APBA Binges Hard to Resist When New Cards Arrive

My name is Rob. I'm an APBA addict.

Most of the time I keep my dice baseball obsession in check, playing only enough games to remind the family of my sometimes goofy hobby. But upon the arrival of a new card set in the mail ...

At such times they'll shake their heads in amazement and wonder as I spend hour after hour at the dining room table, shuffling player cards and  team envelopes, looking up boxscores, stats and other minutiae on a laptop, and shaking those multi-colored dice ... always shaking in hopes of the elusive 66 in the bottom of the ninth ...

My latest dice-tossing marathon came courtesy of the 1957 reprint set. (Dang, if I didn't look just like Tom Nelshoppen in that viral YouTube video where he tears into and sorts his new 1966 set ...)

What ensued were showdowns between:

• Mantle's Yankees and Teddy's Red Sox
• Cards vs. Cubs (Musial was indeed The Man!)
• AL vs. NL All-Stars
• NL All-Stars vs. Oregon All-Stars (more on them later ...)
• Brooklyn vs. the 2012 Mariners (with Jacoby Ellsbury batting leadoff!)
• Pirates vs. Cubs at Wrigley Field (Clemente vs. Banks)
• White Sox vs. Orioles (... and some young guy named Brooks Robinson)
• ... and a dramatic August series sweep of the Dodgers at Ebbets Field by the visiting Milwaukee Braves!

The '57 Braves -- one of my favorite teams ever -- was the main reason I added this set to my APBA card collection, which now spans seven decades. Nearly 40 years ago when I was growing up in Milwaukee, I bought the World Champs of Aaron, Mathews and Spahn along with some other Great Teams of the Past -- '27 Yanks, '34 Cards and the '59 Go-Go White Sox.

Of course, this latest binge of gaming was preceded by admiring and studying each and every card in the set -- Whoa, Mantle's got double 1's! How did Teddy Ballgame ever make an out?! Hey, Warren Spahn got an A!

Yep, one of the first things I checked out was the GTOP Braves vs. the '57 reprint edition. Spahn wasn't the only hurler who got a second look by the geniuses at APBA. Bob Buhl also benefited from the A makeover. I suppose something had to change to ensure the Braves triumph over the hated Bronx Bombers!

While the speed and fielding ratings remained unchanged, it's interesting to see how the batting has been tweaked from single to double columns in some cases. And I now have five more guys off the bench, including "Nippy" Jones, "Gabby" Jolly and "T-Bone" Phillips in the bullpen.

Finally able to get over the thrill of the new card set, it was time to let the dice roll ... and roll ... and roll ...

Some of the highlights:

• Stan Musial smacking an 11th-inning home run to defeat the Cubs (Ernie Banks had a pair of doubles)
• Mickey Mantle hitting a pair of homers to propel the AL All-Stars to a 4-0 win over the Nationals.
• Williams hitting a pair of home runs in the rematch, only to be outdone by Musial's two-homer outing, including the winner in the 11th inning.
• Cubs outfielder "Moose" Moryn going 3-for-5 with 2 runs, 4 RBI, and a game-winning home run in the bottom of the 10th against Pittsburgh. Banks hit a solo shot in the bottom of the ninth to send the game into extras.
• Billy Pierce tossing a 5-hit shutout vs. the Orioles, who got one hit from newbie third baseman Brooks Robinson.

Finally, I replayed Aug. 22-24 series between the Braves and Dodgers. Keeping up the trend, the Braves won two of the games in the 9th inning on dramatic two-run homers by "Hurricane" Hazle and Del Crandall.

The Braves wrapped up the sweep with a 4-2 win on the strength of a double by Eddie Mathews and back-to-back homers by Hank Aaron and Crandall. As an extra measure of insurance, Johnny Logan hit a solo homer in the ninth. The Braves had seven homers over the three-game set.

On the mound, Braves pitchers limited Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and the rest of the Brooklyn crew to 5 runs in all. They also got the best of Johnny Podres, Sal "The Barber" Maglie, and young Sandy Koufax, a D starter who pitched 7 shutout innings before being lifted for a pinch-hitter.

A dozen games in the scorebook and it was time to get back to my normal routine. ... Well, maybe I'll just replay the '57 World Series. ... The Braves win, right?

--66--