Mike Bunch, the president of the Illowa APBA League, announced his annual predictions for the coming APBA baseball card set for our league. He’s been doing this for years and I find his swami-style predictions on par with Bruce Norlander from the Between the Lines forum. I’m posting them here…
I’m more familiar with Freddy Leach’s card from 1930 which wasn’t too shabby but this one from the 1924 Phillies is out of this world. While it is a J-4, I haven’t seen too many position players cards this potent. It’s got a lot of fun numbers! Leach made the…
Ask and you shall receive. Dan Velderrain responded to my request for help and submitted this article. Thanks, Dan! -Tom On November 16th of this year, many of our APBA friends will be gathering from all over, converging on the Windy City of Chicago, Illinois to compete in the…
An OF-1 with a 25-13… ouch. To be accurate, 1982 Dan Briggs didn’t play much in the outfield for the Chicago Cubs. He only took the field 14 times in 48 games and only started twice. Looking at his APBA card, you can probably see why. It was Briggs’ last…
In the hitting-lean 1966 season, Frank Robinson led the Baltimore Orioles to an AL pennant and then later to a World Championship over the Los Angeles Dodgers. He had help of course, from a quite studly Oriole pitching staff plus some helpful glovework from his “brother” Brooks Robinson. But it…
An open letter to my friend, Dan Velderrain, Earlier this year, you asked me to take your Saddleback Sharks team and make a lineup out of them. I did and posted the results here on the blog. To be honest, I had a blast doing it. It’s always fun looking…
Chuck Lucas is a long time friend and a fellow Illowa APBA League member. At league conventions, we would trade stories about what solo projects we were working on and I’m quite familiar with his 1959 replay he’s currently doing. For a while now, I have been asking if he’d…
Now that the MLB season is over, many of us are crunching some of the 2013 stats. John Briggs is making it easy for those of us replayers and league members who are sticklers for the details by breaking down the pitchers’ starting and relief innings. He sent me the…
Future All-Star Cristian Guzman had a rough start in his rookie year for the Twins in 1999. Maybe it wasn’t all that horrible given that Minnesota stuck with him for the year. He started 126 of his 131 games at short. But his .226/.267/.276 his nothing to write home…
Some of us APBA baseball players are gearing up for the 2nd Chicagoland APBA World Series Tournament. A couple weeks ago, I posted an interview with Doug Schuyler who is helping organize the event. Doug certainly isn’t working alone, though. Co-organizer Jim Saksa from Woodstock, Illinois has been an integral…