Tom Wall talks about his ‘fantasy’ APBA baseball leagues

Tom Wall writes in with his story how he plays APBA Baseball.  We all play the game for different reasons.  Some of us want to achieve statistical accuracy and some of what to find realism.  Tom, however, enjoys the aspect of APBA of “what-if” scenarios.  That is, creating scenarios which could never exist in real life and re-creating them via the APBA game engine.

Tom writes:

Hi! Thanks for responding. I wanted to share that I like to play seasons that never were but that now can be thanks to APBA. As a youngster I replayed the 1968 NL season and sure enough the standings and player stats were remarkably accurate compared to real life.

One thing led to another and I drifted away from the game even though APBA kept mailing me stuff. (I’ve read that APBA remains in business because of the loyalty of its fans; actually, the company is pretty loyal too.)

Anyways, about 20 years ago or so APBA released Original Franchise All-Stars and a set of ‘Great Teams from the Past’. I bought the packages and thought, what if… what if the ’06 Cubs, the ‘09 Pirates, the ’63 Dodgers etc played each other? So I set up two leagues of teams from various eras. Well, even after the first season I was hooked. Unlike a replay of a real life season, I would have no idea what could happen. In Season 1 [S1] the ’06 Cubs won out over the ’09 Pirates after a late season Pittsburgh surge. Pitching dominated. 8 great starters finished with sub 2.00 ERAs. In S2 the mighty ’27 Yankees won the pennant by 12 games even though they were competing against the ’19 White Sox, ’31 Athletics, Ty Cobb’s Tigers of ‘09 and others. Hitting dominated. Ruth finished with 63 Hrs, Gehrig with 160 RBIs and Cobb batted .411.

I am now (20 years later) 1/3 of the way into Season 11 ! where the ’16 Red Sox hold a mere 1 game lead over the ’66 Orioles and the powerful ’30 Athletics are in last place (but only 5 games out)… who knows what will happen; the trading deadline has just past… (I had actually given up the season for two years, but I found your blog and now I’m back in the fold.)

Over time I have tweaked things (I am the commissioner after all) to equal out the playing field when dead ball teams meet the live ball; and I allow some trades within the organizations—all in the interest of creating an exciting pennant race (which I have found is of primary importance for me).

For me, the thrill is that in APBA I can mix fantasy and reality. I have a full life (I am a professor in Taiwan, I love my job, my students and my department), and in addition on any given day I can think that this evening or this weekend Babe Ruth will have to pitch (!) against Al Simmons (!) or that in S12 I want to see Willie Mays and Stan Musial in the same league and see who will out-perform the other against great pitching… you get the idea  I’m sure…

Do other APBA fans do this? It might be fun to share notes.

 

I know Tom isn’t alone in doing this.  The beauty of the APBA tabletop game is giving sports fans the option to do the ‘impossible’ whether it’s baseball, football or even what fellow APBA Blog writer Craig Small is doing with his current golf tournaments matching Tiger Woods with players like Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen.

Thanks for writing, Tom.  Let us know how the project is going in the future!!