He printed player cards on his own printing press, typed out play charts and played APBA with three comrades in the barracks at Fort Eustis, VA. Seitz’s original game went with him to war in the 1940’s. The game is APBA, and the word is pronounced “App’Bah” – a term as slick and condensed as the game. So while APBA is still an acronym for that first baseball simulation league, the word has taken on a meaning of its own. That appellation soon was whittled down to its essential form: APBA. The boys called themselves the American Professional Baseball Association. But unlike any previous board game, it combined the randomness of dice with the on-field performances of individual players. Seitz’s game included batting, pitching and fielding. National Pastime had batting charts only.
His game was based on an old tabletop baseball game called National Pastime.
The boys played a baseball simulation game created by one of them, Dick Seitz. For 70 years APBA has been the unchallenged King of quality sports simulation products.ĪPBA dates back to the 1930s and a bunch of high-school buddies in Lancaster, PA.
