APBA fan Mike Estep is interested in doing some writing for The APBA Blog so I thought I’d have him write up a little intro about himself… and his cool Crosley Field replica he built. -Tom
Hello APBA fans and baseball fans in general!
My name is Mike Estep and I am a 49 year old school teacher from Indiana. I will be contributing guest articles here to this blog and I am extremely excited to do so. I have really enjoyed my experiences with APBA over the years and with my current APBA projects.
(click to enlarge… lots of detail here!)
APBA has fostered my deep love of baseball history and I have many DVDs on baseball and have seen the Ken Burns Baseball series more times than I can count. Field of Dreams anyone? I love that movie as I am sure you do too. I have even built a field to scale using the measurements of old Crosley Field in Cincinnati. I put a wall with it and also the Scoreboard/Clock in left centerfield. I also have some old artificial turf from old Riverfront Stadium, an ushers vest from Riverfront Stadium and my prized item are six consecutive blue seats still linked together from Riverfront Stadium. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I have grown up a Reds fan. However, I assure you that I respect all of the teams we root for and look forward to sharing my experiences. I am looking forward to writing more about those experiences.
I hope you return to this blog many times and read about my experiences and my hope is that those experiences that I write about fuel your desire and passion for this great hobby.
66’s to All!
Mike
Hi Mike,
I’m curious. Have you ever used APBA in the classroom as a teaching tool?
Also, where/how did you get the Riverfront memorabilia? Ebay?
Hello Tom,
I have not used APBA in a classroom setting but that is a great idea! I like the idea in terms of some basic math for statistics.
I got the baseball seats from old Riverfront Stadium from the demolition company as they were selling them when they tore down the ballpark. The other memorabilia I mostly got off of ebay. Most of the memorabilia is in my man cave and the seats will be going in my garage when I get them out of storage. I really loved Riverfront Stadium. Lots of wonderful memories of my dad in that ballpark.
Mike
Very nice ball park. Is there an incline in the outfield? I know it might be tough to build in, but when I saw my one and only game at Crosley Field as a kid that’s the thing I remember best – an incline instead of a warning track.