May I have your attention please…

I’ve been reading through the archives of The Sporting News a lot the past few days as I continue researching the Marion Mets, an Appalachian League team that played in the small Virginia town of Marion.

Part of the joy of the research is finding items like the one below, which involves, baseball, a police chief and the threat of tear gas.

Frank Barnett, police chief of Twin Falls, Idaho, had some unsettling information for 1,586 fans at the July 4 Treasure Valley-Magic Valley (Pioneer) contest. Taking the public address mike in the second inning, the chief announced there was a chance the park might be the target of a tear gas attack. It seems some local summertime soldiers has swiped some tear gas grenades at camp and the police had a tip they would be used on the crowd during the post-game fireworks display. Happily, there was no attack.

From The Sporting News: Saturday, July 23, 1966, page 46

"Monster" Idea Already Taken

I thought I had a cool idea.

In all honesty (and modesty?) it was a cool idea.

The problem? Someone else thought of it first.

Back in the day – read: my teenage years – I was an avid, and I do mean avid, APBA Baseball board game player.

I first got my game in 1985 (which contained teams and players from the '84 season), played it night and day, and wore out the statistics pages (old school stuff like RBIs and ERAs) of the 1985 The Sporting News Baseball Annual. If ever played APBA and tried to create your own teams, you know why I lived on those stats pages.

I plan to write later a more extensive blog post about my active APBA days (even my embarrassing super player creation), but in the meantime I thought it would be cool to write a blog post here and there about the players from that 1984 season, examining various players cards, looking at the numbers – the disappointment that can come from Chris "Snatcher" Chambliss having and "8" on the second roll of 66 – nicknames, hometowns, etc.

Kind of cool, right? Yes, a bit nerdy, I admit.

So, the other day, while researching the aforementioned upcoming APBA blog post, I came across the APBA Blog.

First off all, as a guy who has owned the APBA Baseball board game for nearly 28 years, how in the world am I just now discovering this blog?

Beats me.

You know what else I discovered?

That's right. Each Monday, in a feature called "Monster Card Monday," the APBA Blog has a post about various cards, examining pretty much the same sort of stuff I had thought about doing here, but in a more extensive manner, of course. (By the way, if you're an APBA player, you should check out the APBA Blog, if for some reason you've been oblivious to it until this point. It's great stuff!)

So, there goes that idea… I think. Maybe I'll just steal their idea and not tell them.  

Shhhhhhhh!