The "Entrepreneurial Spirit" Story

It was an ordinary day. I was getting ready to play Mike Z. in a four game series of APBA. APBA, which stands for American Professional Baseball Association, is a board game that I got hooked on a few years ago when my wife bought it for me as a gift. It is dice activated and is based on the previous baseball season's statistics for each player. In 1974 I formed a league of players in Lancaster and we met and drafted our teams. The league is called the Lancaster Red Rose League and has dues that are used to buy a new set of cards each year. There are 8 members and we play four game series throughout the summer months, visiting each others houses for the games. A year later I built a miniature stadium that I could play all my games on. It was made of wood with a silkscreened playing field, scoreboard that reminds you of Fenway Park in Boston, outfield fence with advertisements, bases that light to indicate players that have reached base and lights so I can play at night. Pretty neat! The scoreboard has a light behind it that illuminates Lite Brite pegs that I use to indicate the inning and the score. I called it PADEBRY STADIUM after my three kids, Paul, Derek and Brynn. I even started a dice collection to use when I play the games. Well, everyone really liked it and told me I ought to sell them. So I did! In 1976 I decided I was going to make the boards and sell them. I put a full page advertisement in the national APBAJournal and offered them for sale. Cost was $125.00 for a game board. I was talking to a friend who is a lawyer about the game board and he suggested I form a corporation that sells the game. If someone would be playing the game on the board and happen to get injured or maybe let the game on and it would catch fire and burn their house down, they would have to sue the corporation and not me. They also suggested I buy liability insurance which I did. Anything that had both my name and my wife's name on it would be protected, since the game company was just in my name. I assumed he knew what he was talking about so I formedWBBB Corporation and bought the insurance. Stood for Woods Base Ball Board. I also had to go to a patent attorney to made sure that no one else had ever made something like it and I would be infringing on his patent. He checked the patent files in Washington and I was good to go. It cost me about $500 to form the corporation and have the patent researched and for that I got a certificate and a stamp I could use to make papers official. Never used it once! Now I was in business. Printed thesilkscreened felt fields at school in my shop as well as cut out all the wood pieces in the wood shop at school. Bought the electrical components at Radio Shack and I was in production. I did make a disclaimer sticker that said WBBB wasn't responsible for electrical shock is game was used near water. I figured that some APBA nut might try to play it while bathing. One of my first sales was to the President of the APBA Game Co., Mr. J. RichardSeitz. He gave me a very nice recommendation that I used in one of my full page ads. Eventually the APBA Journal called and asked me to be a contributor to the journal and asked to if I would write a story about the stadiums that people had made that play in our league. OK, I can do that. Naturally, I included photos of my kids playing on the board. I sold about a dozen stadiums. After two years I had sold about a dozen boards. Sounds pretty good except withthe cost of supplies, shipping and packaging and the liability insurance I had to buy, I made probably $200 total. I finally thought it wasn't worth it so I went out of business. Still had my original board and had made one similar for my son Derek who also enjoyed playing APBA. In 2005, over 25 years since I had made the boards, I got a call from someone in California who was an APBA addict and who had found a few copies of the APBA Journal from the 70s and 80s. He saw my game advertisement in the journal and was calling to see if he could buy one. Wow!! I explained that I went out of business and only had my original board I made for myself. "Does it still work?" he asked me over the phone. "It did a few years ago when I moved and tried it out to see if I should keep it or discard it," I told him. "I'll buy it!" he exclaimed. "Just name your price." Now, this was something I was maybe going to throw out and still had the original light bulbs in it and the lines on the base paths were almost worn off from constant play, but he insisted. Didn't even want to see a photo of it. He just wanted a piece of APBA memorabilia for his collection. I told him he can have it for $125 plus the price to ship it. Price I sold them for in the late 70s. "That's a bargain! I'll send you a check today," he told me. "OK, give me your address and I'll mail it as soon as I get the check," I replied. A few days later I sent my original board to California to be used again for the game I once loved to play. I still think of it every now and then and wonder if he is enjoying it as much as I did. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - Photos from top are: Copy of ad I placed in the APBA Journal, pix of daughter Brynn playing on my personal game board and Derek playing on similar version I made him for his birthday.