The First APBA Advertisement

The Sporting News, April 25, 1951

The First APBA Advertisement

You might have seen this before:

I grabbed this image from a message board post from January 2022. I’m not sure what the original source is, though I imagine that it was probably something like APBA.zip (which, by the way, is where the incorrectly labeled first National Pastime advertisement first surfaced).

Of course, as you can clearly see, this APBA advertisement has been poorly cropped.

It comes from this issue of The Sporting News:

Collectors beware — the presence of Mickey Mantle on the cover means that most copies of this paper sell for around $300 today. Since there is no color in the paper, you’re much better off grabbing a SABR membership and simply downloading the pages from Paper of Record.

There are all sorts of features of historical interest in this newspaper. Take this, for example:

To show you how long ago this was, the lead editorial was criticism of Dick Wakefield for having the audacity to not sign for $17,600 a year:

And then there was this evaluation of Mickey Mantle’s 4-F draft status:

The big scoop was the first of a two part series on the life of the late Grover Cleveland Alexander written by his wife:

Alexander had passed away in November 1950.

Baseball was celebrating the start of the 1951 season:

And, of course, that meant the return of the famous boxscores:

The advertisements are fascinating. For example, there’s this ad for Mutual’s famous Game of the Day:

You’ll notice, by the way, that not all of Al Helfer’s broadcasts were recreations — a fact that has been the topic of much dispute in the world of classic radio collecting. We’ll talk more about the recording of his broadcast of the third game of the Giants - Dodgers playoff later.

This advertisement is probably more interesting to baseball sim fans:

I’ve got no idea which game this is. Let me know if you have any idea.

And that’s where we find the first APBA ad, which appears on page 36:

Now, unlike Clifford Van Beek, we know that Seitz used the 1951 Sporting News Baseball Guide, which was released a few weeks earlier:

The part that is more interesting, though, is probably the wording of the advertisement itself:

Those who maintain that APBA was intended to be a “parlor game” need to reread this advertisement:

• Seitz specifically mentions that APBA will replicate numerous real life statistics

• Seitz specifically states that the game can be used for replay projects, including the entire season

• Seitz states specifically that APBA “is not a toy or a mere game of cance, but an adult game”

The focus from the very beginning of APBA was clearly on realism — realism that stretched beyond just won-loss records and making sure that teams finished in the right order, that is. How “realistic” APBA actually was in the early days is still a matter for debate — but there is no question that “realism” was Seitz’ focus from the start.