If for some odd reason you haven't heard, this weekend's 2nd Chicagoland APBA Baseball Tournament was a complete success! 22 men & one woman competed in the 22 team APBA Tournament. I will be posting a more in-depth post about the amazing journey & will also breakdown my memories using my team representative of the 1912 New York Giants.
The post about the tourney will be titled "Brothers United", so look forward to reading about it soon here on the Boys of Summer site. It was finally cool to meet these guys face to face & meet new friends there as well -- I'm looking forward to at least be making an annual winter trip. The two men who made this all possible in Doug Schuyler & Jim Saska, plan to keep doing a bi-annual meeting -- early hintings at a possible April tourney in time for the baseball season. I also finally got to meet two more wonderful friends in Pastor Rich Zawadzki of Jackson, MI (who I had the privilege to travel with from Kalamazoo, MI to Woodstock, IL) and Thomas Nelshoppen of The APBA Blog.
The week for the November tourney could have not been more perfect, just 2-3 weeks after the conclusion of the MLB Season, in time for the MLB BBWAA Awards week, and still a good solid 2 weeks before the Holiday season officially kicks off -- I'm not sure, if these guys chose this week for those reasons or not, either way -- BRILLIANT MOVE!
It was encouraging to see so many make long trips, I believe from the top of my head, we had someone come as far as Minnesota to make the trip, his family made it a great shopping weekend in Chicago. Chicago is perfect area, I really do believe that the Midwest has something really going on here, and I'm encouraged by the fact to find out there was a good handful of guys that actually didn't make the trip, that plan to make the trip for the future tourneys to come. I also loved the fact that our outcome of 23 people, plus a handful of spectators was in the neighborhood of the actual APBA convention which I hear is from (40-50 guys possibly) -- So you can definitely see why, we are loving the growth and the prospects of bigger things to come! The word of mouth was great, and with this day & age of new age media via facebook or Twitter or whatever, we are pretty psyched about the possibilities of spreading the great game & our love for APBA Baseball.
In the words of Thomas (APBA Blog) -- "KEEP CALM and ROLL SIXTY SIXES".
MIDDLE of the ORDER
My Crazy 48's League continues, and will hit the ground running in December. The last few months the league slowed down due to changes in the work schedule, family celebrations/priorities & a month doing my 2007 Detroit Tigers Season Replay -- Tigers are 49-30 through the end of June, 3 games ahead of the actual pace that season, with 7 upcoming games before the All-Star Break. The 7 games will be at home, one against Minnesota, three against real-life A.L. Central Division champ -- Cleveland, and three against the eventual World Champion Boston Red Sox. The Tigers in real-life, went 6-1 through this stretch, so I hope to be in that neighborhood if I plan on changing history -- this one will certainly go down to the wire.
I will likely start the second-half sometime in the Spring as I look forward to get the Crazy 48's back on track. You need to shift things up to keep things fresh. I'm also thinking of using APBA Baseball for Windows (BBW) to get things moving along quicker for that, so I can concentrate on some big projects I plan for APBA.
...and BATTING LAST
Thinking about starting up a basic board game league with other local people in my area of Traverse City, Michigan; I realized with all the fun that I had at the 2nd Chicagoland APBA Tournament how good it feels to compete & talk about the love of baseball with a group of friends, so it definitely has me thinking about starting something up. During the tournament, I realized that it's been five years that I actually played one-on-one against someone, and even then I was introducing the game to someone. Miss the old days, of friendly competition.
Anyways, that's a few of the recent updates for now, I'll have more about the great time in Woodstock in the nearby future.
Take care, everyone!
The post about the tourney will be titled "Brothers United", so look forward to reading about it soon here on the Boys of Summer site. It was finally cool to meet these guys face to face & meet new friends there as well -- I'm looking forward to at least be making an annual winter trip. The two men who made this all possible in Doug Schuyler & Jim Saska, plan to keep doing a bi-annual meeting -- early hintings at a possible April tourney in time for the baseball season. I also finally got to meet two more wonderful friends in Pastor Rich Zawadzki of Jackson, MI (who I had the privilege to travel with from Kalamazoo, MI to Woodstock, IL) and Thomas Nelshoppen of The APBA Blog.
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| Doug Schuyler, Rich Zawadzki & me (Shawn Baier). |
It was encouraging to see so many make long trips, I believe from the top of my head, we had someone come as far as Minnesota to make the trip, his family made it a great shopping weekend in Chicago. Chicago is perfect area, I really do believe that the Midwest has something really going on here, and I'm encouraged by the fact to find out there was a good handful of guys that actually didn't make the trip, that plan to make the trip for the future tourneys to come. I also loved the fact that our outcome of 23 people, plus a handful of spectators was in the neighborhood of the actual APBA convention which I hear is from (40-50 guys possibly) -- So you can definitely see why, we are loving the growth and the prospects of bigger things to come! The word of mouth was great, and with this day & age of new age media via facebook or Twitter or whatever, we are pretty psyched about the possibilities of spreading the great game & our love for APBA Baseball.
In the words of Thomas (APBA Blog) -- "KEEP CALM and ROLL SIXTY SIXES".
MIDDLE of the ORDER
My Crazy 48's League continues, and will hit the ground running in December. The last few months the league slowed down due to changes in the work schedule, family celebrations/priorities & a month doing my 2007 Detroit Tigers Season Replay -- Tigers are 49-30 through the end of June, 3 games ahead of the actual pace that season, with 7 upcoming games before the All-Star Break. The 7 games will be at home, one against Minnesota, three against real-life A.L. Central Division champ -- Cleveland, and three against the eventual World Champion Boston Red Sox. The Tigers in real-life, went 6-1 through this stretch, so I hope to be in that neighborhood if I plan on changing history -- this one will certainly go down to the wire.
I will likely start the second-half sometime in the Spring as I look forward to get the Crazy 48's back on track. You need to shift things up to keep things fresh. I'm also thinking of using APBA Baseball for Windows (BBW) to get things moving along quicker for that, so I can concentrate on some big projects I plan for APBA.
...and BATTING LAST
Thinking about starting up a basic board game league with other local people in my area of Traverse City, Michigan; I realized with all the fun that I had at the 2nd Chicagoland APBA Tournament how good it feels to compete & talk about the love of baseball with a group of friends, so it definitely has me thinking about starting something up. During the tournament, I realized that it's been five years that I actually played one-on-one against someone, and even then I was introducing the game to someone. Miss the old days, of friendly competition.
Anyways, that's a few of the recent updates for now, I'll have more about the great time in Woodstock in the nearby future.
Take care, everyone!
This tourney could end up as big as the official event in Ga. Great job, everyone!
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