This weekend, the APBA Convention & Tournament takes place in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. APBA has been making fast-playing sports simulation games since the 1950s. I don’t know much about the Football or Hockey games, but I played through several seasons of APBA Baseball with the kids on my block during junior high school. Each year, new player cards are issued representing the previous year’s stats. We’d draft new players, make trades, set a schedule of games, and then play it out through a World Series. The game is pretty basic and will remind you of simpler times, but the statistics hold up pretty well to real life. One of our players kept very detailed books and loved to quote obscure records. I think once we managed to roll the dice in just the right series to end up with the hidden-ball trick.

I’m glad to see the game is still being played.