Bob Gordon: APBA Dice and Me

Lately, Bob Gordon has been contributing regularly to The APBA Blog so I am giving him due credit with his own byline. I like his irreverent sense of humor. This is his latest piece.

I played Parcheesi, with its wide, felt cups. Or Yahtzee, with cups that held six dice. Yet I was woefully unprepared for APBA dice and their yellow shaker. Wait. What? Yeah they are yellow. How do I know? Easy. I had a boss that said there are seven colors. No more, no less. White and black are colorless. That leaves red, yellow, blue, green, orange, brown and purple. Done. No salmon – no way. (I sometimes picture him, my boss not the salmon, retired, working part time at a Sherwin Williams. A customer comes in and asks for sea foam. His color slowly rises up his neck to the top of his head, turning a bright red. Or is it maroon?) Sure, your first APBA game arrives and it takes all of four minutes to read the directions. But there are no instructions on how to roll the dice.

APBA dice, and that shaker, are evil. No, I don’t mean when you are down by one, needing a win to make the playoffs. Winning run is at bat and you roll. First die down is a six, second die spins. And spins. And spins some more. And finally settles with all those pips showing. Five of them. For a 65. Game, series and season over. Back to the drawing board (or as Andy would say, to Our Lady of the Perpetual Rebuild). They are even more evil than that.

Do you remember the first time you rolled the dice and one left the table? Now the fun begins. We all know it won’t land in your lap. Oh, no. It may pause there. But that baby is going places. If you are lucky, it’s under your desk or table. Then it shouldn’t take more than an hour to track down. No doubt, when you settled down to play, you spent zero time considering the playing surface. Is the floor carpeted? Or are you playing on a hard surface (hardwood, LVP, tile – it doesn’t matter.) Either way, you are hosed. APBA dice are like chameleons. They adopt the color of the rug they have fallen on. The best way to find them is to take off your shoes and walk in concentric circles. Ever step on a Lego by accident? Yeah, you have the technique down. And if it’s hard surface, APBA dice have more range than most electric vehicles. They could be anywhere. You’ve all done it – the die rolls off the table, hits the floor, makes two hard turns to get under the basement door. You can hear the thing bound off each individual step like a slinky. Only the slinky rests at the bottom of the stairs and is easy to find. That die could take months to find. You’ve got a better chance of pairing all the socks that come out of the drier than finding that bad boy.

The APBA instructions don’t tell you what to do once a die has gone missing. Do you roll it again when you find it? Do you roll both of them? Or do you accept the result once you track down the missing die? What if the die is stuck in the carpet so there are three possible results?

For years I wondered how to avoid this problem. Or those other problems. You know, keeping everyone awake with the clackety clack of dice in the shaker and the clicking as it rolls across the table. You’re just trying to complete your ’66 replay before you have to differentiate between 1966 and 2066. (Just picked that year by chance. Hope there are no guilty consciences out there. Ahem.) When you are trying to be at your quietest, that is when the yellow shaker (No, seriously, it is not Aztec gold. Its yellow) does you in. You’ve been there. The dice get stuck. You throw them and nothing happens. Admit it. You’ve done it. The dang dice are stuck. You put your eye to the open end and peer in. Like that will make them fall out. Not. Now what? Shake. Shake harder. Nothing. Still stuck. I look inside. Invariably, the dice are aligned to give me just the roll I need. Need a dinger? There are two ones staring at you. If I could only bang them on the table and get them to drop down – instant 66! But is that fair? What the APBA rules say to do? I gotta bang the shaker on something so they come out. But what? Maybe in my hand. Nope, no (wait for it) dice. Gotta wake everyone up whacking the shaker on the table. First not too hard, then harder. And harder. Finally (as the neighbor next door’s lights go on) the dice fall out. The little die rolls off the table, hits the floor, makes two hard turns to get under the basement door. You can hear the thing bound off each individual step like a slinky.

Someone came up with the idea of a dice tower. No more shaker. No more getting stuck. I thought this would solve all my problems. Just drop the dice in to the tower, watch as they careen off the angled boards and settle in to the felt trap at the bottom of the tower. Sure. Easy peezy. All this did was demonstrate the concept of turning potential energy into kinetic energy. You know. Hold a bowling ball above your foot. It has potential energy. Lose your grip and it converts to kinetic energy, picking up speed until it lands – painfully – on your foot. Then you energetically hop around. Same thing with a dice tower. Those dice careen down the tower, pick up speed, drop in to the landing zone and keep on going. What the…. One went under the table. And the other one? The little die rolls out of the landing zone, off the table, hits the floor, makes two hard turns to get under the basement door. You can hear the thing bound off each individual step like a slinky. I’m going down to get it. Its nestled somewhere in the carpet at the bottom of the stairs. The way the light hits it, the die, chameleon like, has taken on the color of the carpet. I think it might be sea foam. (Sorry boss, it wasn’t just cheap, it was easy.)

For decades I struggled with the evil APBA dice. I joined a league, mid-season, replacing a manager that resigned. I hadn’t played a game yet, when I got a text from one of the other managers. He was apologizing for staging a miraculous come back in the bottom of the 9th. Scoring like a zillion runs with two out against my A&CXYZ* reliever. (The league requires you to send the scoresheet to your opponent, so I was bound to notice.) Now the other manager didn’t want me to think he was cheating. Nor did he know if I was a big jerk or not. (I think we all know the answer to that question. Go ahead. Take your best shot. Remember, if you hang on the rim too long, the ref will T you up….) So, the text had a screen shot. It was a digital APBA dice roller. It showed the current roll as well as the last four rolls. The screen shot was filled with 11’s and 66’s. So, I lost. But I had the solution to all my dice problems. No more clickety clack. No more missing dice or climbing basement stairs. No more using a crowbar and Crisco to get the dice out of the shaker. I can’t wait to try this. Ain’t technology grand?

First game I’m using my phone to roll those dice (my wife can’t figure out why it is quiet). Its the bottom of the 9th two out. Man on, down by one. I need that big, beautiful 66. First die on screen, it’s a 6! Next die….the phone battery dies. Do I have to roll again? Both dice, just one?

Where is my yellow shaker? Or is it macaroon?