APBA Stories Straight to the Heart

I was on the APBA Baseball Group on Facebook, when one of the guys Scott posted a wonderful story of him & his cousin at a Dodgers/Cubs game in 1973, it triggered other wonderful stories that I felt had to be shared on this blog -- Documented for other APBA fans to carry on.

Below is Scott's story and others that have contributed via Facebook...

• "One of my favorite APBA stories. My cousin (big Cubs fan) and I (big Dodgers fan) were in Dodger Stadium watching a Cubs-Dodgers game in 1973. Early in the game Randy Hundley stole second prompting my cousin to laugh and say, "That's great -- next year Hundley could have a 10." I laughed too and a few seconds later the two guys sitting in the row behind us tapped us on the shoulder and said, "Hey, do you guys play APBA?"

• "Similar event happen to me...I join a new softball team and I was on the bench and a pop up to the catcher and I spoke out 65 and my teammate turned to me and said 35 and we both laughed and became great friends and formed a league together and we had 5 other friends we taught them the game and we played for 5 years ,sad to say Dan passed away in 97 RIP Dan Werner and we have not played the league anymore. Dan's favorite player was Joe Morgan in the game,so we put it in dan's pocket, its his forever..."

• "This is as close to that as I can come. I was a cook at my Dads restaurant and I had a 1972 card of Reggie Jackson's and was going to take it to the printer to make blank cards and a waitress saw it and told me her boyfriend played APBA and he came to the rest. the next day and were friends for 30 years. He even got me on his slow pitch softball team where I played for 18 years."

• "Back in 86 I was at Memorial Stadium watching the final game of the season between the O's and Tigers. After the game, as the Tigers were boarding their team bus, I handed Darrell Evans his APBA card to sign and he said "Oh wow, I have 1s at 11 and 66, how many home runs have I hit in your replay?" I couldn't believe, not only that he'd heard of the game, but he recognized the significance of the numbers!"

• "I had Lance Parrish & Dave Winfield both sign their APBA Cards in 1991 and neither one knew what they were!! LOL"

• "In Detroit during batting practice. Dave Parker playing for the Oakland A's and was off to a bad start of the season. I talked to him early in BP and said to him "Your killing my APBA teams chances next year". He looked directly at me and said "Your APBA team, what about my next years salary"... I was afraid. LOL"

• "I was on night watch when I was in the military, by myself. To pass the 12 hours of nothingness, I would sometimes bring some APBA cards with me and play a couple of games. Once, the supervisor came in (he had never done that before), and I figured he would be mad. But.......he turned out to be an APBA fan, and we sat there and compared stats and different seasons we played. After that, he showed up all the time and we would play a few games."