The Genesis of AGBA

I want to say it was actually two Christmases ago when I first mentioned it to my brother Chris, and the original idea is now quite a difference from what it is now.

The great thing about APBA is that we let our imaginations run completely wild. We can replay historic seasons or playing seasons or teams that mattered most to us during our childhoods. We sometimes run leagues with other APBA owners, while we get to pretend to be General Managers drafting today's stars onto rosters, while scouting for the next big thing so you can get an edge on your division rival. I have pretty much done everything that I have imagined, but decided last Christmas to re-explore what I thought about the previous Christmas.

Originally, I started thinking about doing 20 teams franchises from 1967, while using 1992 & 2017 players, but from only those franchises, and from year-to-year they would have real life transactions from year-to-year. The other franchises would join in the same manner as they did, with 1969 & 1977 being the next years of expansion.

I mentioned it to my brother again, during Easter 2019 (the same time that we launched our 'Brothers In Dice: 1978 Replay').

He asked good questions, or some obvious questions that I completely overlooked...

Chris: "So what's going to happen to like the Mariners?"
Shawn (Me): "They'll join in 1977, and will be teamed up with 2002 & 2027"
Chris: "So... you won't ever get to Junior or Randy Johnson?"
Shawn: "Yeah, I mean this is a different universe and it will only have these players."

But I went home that night, and then I realized he was right, and then I started also thinking about the true transaction deal, and it really dawned on me how teams like the Detroit Tigers would be completely screwed -- Tigers went into the 70's rebuilding, they were lousy in the 1990's and are currently rebuilding as we speak, that is a lot of losing for quite some time in the foreseeable future. Plus I started thinking about the fact that the same franchises that have succeeded will be the same teams succeeding and thought what if I did all 30 franchises instead, and had certain ways of bringing in some of the home talent, while letting teams do any transactions.

At the same time, I was looking at the cool baseball logos and uniforms created in the Out of Park Baseball universe, and thought that I wanted to give these franchises in this dream project their own personas, identities. This is a universe that will be making its own sort of history, a universe that Barry and Bobby Bonds will be both playing at the same time, while at their peaks.

Originally 1967-1992-2017 was supposed to be the season to launch it, but I already owned a 1993 and 2018 set, and plus I would be closer to current players season, instead of playing close to 2-3 seasons behind the current stars. I was using the 2018 MLB Season cards for a mail-in league that I am part of, in the UAL, and did have to wait for that season to end (which ended this past, horrific March).

I bought the 1968 season, which I always wanted to own, and that's when the true evolution started to come together. At one point I realized a 30 team league, with the schedule that I wanted would be a complete nightmare, for a half-season league. I believe originally it was supposed to be 92-94 games (I can't remember what the original number was) for each of the 30 teams, than I decided 28 teams would make the schedule making much easier....

But then, I looked over the talent in the three sets, and realized there would be so much baseball talent sitting out of action. While digging through some old files, I started looking over one of my old league setups for a Out of the Park Baseball project, and realized that one of its 36-team setups could be doable in this APBA dream project. I came up with a 76-games each, which actually wasn't much different from the other setup with 90+ games & 30 teams. Plus 76 games is just short of 81 games, and it will be easy to glance at a card and realize if I am approaching innings limits or whatever, by cutting the totals in half.

I figured out a schedule while the last few months, I rounded out rosters while still trying to decide how the divisions would be set up, and what teams would finally make the cut. Believe me, even as of a few weeks ago, I juggled around some teams with new logos, while ditching those that I was not comfortable with.

By the way, the league name AGBA (pronounced AG-BAH) actually was the same name of my high school APBA Baseball league with my classmates. I always liked the name, although it might come off sacrilegious having an abbreviation inside of an abbreviation, with the league being called AGBA (APBA Galaxy Baseball Association)...

but anyways, I will start breaking down each league and how I came up with the team, and all that.