Revisions of the Basic Playing Boards for the APBA Baseball Game by F.A. ‘Dusty’ Welsh

I read with interest a post on the APBA forums about the revisions that the APBA baseball boards have gone throughout the years.  The original post was in 2004 but forum readers are so interested in the topic that they have been discussing the the same topic to this day.

The original poster was F.A. ‘Dusty’ Welsh who did some extensive research on all the changes the boards went through in APBA’s glorious history and posted his results.  So I asked Dusty if he would be willing to summarize his findings for an article here on The APBA Blog.  Lucky for us, he agreed.  Here is what he has to say… –tbz

The APBA playing boards for the basic baseball game have undergone multiple revisions since the original 1951 version. However, the number of versions that exist, as well as the time of their introduction, was not known. Thus began a quest to document all of the revisions in the basic game boards.

The first step was to obtain early versions of the boards, or copies of them. Because no dates were printed on the early boards, complete games were needed to identify their vintage. With the help of many individuals in the APBA community, most, if not all, versions of the basic game boards have been tracked down (Table 1). In some cases, the vintage was deduced by comparing the play results with those in versions of known vintage. Revisions of the boards were frequent during the 1950s; no fewer than ten were produced in this decade. I began with the assumption that there was a one-to-one correspondence between card seasons and board versions, but this assumption proved to be incorrect. Complete games containing the 1952 season cards have been found with two different versions of the boards, and a third version may have been used with this same season. Similarly, more than one version of the boards has been associated with other card seasons. Presumably, whenever the game company’s supply of boards ran low, a new batch of boards was printed, sometimes incorporating revisions in the play results.

Finding the different versions of the boards was fascinating to me, but identifying the changes in play results between different versions was tedious. This was my method. First, Xerox copies were made for each version, reducing the size of the playing boards to 8×11 for convenience. Second, the play results between two consecutive versions were compared, highlighting any alterations on the later version. In this manner, I marched through the 22 versions, highlighting any revisions. Details of the changes in play results were compiled in separate files, too long for this blog. Many of these files can be found on the Delphi website, APBA between the lines, post #16001. If there is sufficient interest, more details of the different versions can be posted on this blog site.

Finally there may still be additional versions yet undiscovered. In fact, the investigation was thought to be complete several years ago when a new version surfaced (version 5). More recently, another new version was discovered (version 10a). So, this is still a work in progress.

Chronology of the APBA Board Revisions

Thanks to Dusty for his work and willingness to share it.  Fantastic stuff!