The Illowa APBA League had last year’s playoffs & World Series, along with the rookie draft, and opening of the new season (30 games per team) in Naperville Illinois in March. Then most teams played an in area series (9 games) in April. This past weekend was the league’s May Champaign Illinois get together where another 30 games would be played versus out of area teams.
I manage the Chicago Champions, have since the league’s 2nd season way back in 1976, but truth be told I’m still kind of figuring out the “new” APBA game. As a league, we also decided to eliminate the use of the “unusual play” & error cards to randomize funny numbers & error numbers.
The Champions came into the weekend one game over .500 at 20-19. Although I had an objective of resting some of my regulars who missed time during the regular season, like Carlos Lee, Ryan Doumit, JRoll, ARod, B.J. Upton, & Felipe Lopez, winning was the ultimate goal, winning AND having fun. The constants for the Champions for the weekend would be Justin Morneau batting in the 3rd hole behind Grady Sizemore, a five man rotation of Tim Lincecum, Mark Buehrle, Matt Cain, Greg Maddux, & Josh Beckett, and a lights out bullpen headed by closer Joey Devine, with Cory Wade, Papa Grande, Matt Capps, & Sergio Romo setting him up. Not to mention long reliever Brett Myers. We feature a rule in the IAL, which allows for D pitcher’s limits to be doubled, D starters can relieve, but D relievers cannot start.
We arrived at 7:00 PM Friday night and left 10:00 AM Sunday, in between, it was a successful weekend. After 24 games played against the out of area foes our record was four games over .500, with six games to be played against the toughest out of area team, the Molly Putts Marauders. MP went into a slump at the right time and we were fortunate enough to win five of six, upping our overall record to 9 games over .500.
Teddy Ballgame was too modest in the final sentence of his last paragraph. Champion pitchers dominated the series, holding the Marauders to 12 runs in 6 games. I’m glad every team in the ILLOWA league doesn’t have pitching like the Champions.
DonS – Manager, Molly Putts Marauders.
Every team goes into a slump, we were fortunate to catch the Marauders at the right time. Every dog has his day, we had ours.