In preparation of the arrival of the new APBA Baseball box, I began to put together the lineups for Opening Day 1986 for the Mets and the Giants.

I looked up the lineups for the Mets-Pirates season opener on April 8th, 1986, started to sort out the lineups, and found that the 1986 set does not have Steve Kemp carded for the Pirates.

Hmph.  I hate when that happens, but there you go.

So I started looking at possible solutions.

Option 1:  purchase the updated 1986 APBA Baseball Season set, where all players are carded.

Nope.  Not interested in purchasing any new APBA Baseball sets.

Option 2: play the game with Payoff Pitch Baseball 1986, where Kemp *is* carded.

Possible/probable route I’ll take, as I was thinking of rolling home games using APBA and away games using Payoff Pitch.

Option 3: same as #2, but just sub players in when playing APBA.

More probable since I had to do that with some games/players in my Ball Park Baseball 1971 SF Giants replay.

Option 4: APBA only and sub players as needed.

Most probable if I only want to use one game system.  Which I kinda do, at least with either or both the Mets or Giants.

For starters I think I’ll play with the APBA Baseball 1986 season, basic set, with advanced fielding rules.

I’d like to also score these games by hand, there’s a website called Digital Dugout that will print out a blank scoresheet with lineups for any ball game from 1906 to now, but BallStat makes it easier on my arthritis and stat keeping.

I’ll figure it out after the new box arrives.

Stay tuned!