grounder to Rusty Peters, the wartime replacement for Luke Appling.
McKechnie went to righty Rube Gentry (Grade 7* C-51 HR+0), his fifth pitcher of the day. Gentry retired Cullenbine and DiMaggio, then gave up sharp singles to Danny Litwhiler and Ray Sanders, silencing the home crowd. Then Hal Wagner took Culberson to the deep warning track, but he hauled it in for the third out.
It set up the drama of the afternoon. Stirnweiss worked the wild Wheaton for a free pass, and took second on a hit and run grounder to Christman. McKechnie issued his second intentional walk of the afternoon to Holmes (4 0s, 11 hits), hoping to set up the DP by McCormick. But Wheaton got into immediate trouble, and was in the process of serving up ball four (12 result, control roll 61) when McCormick reached out and flicked the ball toward sure-handed Ray Sanders (1B4) – who let the ball go through his legs (66 fielding roll) for a two run single, plating Lopez on a throw that wasn’t even close.
The Indianapolis fans went home happy, and there was something to talk about when the shift clocked in at 11 PM. Omaha wasn’t what it used to be – but without Luke Appling and Bill Dickey and Johnny McCarthy and Jerry Priddy and Hi Bithorn and Mace Brown and Lon Warneke, how could they be? But the home boys were missing Johnny Vander Meer and Tommy Bridges and Jack Kraus and Grandma Murphy . . . and who knew what 1945 might bring? There’s a war on, you know, they said as they slapped each other on the back and went off to their work. Jack Kramer would be pitching tomorrow, and that might mean a sweep. There’s a chance, the boys in the press box said. You can feel it.
Kramer got hammered in Game 3, leaving the Indianapolis Aces right near .500, with little time to get to the top of the standings. Trucks and Vander Meer wouldn’t be back until ’46, and neither would Harry “the Hat” Walker or Sid Gordon, and Al Zarilla would be in the army in ’45 along with Johnny Allen and Rufe Gentry and lots of others across the league.
Victory Field was indeed a huge cavern. It was 500 feet to deep center field, and would stay that way until 1967 (even though they moved home plate 20 feet closer in 1945). They built an inner fence in ’67 across center field to make it 395, with 405 to the power alleys. It was renamed Bush Stadium in that year to honor Donie Bush, former ballplayer and then president of the Indianapolis Indians. It’s said that the ivy originally planted on the brick outfield walls inspired the Wrigley Field ivy. The Indianapolis Clowns Negro League team played there well into the 1950s, and was featured as a backdrop in “Eight Men Out.” The AAA Indians left Bush for the more modern Victory Field in 1996, and it was eventually torn down in 2011, though some features such as the owner’s suite, ticket booth, and the lights still stand. You can see the field’s dimensions lined in brick as well.
We’re gearing up for a Providence-Columbus World Series, though the Southern Division is still a race with 13-15 games left to go. But every game, every inning, is baseball, a drama played out on the table in front of me with two dice and some cards of young men now old or, more likely, long gone.
A gamer friend, trying to design a baseball game, showed me his prototype. He said he didn’t know what was wrong with it: there were stats and interactions, plays and strategies, but he – and his playtesters – found it soulless. I told him about APBA and we played a game: he got right into it, even though they were players he hardly knew (1970, at the time, from another league of similar form I’m doing with a friend). I talked about the story of the game and of the league, pennant races and so forth, and how evocative it was and could be. That’s the essence of the game we play: not that we tote up statistics or win or lose key games or pennants or championships, but as the old APBA ad said, that the games “come to life” for us. It’s an escape from the present and from the everyday. It’s what keeps the hobby fresh. It’s very much worth my time.
Thanks for the contribution, Walt! I hope all is well with you and everyone in TBL.
