The year he chose was 1961, a season that has always had special significance to him. All handwritten, of course, since he and computers never got along too well. As a high school calculus teacher and former high school hoops coach, keeping stats comes naturally to him. Neither did I back when he and I spent countless hours playing together, hours I’ll always treasure, before I went away to college.Ībout 12 years ago, Dad set out to do something he never had done before - play an entire season while keeping statistics. He doesn’t need to look at the result boards. On that card is his defensive rating, whether he’s a slow, average or fast runner and numbers that correspond to the 36 different two-dice combinations you can roll when he is up to bat.ĭad has played the game so much he has every possible result memorized. Sign up for them here.ĪPBA is simple, and the rhythms of the game become familiar with repetition. APBA even has an annual tournament in which diehards can play against each other with their favorite teams, new or old. The company (short for American Professional Baseball Association) was located near Lancaster, Pa., before moving its headquarters to Alpharetta, Ga., and still sells the game (in other sports, too) and provides an updated set of players cards for every season. You might think the sound of the rolls would get annoying, but Dad has played it so much it’s like white noise to anyone else in the house. He hasn’t stopped now that he’s still (impressively) fending off gray hair.Īs he’s searched for ways to pass the time while under a stay-at-home order, he’s been playing it even more. Dad, however, grew up on APBA (pronounced APP-buh). Then thump, out the dice fall onto his APBA baseball board for him to translate into an out, hit or home run.Įver since he was a kid, my dad, now 71, has owned the APBA game - which is similar to another popular dice game, Strat-O-Matic. This is where my dad, Chet, will post up and occupy half the table for a couple hours at a time - and send the sound of several rapid rattles of a dice shaker bouncing off the walls of the downstairs.
In my parents’ home in West Pittston, Pa., a small town about 10 miles from Scranton, the dining room is in the middle of the first floor.
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