To play and they enjoyed and had fun, but it was never as special them as it It arrived, I had that same feeling from 1978, and it was amazing. But that feeling was always there.Īs an adult, I bought one a few years ago off eBay, the day As I grew older, the games got lost or cards strewn throughout the house and later trashed. Injuries, the dreaded column #53 from the player card that always seemed to bring calamity, the rain out scenario which really confused me, etc. Soon, I learned all of the boards and most of the combinations. They knew I was addicted and they were stringing meĪlong with sales collateral at just the right time. Own team (they always went 162-0) and started buying old teams from APBA offers Team for about 40 games (I always picked the Yankees for some reason), made my Never got past more than a week, but I tried several combinations. Unfortunately, my attention span was not as diligent and I Stats, I used carbon paper to mass produce a stat sheet for each player. I taught myself how to playĪnd immediately started to try the 1978 season. My house to play a game (figuratively of course). See Jeff Burroughs, Garry Matthews and Phil Neikro, those guys were actually in It was the complete 1978 set and I ripped open the Braves envelope to The feeling of opening that box was special, just so much to Long, flat cardboard box from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, ARRIVAL! The back door and saw him reach across the seat of his truck and retrieve a Then one day, my dad pulled into our driveway, and I watched him intently from

It was all too much for a 12 year old to take in. Would hold the check for several weeks before filling the order to make sure Two days later, I would wait for my dad to show up with the mail to see if it had arrived (I guess I was already expecting Amazon Prime service 40 years ahead of its time.)ĭays turned to weeks and my mom explained that often vendors I convinced my mom it would be life changing for me and she wrote the check and we sent if off. While $32 doesn’t seem like much now, it felt like $1,000 in today’s economy. The process was unbelievable long, I sent off for an information packet, which in turn had the form to purchase. While reading a baseball preview magazine in 1977, I saw an advertisement for a simulated baseball game called APBA. Soon followed, but in 1978, I found the solution that forever cemented by love To teach myself how to keep score soon after from Braves radio. Parents (I still do!), but at the time, they really weren’t that much intoīaseball, I lived almost two hours from Atlanta and the Braves, which was a lotįurther back then that is seems now and there were virtually no games on TV.īut somehow, I started reading the box scores when I was around seven and began The odds were stacked against me, I had amazing As a kid growing up in rural Middle Georgia in the 70s, I

Apba baseball protest