Checking in post-Chicagoland

Reader Jerry Hill writes:

Is every thing OK with you and the APBA Blog?

I admit I’ve slacked off a bit lately.  A job transition/promotion, focusing on my family (my youngest is in her senior year of high school) and working on some other projects has taken a little of my time away.

Jerry, don’t worry.  Rob Spatz’ Chicagoland Tourney was just what I needed to get me on track.  As you can see I’ve posted a bit this week and there are a few articles by Scott Fennessy that are queued up to post too.

Stat-keeping

“When will you post the next episode, Tom”

At Chicagoland this past weekend, Dick Butler (above) complimented me on my Excel stat tutorials a while back.  I enjoy doing them and still plan on continuing that project (I promise Brett Cline, Pivot Tables are coming!).

Speaking of keeping stats, I had a chance to watch Dave Rueck keep stats on iScore on his iPad at Chicagoland.  While, I love keeping score with a pen and paper, iScore looked intriguing.  Using iScore, Dave was able to tell me exactly what his team was hitting.  That kind of real-time stats is pretty awesome.

Maybe a review is forthcoming.

Tournament history

Last weekend at Chicagoland, Bob Eller and I got into a discussion about collecting an archived history of regional tournaments.  After a year or so, winners of the tournaments are fresh in our heads.  However, now that they have been going on for years and we have tournaments all over the country, we have some accumulated history that we do not want to lose.

Take a look at APBA’s Wikipedia page and you can find National Convention tournament winners and runners-up for each year.  Someone is being diligent about updating its page.

Bob said it would be great to have a similar history recorded for all of the regional tournaments.  The APBA Blog will do its part in helping out.

Prairieland III

Finally, the Prairieland organizers (and a few of the regulars) were starting to talk about Prairieland III in 2018.  First up, we’ll be picking a date and a theme. Stay tuned!

thanks for writing, Jerry. It is much appreciated.  Say, when are those new cards coming??