My old man and his friends were in a APBA league with probably close to 20 teams, give or take. I remember all the excitement that used to take place between him and his friends while knocking out series against one another. Lots of laughter, smiles, and conversation. I remember going pass the table with my eye level barely over the table, and noticed all the colored numbers on the cards with the names in bigger print. I didn't realize during the time that I would grow to love these cards. I believe part of the lure was that I saw how the game brought my dad and friends happiness, and that if it brings them happiness, it must be a really fun game. My dad worked his butt off at a factory that made parts for General Motors, working long and good hours, and APBA Baseball, along with some drinks, smoke and friends was the way for all of them to kick back their heals after a long work day or work week. Plus my dad would have the record player going, listening to the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, Bowie, Elvis Costello, XTC, or whoever (you name it! My dad had 3,000 records, the best stuff).
I grew up as a 80's kid, 90's teen, and my love for baseball started probably with the 1984 Detroit Tigers and that magical season. The next season my dad would slowly start allowing us to collect baseball cards, starting with the beautiful design of those 1985 Topps Baseball Cards. The color scheme caught the eye, while I was getting more familiar with the team names and logos.
Then came the 1986 MLB Postseason, one for the ages, and one that sealed the deal for me... I would forever breathe, sleep, and bleed baseball. I remember the Red Sox' Dave Henderson slamming the home run off California's Donnie Moore, the Mets-Astros series, and then of course, the amazing World Series that capped it all off. That's all that anyone could talk about on the playground was Mookie's grounder going past Buckner's old legs. The next season would be the year that I officially collected baseball cards in the 1987 Topps.
Prior to my 15th birthday, we moved up north from Waterford, Michigan to Kingsley, Michigan (just south of Traverse City). New high school, a new town... small town. It was quite the culture shock to tell you the truth, and it was my sophomore high school year, during my 16th birthday, that I got my first APBA Baseball game (1991 APBA Baseball). What a sweet sixteenth indeed! The magic and joy of holding those cards, and going through all the envelopes, and knowing they are your very own.
With my love for the game, it only made sense to share this love for the game with my new friends. We had 6 people with 2 teams each, a twelve team league. They fell in love with the game as well. I saw how much happiness it brought my dad and his friends, and I wanted to experience the same with others. I continued to introduce the game to others while I served my country for the United States Navy. At my 'A' school in 1996, I introduced the game to a few of my shipmates. One of my good buddies Joe Mucha enjoyed the game so much, that we once tried to squeeze a game out right before uniform inspection, and let me tell you we cut it very close, we had to double-time it to get to formation, which resulted in some shin splints.
Once I got to Fort Gordon in 1997, I showed the game to a few new friends. They were all into computers and wondered if APBA made a computer game to make it simpler for us to run a league, while not having to do all the stats, and that's when I started playing APBA Baseball for Windows (BBW). We would start a Navy league that would run nearly 10 years until life took over, they all started having kids. I started diving back into the cards around 2004 (the APBA BATS 1 set), when I ended up being dumped in a relationship. With plenty of time on my hands I started a 64-game season with the 26 original MLB teams - the franchise's best players up to 1998.
I continued to play that season into the early days of my marriage (finishing the season sometime in 2008) with Becky. Becky has been a blessing, and I don't know where I would be without her. Not only she enjoys that I have a fun hobby in APBA Baseball, but she finds the dice-rolling soothing... Keeper!
By the way, I played the all-time franchises in the 4 division setup, with the Detroit Tigers catching the New York Yankees on the last day, forcing a tie-breaking game which Detroit won. The Oakland Athletics won the A.L. West, while the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants came out of the National League. The Tigers swept Oakland, while the Cubs won in seven games. Then Detroit cooled off, getting swept by the Cubbies.
Becky and I were married in October 2006, and like many young couples we had our financial struggles, to tell you the truth it has never been financially easy throughout our close-to-fourteen years. We would eventually declare bankruptcy, as we could not gain traction through the recession. We tried our best for five years trying to get our heads above water, which the lawyer would go on and tell us that we should have come to him like three years earlier. It was my pride and hard work that prevented us from going to him sooner, I don't like handouts, and I don't like asking for help... It's tough for me to do.
There is a few things that you may want to know about me, things I take complete pride in and that's...
1) Working hard for a living.
2) I wear my heart on my sleeve, and always look out for others.
3) I never lie
And to be accused of any of these things really strikes me to the core, in the same manner that Back to the Future's Marty McFly hates being called Chicken. And if you wrong me in those areas, I hold serious grudges for significantly long periods of time.
It was the summer of 2012, I wasn't happy with my job at the time, and that year's election was starting to heat up. The wife and I just hopped into the car and drove around beautiful stretches around the Grand Traverse area, and just talked about things that was getting us down, the job, and questioning God's plan for us. We decided that I needed to look for a new job, while placing our faith in God. It was him that led us to each other, and there was no doubt about it. I will have to tell you that glorious story one of these days, and once I do, you too will have no doubt that it was God's will.
After a good drive, I went back home, and started thinking about APBA again (which faded in the recent years). I went onto Facebook and decided to do a search, and that's when I found Thomas Nelshoppen's 'The APBA Blog'. Another blog I fell in love with was, Kenneth Heard's 'Love, Life and APBA Baseball' I decided to walk away from my other blog, that was inspired by my love for Batman, which also was about politics, and the entertainment business. I decided to start a new blog named The Boys of Summer. Besides a couple posts here and there, I didn't truly start writing until February 2013.
During that summer of 2012, I also found a Facebook Group -- The APBA Facebook Group. When I joined I was in the 700's for membership I believe, it has grown over 3,000 members since joining. I met friends right away, and started purchasing APBA cards again. As the year came to an end, I bought the Greatest Teams of the Past I & II (GTOP I & II) with the intention of buying GTOP III with tax money in early 2013, for a 64-team tournament project. I started the tournament, but shifted gears and made a 48-team project called the Crazy 48's, 8 divisions of 6-teams each.
The blog started rolling in 2013, and by that summer, I realized friends from the APBA Facebook Group were really enjoying my project and blog. One of my earlier friends was one of the co-hosts of the upcoming Chicagoland Fall Tournament, and it was during that trip to Chicago, riding with Rich Zawadzki, that a whole new world was going to open up. To my surprise when we got there, I mentioned my name (while introducing ourselves to the others standing outside of the tourney) and three to four people right away, said "Shawn from The Boys of Summer?"
"Why Yes"
Apparently my blog was more popular than I ever realized. I used pictures a lot to my blog pieces, so I do know that if someone connects to a picture they liked, that that can be counted as a hit. So I really didn't think much about the actual statistics to the site. In April 2013, I had my most for a month at that point with 793, which then doubled the next month. I would not dip below 1,000 the remainder of that year, with my blog ranging from 1,200 to its height of 1,646 hits. My post about that Chicagoland Tournament would qualify for 1,350 hits in a 1,585 hits month.
My tournament posts would go on to attract people more than the other posts, and are among my biggest posts all-time numbers. Almost half of my top 20 posts, are related to face-to-face tournaments. That is a lot of free advertising through the years. I often say that the Chicagoland Fall 2013 Tournament was the spark that generated the tournament explosion, and my friend Thomas from The APBA Blog even agreed on that point. At the time, I was modest about it, and for years to follow, but looking back we as writers contributed in a major way to these tournaments, and they would not have caught on like they did if it were not for our help. Jim's APBA Barn, another great blog, was also another major contributor to this big bang moment for tournaments as well, especially for the Twin Cities APBA Baseball Tournament.
For The Boys of Summer Blog, it would completely break out during 2016, with three months registering 2526, 3423 & 3774 hits, while I would be regularly recording 2,000 hit months throughout 2016, while regularly recording about 2,800+ from 2018 forward -- with a peak month of 4,196 hits in November 2019.
The numbers don't reflect the time, dedication & heart that goes into these posts. I have done 885 posts up to this point (with just under 157,000 hits) and I can't tell you how many I started that didn't go anywhere, drafts that died before they ever seen the light of day. The most popular APBA Tournament post is GMABT IV: Nice Guys Finish First (Spatz & Zawadzki), a tournament piece that I done, which may not be among my best written, while I was not present at that tournament like most of my tournament pieces...
but if you read them, you would have thought I was there, and that was the intention, I wanted these articles to be intimate like that.
Here's a list of APBA Tournaments that I wrote about through the years...
(Click and read)
- Raise Your Glasses to the Glass City (GCABT-V)
- It's Tournament Season!
- Rolling Again in Michigan! (GMABT III Results)
- Rookies Shine at Chicagoland Fall Tourney
- Mosher's 1961 Yankees Wins Grand Rapids Tourney
- Smitten with APBA in the Mitten
- GMABT III - Divisions Announced!
- Say Yes to Greater Michigan (GMABT II)
- Fantasies Do Come True (Chicagoland Summer 2016)
- It's Always Sunny in APBAland (PA Hosts Two)
- Chicago World Series Fall 2015
- Brothers United ("The Spark") - Chicagoland 2013
- My Chicagoland 2013 Fall Results Game #4
- Another Success at Slippery Rock
I wrote these articles not because I was asked to, I wrote them on my free will, because I loved my APBA community and the friends that came with it. These articles are never easy, but they were written to inspire others that loved the game of APBA to give face-to-face tournaments a chance. At the time when these articles were written, the responses and appreciation for these articles seem to be have been genuine.
Over time, I unfortunately would come to realize that people tend to only live in the moment, while they forget how much you supported them, going above and beyond with my big, delicate heart. It hurts sometimes when reflecting on the past, but I know it was once a fun time.
We are all human, we all make mistakes, and I am no different.
This concludes Part 1
