"I ain't what I used to be, but who the hell is?"
I live outside Chicago with the Redhead, the poet, three cats, and two dachshunds.
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A few months ago, my brother and I decided to sell on eBay the APBA baseball cards we had accumulated during the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, I sold the APBA football cards I had bought as well. That left only the APBA basketball game, which my other brother had received as a gift the same year I had received the football game.
Digressing briefly, before we played APBA, we had the famous All-Star Baseball game, which was developed by one Ethan Allen. When I was a child playing this game, it was vaguely apparent that he was a former big-league player, but I had no idea who he actually was. As the more astute of you may know, he was not only a big-league player in the 1930s, but is better known as the long-time baseball coach at Yale. His most famous player turned out to be a first baseman named George Bush.
Baseball lends itself well to tabletop game play, as is easily broken into individual events, which can be easily simulated, either simply as APBA does, or using much more statistically robust methods, as the most popular games currently on the market, such as Diamond Mind and Strat-o-Matic, do. Baseball is also easily adapted to the computer, although APBA’s product suffers by comparison to the other games, as they used the same simple simulation as they did for the board game. Football can be simulated at the individual play level, which leaves out some of the nuances, but still yields a satisfactory result.
Having success with the aforementioned sports, and being able to adapt their system to golf, horse racing, and even bowling, the makers of APBA games evidently figured that basketball would be equally easy to simulate. Such is not the case, at least when it came to this game. Unlike the other APBA games, the basketball game was not easily learned, nor was it enjoyable to play. Trying to play the basketball game was an exercise in frustration, as the few times I tried to play the game, it took the better part of an hour to play a quarter. Compare this to taking twenty minutes to play a baseball game, and about an hour to play an entire football game.
Needless to say, the game went into the closet and stayed there. I’ve toted it around for the past twenty years, through several moves and a house purchase, never trying to play it again. As I’m not one to rush into things, it was not until yesterday that I posted the basketball game. Now it’s on eBay, and since it’s already been bid on, will be leaving my house next week. Thus closes the tabletop APBA career.
Thanks to anyone who has visited since yesterday, and thanks in particular to those who've commented.
I think it appropriate to mention that, true to his nature, one of Puck's last fine moments was right before Christmas, when he walked through a pan of freshly cooked (but fortunately cooled) chocolate brownies in search of a taste of butter.
In the summer of 1993, I decided to adopt a second cat. A trip to the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society’s shelter put me face-to-face with a four-month old black and white cat with a bright pink nose, who had been picked up from a porch in
Despite being somewhat shy and neurotic (thanks in no small part to his owner, who has the same traits), Puck was a sweet cat. He quickly realized that if I was home during the day, that dinner time could come early, so he was always sure to let me know when he wanted room service. When I was at work, he would begin to eye the front door by 5, and wait patiently for me to come in.
He also discovered that I was quite willing to offer him people food, which unfortunately meant that he would eventually top out at 21 pounds by the time he was nine. Despite his zeppelin-like shape, he became a mouser in his middle age, finding and killing three mice in the eighteen months I lived in an old two-flat.
It took him a few years, but he eventually became, while not exactly a lap cat, more of a lay-across-my-legs cat. He would occasionally climb into my lap and purr loudly when scratched.
About three years ago, I took him to the vet for a cut on his nose, at which time I discovered that he had dropped to fourteen pounds. This wasn’t due to running the basement stairs, unfortunately, but was due to diabetes. Twice-daily insulin injections turned out to not bother him in the least, particularly if he was being fed at the time. He gained back some weight, and everything was fine.
A few months ago, he began losing weight again, but it had stabilized at around 12 pounds, and he seemed quite healthy otherwise, still requesting dinner whenever I was home, and even starting to climb onto beds to sleep, something he had not done in a few years.
Shortly after Christmas, however, he began losing weight, and became much less active, showing signs of weakness in his hind legs. Although this is a common symptom in diabetic cats, it soon became clear that something was wrong, particularly when stopped eating the moist food he loved so much.
This past Monday, he began having difficulty walking, and would complain if I picked him up. I had scheduled a trip to the vet for Tuesday afternoon, but it was clear that he needed to go as soon as possible. When we got to the vet Tuesday morning, the insides of his ears and his gums were turning yellow. The vet did not need to run any tests to see that he was going into liver failure.
The only course of action would have been to insert a feeding tube into his neck and feed him several times a day for several weeks to try to bring him back to health. This had no better than a 60% chance of success with a healthy cat, and was simply not practical.
More importantly, there was no point in putting him through this. So, I took him home, gave him some tuna and treats, and after a few hours, took him back to the vet. Shortly after 5 Tuesday afternoon, I kissed him goodbye.
Wherever you are, Puckster, I hope there are mice to chase and all the cheese and treats you could want.
