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. His game was loosely based on an old tabletop baseball game called National Pastime. The boys played a baseball simulation game invented by one of them, Dick Seitz. For 60 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.