Win or lose, it was a successful APBA Jackie Robinson Day!

“There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”
—Jackie Robinson

Yesterday was APBA Jackie Robinson Day! This was an idea that Kevin Weber came to me with just last week. I thought it was an excellent one and boy, it really took off! In short, the essence was to honor Jackie Robinson’s legacy through APBA since there would be no viable way to do that in the MLB format. Kevin encouraged all APBA fans to play APBA baseball using Jackie Robinson in whatever format they wish and report their results.

The response was fantastic! You can see some responses on the comments Kevin’s post from yesterday. In addition, there were lots of comments on The APBA Blog’s Facebook page as well. Some like David Dawn and Ron Glos posted their resulted on the APBA Baseball group on Facebook. In fact, Dick Glisinski played a series for Jackie Robinson Week!

It didn’t end there. Shawn Baier of the Boys of Summer Baseball blog put a rush job on his 1955 World Series so it would coincide with APBA Jackie Robinson Day. You can see his results of Game 1 here.

Even those who weren’t on Facebook emailed us directly with their results. Darren Schulz took on his son Logan and submitted his summary and box score of the game. Logan’s 1953 Dodgers defeated Darren’s 1952 Dodgers 3-2 with help from Jackie’s 2-hit performance.

Don George had an exciting game! He pitted the 1953 Dodgers against the 1961 Dodgers. Robinson’s rbi single tied the game so it would go into extras. The ’53 Bums beat their modern counterparts on a walk-off sac fly by Rube Walker. Don compiled a great graphic summarizing the game.

So I how did my JR Day go?

I took on Kirk Weber in an APBA GO matchup between my 1949 Dodgers and Kirk’s 1951 Dodgers. In fact, you can watch the whole thing:

If you’re wondering, here’s how it worked. Kirk and I are both logged into APBA GO as players. Kevin Weber (he’s the one in the middle) was an observer in APBA GO. We were all connected via Zoom (see my article about playing APBA remotely).

It is Kevin’s screen that you are seeing in the video (which is why you don’t see any of the roster changes etc.).

When it came down to it, Kirk’s 1951 Don Newcombe outpitched my 1949 Preacher Roe. A two-run double by Jackie Robinson was the game winner and a three-run homerun by Roy Campanella put the nail in the coffin. For me, Duke Snider’s sac fly in the ninth inning was the only thing that prevented a shutout.

The thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat!

That said, it was a blast! It was like three kids playing a board game. Well, I guess that’s what it really was. Congrats, Kirk on a well-played game! Here is the box score of the 5-1 ballgame.

By the way, those who are interested in playing APBA GO might want to watch the video just to check out the game interface.

I wasn’t done yet…

My buddy John “Brando” Brandeberry challenged me to three games for JR Day. I would play the 1949 Dodgers and he would play the 1950 Dodgers. For the three-game series, we used the APBA Basic Game and played over Skype.

A word about Brando… when he says he’s a Dodger fan, he means the Brooklyn Dodgers (see the cap?). He says he started watching the Brooklyn team around 1955-56. So he knows about some of these players first hand.

I lost the first two games against Brando and his 1950 team. In fact, Newk shut me out in Game 1 10-0! Hodges contributed a double and a homer.

It didn’t get much better in Game 2 though I pitched another B, Preacher Roe. The Preacher kept the 1950’s to just one run in seven innings but it was still tied 1-1. A Pee Wee Reese error set the table for a Bobby Morgan game winning homer. 1950 wins 3-1.

Game 3 saw Ralph Branca a CYW, on the hill for my 1949’s while Brando had the Preacher, a BZ, going. Yikes, if my B pitchers can’t win, how can I ask a CYW to do the job against these guys?

Well, Ralph pitched a complete game win allowing just two runs, striking out eight. He was helped by Billy Cox’ homer and Duke Snider who went 2 for 3 with a double, a triple and three rbis. 1949 Dodgers win 8-2!

For the day, Jackie Robinson went 3 for 15 for me with three rbis.

I want to thank everyone who participated in APBA Jackie Robinson Day and a special thanks to Kevin Weber and Kirk Weber for all of their help! Check out their awesome podcast, Double Take!

If you played a Jackie Robinson game anytime this week, feel free to leave a comment. We would love to hear how it went.
66s!