Does your wife know?

Mine didn’t.  She does now.  And still puts up with me. 

It all started junior year of high school.  It was my third high school in as many years.  (I went to four in four years.  As Tom has observed, that explains a lot!)  After school we would indulge in baseball or football, weather permitting.

When the weather was bad, we would go to one of the guys’ basements.  It was there I was introduced to APBA.  They had drafted teams before I appeared on the scene, but I was hooked.  Here was this game that combined baseball and stats.  What could be better? (Ok, I know.  It could come with my favorite beverage and snacks and some starlet feeds me the snacks, but you know what I mean.)  I was hooked.  When my parents asked what I wanted for Christmas, it was an easy choice.  I wanted this game called APBA baseball. 

Santa came through with my very own APBA baseball game.  I started my first replay, keeping stats with pencil and paper (Man, I wish I still had them.  I can picture the old sheets with the paper thinned out from all the erasures.)  When the outdoor sports were done and so was my homework (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it), it was time to roll the dice on a tiny desk barely big enough to hold the field that came with the game.  Now I was really hooked.  And I couldn’t wait to see how the replay turned out.

Off to my fourth different high school I went and I continued the APBA habit.  Shockingly, I did not complete the replay during my senior year.  Off to college I went – but without my APBA game.  I figured I would waste all that tuition money, rolling games instead of going to class.  I still played during the summer months, grinding my way through that replay.  I worked a summer job, dated the young lady that would become my wife and rolled APBA games.  A lot of them were played after a date.  Gee, honey, its 7:30 already.  You look tired and I have to be at work by 11:00 am tomorrow.  We better call it a night.  Shake, shake, shake, roll, 65.  Dang. 

The Salad Days

College graduation was fast approaching.  I was fortunate enough to have a job lined up.  However, I had no idea how to cook.  (I had mastered laundry at college.   It takes no talent to lose a sock or fold underwear.)  But I really needed to eat.  So, a week after graduation, I was married and another week later starting a new job in a new town.

Now I don’t remember the story this way, but she does.  As you can imagine, the moving van didn’t have much stuff on it.  A card table (our dining room table), some bedroom furniture, a tiny TV and clothes.  Plus, some wedding presents.  (Hey honey, which side of this pan do you fry the steak with?)  The APBA game was on that van as well.  As she tells the story, I told her “Honey, I think there is something you should know.”  Her mind went to illegitimate kid, STD, married already, vampire????  I then explained the APBA game.  You see, she never knew I played the game all through the roughly four years we dated.  Given her expectations, me playing APBA didn’t seem like a big deal.

I would come home from work, we would have dinner and the APBA game would come out.  (The card table was a big improvement from the desk I used to use.)  I don’t think I played that often.  It took me a good decade to finish the replay.  (So maybe Tom can finish his ’66 replay faster than that.)  But her memory is that I was often at the table, rolling dice.  Really often.  She called APBA my executive pacifier. 

Getting buy-in

She even wrote a letter to Dick Seitz.  She told him she was worried that we would never have kids as she couldn’t get me away from the dining room table.  Now as you, the discerning reader, well know, that was a big exaggeration.  A card table could never be confused with a dining room table.  She also ordered a new game for me for our first Christmas together.  See? I couldn’t have been playing that much or she wouldn’t have ordered another game for me.  Right?  Or was it a case of I was so bad at, uh, other activities, that she was trying to keep me occupied at all costs? Don’t answer that.

Dick wrote back (I still have the letter somewhere) telling her there was an APBA wives club.  He enclosed box seat tickets to a Phillies game and a premium parking pass with my new game.  (Just what she always dreamed of.)  We did go to see the game.  I eventually finished my replay and broke out the new set.  I even finished a replay with that set.  So, she bought me a BATS2 set.  Now you can play that game forever.  I’m starting to think she likes me better in the dining room than some other rooms in the house.

We’ve been married for decades now.  Well, I’ve been married for decades.  For her, each year feels more like more than a year, kinda like dog years.  So, she has been stuck with me for centuries.  We meet new people.  Young and old.  Invariably, they ask how we met. 

Somehow, the conversation turns to “I never knew….”