Quit your bitching! I would like to believe that I am the voice of the people (Vox Populi) when I make this statement. This is not directed at any one person, but rather the league as a whole, as is my diplomatic way. There are several issues in the past that have been harped on, on more than one occasion, and I would like to set the record straight as I see it.
This game of APBA baseball is a computer version of the APBA master baseball game. It is not loosely based on the board game, it is a strict version of the game. To say that it should be a much more encompassing version of the game because it is on a c omputer, is not necessarily fair to APBA enthusiasts. Perhaps a lot of changes could have been made towards realism, and I am the first to agree with that statement. But that game would not be able to be called APBA, and that is what we are playing. For t he record, this point was made abundantly clear previous to the past season, regardless of what anyone might think.
The computer generates random numbers producing a dice roll, then producing a corresponding number on that player's card. You may have three popouts to the catcher in a row one inning. What are the odds of that happening, I don't know, but the point is that it does have potential to happen. (In fact it happened to the Atlanta Braves vs. Al Leiter on 10-8-97). If one of your favorite little power hitters doesn't homer every at bat like he's "supposed to," my response would be look at one your backups wh o has 100 at bats and 15 homers already. It all evens out somewhere over the course of the season. Another example might be your guy not getting a clutch hit in a close game, but he goes 5-5 in a 14-2 win. Now we are coming to the real problem, it's not t hat big hits don't happen, they just don't happen when you want them. My response here would be either get a better manager, or a get a better general manager.
Your guys are always thrown out taking the extra base, or you don't understand why something happened a certain way? John and Joe have the game at school. Steve has it at work. Greg has it at home. Keith, Ken, Chris and Jim have access to it at TOCC (a s well as anyone else who wishes to). I strongly encourage you to play games. That is undisputedly the best way to learn how the computer is going to act in certain situations. Everyone should know by now not to trust it when says something like "it's a v ery deep flyball, the outfielder is racing back and catches it at the wall." And because of this you send your slow runner home, and Lance Johnson throws him out at the plate. Why the Miller Assoc. people do this in the script, I don't know, but if you pl ay enough games you will see this happen regularly enough to warrant a signal in your brain.
Please take this into consideration, and let's have a happy and quiet 1998 Summer League!