The "Playing America's Game: Part II" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Writing about my favorite subject, baseball.  Yesterday's story took us up to the mid-late 1960s as far as the sport of baseball in and around Lancaster while today's will highlight what has happened on the local scene since that time.  As I wrote yesterday,  Lancaster fans kind of gave up on it's minor league team in the early 60s and we lost our minor league team that played for years and years near my childhood home on the north end of town.  But, baseball was really still alive with all the youth programs that existed in Lancaster.  I played baseball from 1955 until out of high school in 1962. In 1966 I began coaching little league teams and girl's softball until I finally gave that up in early 1990s.  Still loved the game, but the toll it was taking on my body forced me to stop at that time.

Box lid of the APBA Baseball Game from Lancaster.

But, I stayed involved in the sport in quite a different way.  It was back in 1951 that J. Richard Seitz, a Lancastrian, created a baseball game that was known simply as APBA (pronounced AP-buh).  The Professional Baseball Association combined the randomness of dice with the on-field performances of real professional baseball players. The baseball table-top game was for all ages and sexes and included player cards for each major league player.  Cost was $10.  In 1957 Seitz began mass producing the game as well as developing other similar sports games.  Lancaster was known as the Mecca for APBA players and my wife bought me a copy of the game in 1976.  

Cover of the rules and regulations of the
Lancaster Red Rose APBA League that I
started in 1977.

Wasn't long before I got a group of my friends involved and I started the Red Rose APBA League.  Started with 8 players and when I dropped out of the league a dozen years later there were 16 teams in the league.  Neat way to stay involved in our nation's game.  But, getting back to real life, many in Lancaster were continuing to excel at the sport of baseball.  Pitchers Nelsom Chittum and Bill Kirk played their formative years on Lancaster's fields.  Chittum, a graduate of Elizabethtown High, pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and Kirk, who graduated from Lancaster McCaskey High, eventually played for the Kansas City Athletics.  These two were the earliest entries from Lancaster into the majors, but over the years, more than 20 more have made it that far.  My wife's cousin, Bobby, made it to the Indians and then, after retiring from the majors, helped me coach in Lancaster.  Ended up coaching against him my final year of coaching when my Manheim Township Midget team beat his Lancaster Township Midget team in the New Era Finals, a tournament sponsored by a local newspaper for the best teams in the county.  Some from Lancaster you may remember were Bruce Sutter, Gene Garber, John Parrish, Jim Weaver as well as current players Chris Heisey with Cincinnati and Jeff Bianci with Milwaukee.  In 1999, former mayor of Lancaster, Richard Scott led the charge to bring back baseball to Lancaster.  

Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, PA

A new stadium was build on North Prince Street in downtown which can hold 5,700 fans.  In 2005 the Lancaster Barn- stormers opened with a packed house just about every game that year.  I was hoping to have the team called the Red Roses once again, but that didn't happen.  Lancaster has supported our team as they just began the 10th season of baseball.  The team isn't affiliated with any major league team, but the level of play is just about as good with many guys hopeful of being called up to the minors during the season.  Young and old, amateur and professional, fan and player, baseball has sustained our community for over 140 years now and I'm hoping it continues for many more years.  It was an extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.