The front page of that APBA Journal issue is a reprint of "The Sports Collector", a Sporting News column from July 24, 1976. The Simonelli/Weiser article starts on Page Three. TSN's mainstream mention of the National Pastime game came complete with Seitz being interviewed on the subject: "There's never been any secret that APBA grew out of a game we played as kids. But the only red similarity between the two games is principle. There was no pitching per se in the game we played as kids and the refinements we've done to APBA make it a far more advanced and intricate game than the original." (Undoubtedly easier for Seitz to claim when few had seen the NP boards, but true except for that one not-so-minor detail.)
Anyway, If Weiser as AJ editor had been holding up the story until then, it clearly wasn't a secret after that, though as you note it still had to be treated carefully.
As it turned out, Van Beek had come to the APBA convention that summer and met APBA VP Fritz Light, who was seeing the cards for the first time. Van Beek didn't meet Seitz and wasn't introduced to the crowd; the impression I was given, long after the fact, was that it was fine with him. The pseudonym in the article would seem to suggest that either he or the authors thought he'd be in danger from readers who'd come after him in defense of Seitz; the Simonelli/Weiser story was almost certainly written before Madden's column appeared, when Weiser had reason to believe the disclosure would be more of a threat.
I don't think any of APBA's early amployees had seen NP, but as I understand it at least two of the kids who played in Seitz's league in the 1930s, Wendell Mook and 'Gabby' Doran, were still alive and in the area well into the 1990s. (Seitz made NP cards for MLB players who came up between 1931 and 1936 to keep their league updated, and also made batting cards for himself and all the players in the league, since in the Depression era many MLB teams had player-managers. Reportedly he used dice rolls to generate the number of power numbers and singles, much as roleplaying fantasy gamers would do fifty years later. Anyway, as a result the names of Seitz's league opponents still live on.)
FWIW, the cards that Seitz made show definitively that as a teenager, Seitz knew a lot less about how Van Beek constructed cards than you do now: not necessarily from an accuracy standpoint, but in terms of templates and left/right distinctions.
I’m afraid I have nothing more to add to the national pastime info but I did want to thank you for a very interesting article. I played apba baseball briefly in the 70s, when they came out with the 1930 season. I did not know any details about this. I have always played strat-o-matic baseball. Also enjoy your YouTube content.
The front page of that APBA Journal issue is a reprint of "The Sports Collector", a Sporting News column from July 24, 1976. The Simonelli/Weiser article starts on Page Three. TSN's mainstream mention of the National Pastime game came complete with Seitz being interviewed on the subject: "There's never been any secret that APBA grew out of a game we played as kids. But the only red similarity between the two games is principle. There was no pitching per se in the game we played as kids and the refinements we've done to APBA make it a far more advanced and intricate game than the original." (Undoubtedly easier for Seitz to claim when few had seen the NP boards, but true except for that one not-so-minor detail.)
Anyway, If Weiser as AJ editor had been holding up the story until then, it clearly wasn't a secret after that, though as you note it still had to be treated carefully.
As it turned out, Van Beek had come to the APBA convention that summer and met APBA VP Fritz Light, who was seeing the cards for the first time. Van Beek didn't meet Seitz and wasn't introduced to the crowd; the impression I was given, long after the fact, was that it was fine with him. The pseudonym in the article would seem to suggest that either he or the authors thought he'd be in danger from readers who'd come after him in defense of Seitz; the Simonelli/Weiser story was almost certainly written before Madden's column appeared, when Weiser had reason to believe the disclosure would be more of a threat.
I don't think any of APBA's early amployees had seen NP, but as I understand it at least two of the kids who played in Seitz's league in the 1930s, Wendell Mook and 'Gabby' Doran, were still alive and in the area well into the 1990s. (Seitz made NP cards for MLB players who came up between 1931 and 1936 to keep their league updated, and also made batting cards for himself and all the players in the league, since in the Depression era many MLB teams had player-managers. Reportedly he used dice rolls to generate the number of power numbers and singles, much as roleplaying fantasy gamers would do fifty years later. Anyway, as a result the names of Seitz's league opponents still live on.)
FWIW, the cards that Seitz made show definitively that as a teenager, Seitz knew a lot less about how Van Beek constructed cards than you do now: not necessarily from an accuracy standpoint, but in terms of templates and left/right distinctions.
I’m afraid I have nothing more to add to the national pastime info but I did want to thank you for a very interesting article. I played apba baseball briefly in the 70s, when they came out with the 1930 season. I did not know any details about this. I have always played strat-o-matic baseball. Also enjoy your YouTube content.
Next year will be 100 years since Clifford Van Beek was granted the patent for National Pastime.
have you given thought to looking at a third fella who sort of split from APBA Bill Middleton?
Does he know a lot about National Pastime?
He is doing NPNG+
Good game but decidedly not the same thing.