Another APBA weekend coming up! No, it won’t be a full Illowa APBA League convention like we had a month ago but rather a “mini” intra-division get together. I plan to knock off work early and ride up with my buddy Brando to the Quad City area to test our teams against the three teams in our division. We hope to get one series in Friday and maybe two more Saturday.
While it’s true the IAL has divisions but only for two purposes: 1) competing in the All-Star game and 2) scheduling. When it comes to standings we lump all ten teams in to one race.
Time was, the IAL scheduled our (mostly face-to-face) series rather randomly. That meant that inter-division series between teams that were three hours apart would occur throughout the year and travelling to play them was quite difficult. At some point, we brainstormed and we hashed out a plan that seemed to work pretty well. Three weekend conventions per year where we all get together. During those conventions, those inter-division teams play their F-T-F series. As a result, 90 games (more or less) were getting played at our three get-togethers (which by the way are usually a blast). This might give you an idea how we schedule our 162-game season).
But that left the intra-division games left to play. Our East Division managers live relatively close together in the Chicago area (with the exception of Todd who now lives in Pittsburgh) so arranging playing times is usually not a big deal. However, the West Division is a different story. We have three living in the Quad City area and two in the Champaign-Urbana area. So it wasn’t long before we decided to implement our own low-key IAL mini-convention with the five of us getting our games in all at once. Commish Mike Bunch is hosting this time and we’re thankful to his wife for putting up with us.
My Twin City Thunderchickens will be entering the weekend with a 20-49 record and don’t harbor any delusions of playoff hopes. We just want to have a little fun and bide our time till 2013 when Stephen Strasburg becomes healthy for 2013.
Pigskin Pete Predicts: One of our teams is “going to get fat” this weekend. Somebody is going to go on a hot streak.
I wonder which of us it will be.
Rumor has it that there will be a door prize for the manager with the best weekend record.
DonS.
Pigskin Pete was wrong: Nobody broke out of the pack.
Final summary: John won 14, Marc won 13 (and the cool dice-cup door prize), Mike won 10, TomN won 9, DonS won 8.