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Roll! They Cried
Some ballplayers have their glory fade slowly, some stick around just one season too long. Then there’s Ben “The Blemish” Glinton, whose catastrophic failure in the biggest game of his life tainted his middling career and everything that came afterwards. Years later, a chance meeting with a young fan opens his eyes to the possibilities of APBA Baseball, the time-honored tabletop simulation game which Ben sees as a vehicle for reputation rehabilitation. If he can master the game, stage a tournament of top players, and coach his simulated self to victory through the intelligent management of dice, cards, and charts, he can finally know peace. His obstacles to regaining his past glory include an irritating training regimen under the watch of a mysterious APBA guru, a cross-country journey in a vehicle unfit for even driveway travel, and a collection of fellow board game diehards whose friendship makes it rather tough to concentrate on ultimate victory. Roll! They Cried is a light-hearted salute to a lifestyle which has consumed thousands with its benevolent opportunities for athletic greatness in miniature.
- GenresBaseball
202 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
1 person is currently reading
16 people want to read
About the author
Soren Narnia
43 books145 followersSoren Narnia's books are offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, meaning that anyone is free to adapt them as they see fit, even for profit, without the obligation to compensate the author.
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December 9, 2017
"You're my hero, Spike!" a boy of nine said to Spike as he held out a New England Never pennant for him to sign.
"Thanks, tike," Spike replied. "You're not gonna grow up to challenge my homerun record, are you?" he added with a wink.
"No sir!" the boy piped. "I want to work for Greyhound!"
Before I begin this review, I need to wax nostalgic by setting the tone with a little music. If that link doesn’t work then just search out the Field of Dreams theme.
The horn solo gets me every time, and just wait for that piano.
Some James Horner magic.
Now that the necessary atmosphere is set you can peruse this overly long review discussing a book written by an author with criminally little fanfare. Soren's got quite the impressive body of work covering light-hearted romance, horror, suspense, and many thoughtful prose pieces; his work is always imaginative, well-written, and entertaining. It's safe to say that I was looking forward to picking up his love-letter to baseball.
So, why the Field of Dreams accompaniment? Well, because it's a great soundtrack, and because baseball, of course.
More importantly, it elicits in me the me memories of being a young boy. A period of my life in which all that mattered was all that could be. It occupies that era in my life of summer vacations and all its associated freedoms; ball games with my family, adventures with my friends, and playing catch with my dad. It's fair to say the father-son story also plays a strong role in my nostalgia for both the movie and the sport.
You can almost hear James Earl Jones delivering his stirring monologue on the tenacity of the game.
I grew up in the Midwest, near Detroit, the closest city with a major league ball club. Because my father was a Tiger fan, I decided I was going to be one too.
I can remember the day I decided.
I was sitting on the bottom bunk of mine and my brother’s bed, flipping through a baseball sticker book (truly the ipad of the 80's) with my dad. I remember staring vividly at an animated chrome foil Detroit Tiger hologram sticker I had just gently nestled into its proper spot in just the right manner. I looked from the sticker book to my dad with great respect and admiration. Looking back and forth from my dad to the sticker, I silently decided my confident allegiance, which I then proclaimed aloud, “I think I want to be a Tiger’s fan!” Looking back, I can't say which was the bigger influence on my decision, my dad, or the sticker.
Baseball can be serious business here in the Midwest. I’ve never been a fair-weather fan, proudly sporting a Tiger's hat most of my life, despite the jeers and insults. Looking back, making that decision sure did feel important at the time. It turns out that fate can be a fickle mistress as my choice of fandom would eventually be both wondrously rewarding, and disparagingly foolish decision. The Tigers would go on to win the world series in '84, but follow it up in the late 90's with the record for most losses in a single season. In recent years, as the team has stumbled drunkenly out of the hall of shameful records, the reactions have gone from quiet snickers to occasional awkward high-fives at the grocery store with complete strangers.
It's been a thrill ride of fandom, to say the least.
Things are a bit different now for me, as I've generally lost interest in the game. It's always awkward when people stop me somewhere and ask "Did you catch that game last night?" The answer is almost always no. I haven't been able to provide, maybe, one or two player on the roster since the early 2000's. It just doesn't interest me the way it once did. I can’t say when that disinterest began exactly, but it wasn’t a single moment, and it wasn’t because the Tigers were terrible; because they were terrible I became a bigger fan.
That indeterminate moment I became less interested in baseball grew as the game became more and more about money, and advertising; when its heroes slowly transformed into hulking, drug-laced monsters, instead of hard-working, athletically-gifted, normal people.
Was the game ever pure? I don’t know, but it seemed like it was when I was a kid, and didn’t know any better, and that’s the period that defined my enjoyment of the sport.
So, what does that have to do with Roll! They Cried? Not a whole lot, really.
But it helps set the stage for what was going on in my mind as I was reading it.
Roll! They Cried, in summary, is a story about a washed up athlete, a baseball board game, and a completely impractical and impromptu road trip toward destiny. It’s fun, humorous, and loaded with heart; and who wouldn't love a book that starts with a chapter title like ‘The Day the Warning Track Wept’.
In two short innings, washed-up athlete, Ben Glinton, manages to destroy both his career and his team’s chances of winning the World Series. After leaving the game behind he discovers a baseball simulation board game called APBA Pro Baseball, which simulates the game using real players and their real statistics. Seeing an opportunity to reclaim his reputation, and a chance to make some money, Ben gathers a few friends, a busted up RV, and sets out across the country to win an APBA tournament, of his own creation, using his own card in the game, so that he can, once and for all, set the record straight on the game that blackened his name. Along the way there are lots of hijinks, goofy encounters, satirical commentary, and plenty of heart.
Prior to reading this book, I'd never played a game of APBA Pro Baseball, though I may have to seek one out and give it a try. There are other, similar, baseball simulation games out there, such as Strat-O-Matic Baseball, though the author sticks to his beloved APBA. I've read that each of the games has its own rabid fan-base. There's even a scene in this book in which Ben Glinton, and the 'APBA Collective' as they become known, stand off against a group of Strat-O-Matic fans. After seeing just how blood-thirsty things can get, I'd be careful in ever even asking which is the 'superior' game.
"Yeah, APBA sure has nice...parts," he said dripping with derision. "I hear they're a nice distraction from Strat-O-Matic's superior statistical accuracy."
Ricks' jaw dropped. He had heard some foul, foul things spoken in his twenty-six years on Mother Earth, but these guys were shooting flaming arrows.
It's more than just an homage to a board game, however. It's also a recognition of Baseball’s halcyon days, when the joy of the game meant far more to its players than million-dollar contracts, free agent trades, exorbitant concession prices, and season ending player strike. It’s a ticket into the area of the imagination in which all the best memories of the sport still exist. That place where it’s easy to remember when, as children, we looked upon the athletes as heroes, and the teams as the carriers of our collective hopes. We watched with unabashed expectation as our favorite players pitched, bat, ran, and played for nothing more than the victory, and the enjoyment of the game.
And that is what the author suggests is captured in the APBA Pro Baseball board game his characters are so enamored with. The game that lives inside those dice and cards, played out in an afternoon on a small fold-out table, is genuine. It isn’t poisoned with commercialism, TV timeouts, or big budget network alterations to make it ‘more exciting’. It's as if there is a lost purity APBA captures. At the very least it allows us to remember it the way we once did.
In addition to the lovable fool Ben Glinton's quest to redeem his legacy and the appreciation of baseball, we’re also treated to some wonderful satire on the game and modern day sport broadcast conventions, especially the current mode of television coverage. This was written over ten years ago, so the author’s commentary on the network’s desire to continue upping the excitement and ante for the viewers is almost tame now, but nonetheless, true. Nowhere is this satire more evident, or more on point, than with the ‘Thunder Dunk Sports Network’:
The Thunder Dunk Sports Network was founded in the year 2001 as a more energetic alternative to other 24-hour cable sports channels which, in the opinion of true diehard fans, did not take hype nearly far enough. TDSN boldly added a number of unique wrinkles to its televised contests, including a constant rock and roll soundtrack accompanying the comments of the announcers in the booth, the application of live strobe motion effects and color-alternating lenses to spruce the action up visually, and an attention-deficit updates technique which assured that the viewer did not have to arduously keep watching the same game without whipping around to others every ninety seconds. Purists may have taken issue with the way TDSN gave its viewers neither the highlights nor even the scores of small market pro teams, or the way they had dumped all hockey coverage in favor of dodge ball, blackjack, and extreme mountainwater riverboarding, but the profits spoke for themselves. Their brand new building in downtown Pittsburgh was all silver and steel and giant murals depicting nothing but touchdowns and homeruns - the only two types of plays allowed by corporate decree to be shown on their hourly sports reports.
Not far from the wonderful description given in this speech by James Earl Jones, America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers, but this time it's baseball that has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. The baseball we find today still resembles the game from America’s past though its heart has been replaced with something more machine, something corporate and greedy. It’s the same game, though it’s played for all the wrong reasons. Part of me still loves it; I’ll occasionally visit the local Triple A team and enjoy an afternoon or evening in the ballpark, soaking in the sunshine, the sound, and the smells.
There’s something about it that is distinctly nostalgic and that captures all the excitement and imagination of being a young boy and dreaming. In those days the sport itself could do no wrong.
Roll! They Cried was a great read, and filled with all the right kinds of heart. It's a silly fun story that has very little to do with my own experiences, which I've dictated here, but it did take me back to those warm summer vacation days when I would stay up late watching baseball with my dad, or playing catch.
It reminded me of baseball video games, and imagining myself as the heroic player ready to sock a game-winning run into the stands, or as the manager making all the right calls to win the game. It brought back an era of my life that lives only in memory now, which is ok, because the memory may actually be better than the actual thing ever was.
Much like Ben’s dream to reclaim his glory by winning an APBA tournament of his own devising, tt doesn’t have to make sense. What does make sense is the memory of the warm summer breeze on my face, the smell of my worn leather glove, and that feeling that anything was possible. I miss those days, and this book brought them flooding back.
I suppose now, "if I read it, they will come". When I read this book, or listen to this soundtrack, I can return to those days of yore, those distant weeks and months of days of unchecked hope; when baseball, for all its inherent flaws and faults, felt like something honest and pure. And, perhaps, on occasion, years from now, after I've slid the book back on my shelf, I may be awakened by a voice whispering to me, speaking to me as the sun rises over the distant horizon, welcoming me back whenever I'm ready to breathe that summer air beneath a sky so blue it'll be as if I dipped myself in magic waters; the memories will be so thick, I'll have to brush them away from my face.
Recommended to baseball and board game fans alike.
"I will win because I'm going to spend the time between now and the tournament getting as good as anyone has ever been at this game," Ben said. "There's no reason excellence should be worth more on a real playing field than a cardboard one. A champion is a champion. If I work just as hard as mastering APBA baseball as I did at playing left field, the results I get are just as meaningful."
"Thanks, tike," Spike replied. "You're not gonna grow up to challenge my homerun record, are you?" he added with a wink.
"No sir!" the boy piped. "I want to work for Greyhound!"
Before I begin this review, I need to wax nostalgic by setting the tone with a little music. If that link doesn’t work then just search out the Field of Dreams theme.
The horn solo gets me every time, and just wait for that piano.
Some James Horner magic.
Now that the necessary atmosphere is set you can peruse this overly long review discussing a book written by an author with criminally little fanfare. Soren's got quite the impressive body of work covering light-hearted romance, horror, suspense, and many thoughtful prose pieces; his work is always imaginative, well-written, and entertaining. It's safe to say that I was looking forward to picking up his love-letter to baseball.
So, why the Field of Dreams accompaniment? Well, because it's a great soundtrack, and because baseball, of course.
More importantly, it elicits in me the me memories of being a young boy. A period of my life in which all that mattered was all that could be. It occupies that era in my life of summer vacations and all its associated freedoms; ball games with my family, adventures with my friends, and playing catch with my dad. It's fair to say the father-son story also plays a strong role in my nostalgia for both the movie and the sport.
You can almost hear James Earl Jones delivering his stirring monologue on the tenacity of the game.
I grew up in the Midwest, near Detroit, the closest city with a major league ball club. Because my father was a Tiger fan, I decided I was going to be one too.
I can remember the day I decided.
I was sitting on the bottom bunk of mine and my brother’s bed, flipping through a baseball sticker book (truly the ipad of the 80's) with my dad. I remember staring vividly at an animated chrome foil Detroit Tiger hologram sticker I had just gently nestled into its proper spot in just the right manner. I looked from the sticker book to my dad with great respect and admiration. Looking back and forth from my dad to the sticker, I silently decided my confident allegiance, which I then proclaimed aloud, “I think I want to be a Tiger’s fan!” Looking back, I can't say which was the bigger influence on my decision, my dad, or the sticker.
Baseball can be serious business here in the Midwest. I’ve never been a fair-weather fan, proudly sporting a Tiger's hat most of my life, despite the jeers and insults. Looking back, making that decision sure did feel important at the time. It turns out that fate can be a fickle mistress as my choice of fandom would eventually be both wondrously rewarding, and disparagingly foolish decision. The Tigers would go on to win the world series in '84, but follow it up in the late 90's with the record for most losses in a single season. In recent years, as the team has stumbled drunkenly out of the hall of shameful records, the reactions have gone from quiet snickers to occasional awkward high-fives at the grocery store with complete strangers.
It's been a thrill ride of fandom, to say the least.
Things are a bit different now for me, as I've generally lost interest in the game. It's always awkward when people stop me somewhere and ask "Did you catch that game last night?" The answer is almost always no. I haven't been able to provide, maybe, one or two player on the roster since the early 2000's. It just doesn't interest me the way it once did. I can’t say when that disinterest began exactly, but it wasn’t a single moment, and it wasn’t because the Tigers were terrible; because they were terrible I became a bigger fan.
That indeterminate moment I became less interested in baseball grew as the game became more and more about money, and advertising; when its heroes slowly transformed into hulking, drug-laced monsters, instead of hard-working, athletically-gifted, normal people.
Was the game ever pure? I don’t know, but it seemed like it was when I was a kid, and didn’t know any better, and that’s the period that defined my enjoyment of the sport.
So, what does that have to do with Roll! They Cried? Not a whole lot, really.
But it helps set the stage for what was going on in my mind as I was reading it.
Roll! They Cried, in summary, is a story about a washed up athlete, a baseball board game, and a completely impractical and impromptu road trip toward destiny. It’s fun, humorous, and loaded with heart; and who wouldn't love a book that starts with a chapter title like ‘The Day the Warning Track Wept’.
In two short innings, washed-up athlete, Ben Glinton, manages to destroy both his career and his team’s chances of winning the World Series. After leaving the game behind he discovers a baseball simulation board game called APBA Pro Baseball, which simulates the game using real players and their real statistics. Seeing an opportunity to reclaim his reputation, and a chance to make some money, Ben gathers a few friends, a busted up RV, and sets out across the country to win an APBA tournament, of his own creation, using his own card in the game, so that he can, once and for all, set the record straight on the game that blackened his name. Along the way there are lots of hijinks, goofy encounters, satirical commentary, and plenty of heart.
Prior to reading this book, I'd never played a game of APBA Pro Baseball, though I may have to seek one out and give it a try. There are other, similar, baseball simulation games out there, such as Strat-O-Matic Baseball, though the author sticks to his beloved APBA. I've read that each of the games has its own rabid fan-base. There's even a scene in this book in which Ben Glinton, and the 'APBA Collective' as they become known, stand off against a group of Strat-O-Matic fans. After seeing just how blood-thirsty things can get, I'd be careful in ever even asking which is the 'superior' game.
"Yeah, APBA sure has nice...parts," he said dripping with derision. "I hear they're a nice distraction from Strat-O-Matic's superior statistical accuracy."
Ricks' jaw dropped. He had heard some foul, foul things spoken in his twenty-six years on Mother Earth, but these guys were shooting flaming arrows.
It's more than just an homage to a board game, however. It's also a recognition of Baseball’s halcyon days, when the joy of the game meant far more to its players than million-dollar contracts, free agent trades, exorbitant concession prices, and season ending player strike. It’s a ticket into the area of the imagination in which all the best memories of the sport still exist. That place where it’s easy to remember when, as children, we looked upon the athletes as heroes, and the teams as the carriers of our collective hopes. We watched with unabashed expectation as our favorite players pitched, bat, ran, and played for nothing more than the victory, and the enjoyment of the game.
And that is what the author suggests is captured in the APBA Pro Baseball board game his characters are so enamored with. The game that lives inside those dice and cards, played out in an afternoon on a small fold-out table, is genuine. It isn’t poisoned with commercialism, TV timeouts, or big budget network alterations to make it ‘more exciting’. It's as if there is a lost purity APBA captures. At the very least it allows us to remember it the way we once did.
In addition to the lovable fool Ben Glinton's quest to redeem his legacy and the appreciation of baseball, we’re also treated to some wonderful satire on the game and modern day sport broadcast conventions, especially the current mode of television coverage. This was written over ten years ago, so the author’s commentary on the network’s desire to continue upping the excitement and ante for the viewers is almost tame now, but nonetheless, true. Nowhere is this satire more evident, or more on point, than with the ‘Thunder Dunk Sports Network’:
The Thunder Dunk Sports Network was founded in the year 2001 as a more energetic alternative to other 24-hour cable sports channels which, in the opinion of true diehard fans, did not take hype nearly far enough. TDSN boldly added a number of unique wrinkles to its televised contests, including a constant rock and roll soundtrack accompanying the comments of the announcers in the booth, the application of live strobe motion effects and color-alternating lenses to spruce the action up visually, and an attention-deficit updates technique which assured that the viewer did not have to arduously keep watching the same game without whipping around to others every ninety seconds. Purists may have taken issue with the way TDSN gave its viewers neither the highlights nor even the scores of small market pro teams, or the way they had dumped all hockey coverage in favor of dodge ball, blackjack, and extreme mountainwater riverboarding, but the profits spoke for themselves. Their brand new building in downtown Pittsburgh was all silver and steel and giant murals depicting nothing but touchdowns and homeruns - the only two types of plays allowed by corporate decree to be shown on their hourly sports reports.
Not far from the wonderful description given in this speech by James Earl Jones, America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers, but this time it's baseball that has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. The baseball we find today still resembles the game from America’s past though its heart has been replaced with something more machine, something corporate and greedy. It’s the same game, though it’s played for all the wrong reasons. Part of me still loves it; I’ll occasionally visit the local Triple A team and enjoy an afternoon or evening in the ballpark, soaking in the sunshine, the sound, and the smells.
There’s something about it that is distinctly nostalgic and that captures all the excitement and imagination of being a young boy and dreaming. In those days the sport itself could do no wrong.
Roll! They Cried was a great read, and filled with all the right kinds of heart. It's a silly fun story that has very little to do with my own experiences, which I've dictated here, but it did take me back to those warm summer vacation days when I would stay up late watching baseball with my dad, or playing catch.
It reminded me of baseball video games, and imagining myself as the heroic player ready to sock a game-winning run into the stands, or as the manager making all the right calls to win the game. It brought back an era of my life that lives only in memory now, which is ok, because the memory may actually be better than the actual thing ever was.
Much like Ben’s dream to reclaim his glory by winning an APBA tournament of his own devising, tt doesn’t have to make sense. What does make sense is the memory of the warm summer breeze on my face, the smell of my worn leather glove, and that feeling that anything was possible. I miss those days, and this book brought them flooding back.
I suppose now, "if I read it, they will come". When I read this book, or listen to this soundtrack, I can return to those days of yore, those distant weeks and months of days of unchecked hope; when baseball, for all its inherent flaws and faults, felt like something honest and pure. And, perhaps, on occasion, years from now, after I've slid the book back on my shelf, I may be awakened by a voice whispering to me, speaking to me as the sun rises over the distant horizon, welcoming me back whenever I'm ready to breathe that summer air beneath a sky so blue it'll be as if I dipped myself in magic waters; the memories will be so thick, I'll have to brush them away from my face.
Recommended to baseball and board game fans alike.
"I will win because I'm going to spend the time between now and the tournament getting as good as anyone has ever been at this game," Ben said. "There's no reason excellence should be worth more on a real playing field than a cardboard one. A champion is a champion. If I work just as hard as mastering APBA baseball as I did at playing left field, the results I get are just as meaningful."
August 10, 2020
A book for APBA Baseball fans only. If you don't know what that is, you can probably stop reading. But if you really want to know: It's a tabletop sports game played with dice and cards. This book relies heavily on your knowledge of that game, the people that play and also the forums where it is discussed (some of those community members names are used in the book as characters, I recognized a few but probably missed a bunch). Anyway, as I told a friend, it's a niche of a niche book. But I think I forgot a niche or two in there.
This book has been compared to The Universal Baseball Association by Robert Coover. I would disagree with that. Yeah, it's about tabletop baseball and life in general but I think it's more like a Carl Hiassen type book. Wacky characters in wacky plots with wacky twists and turns. And it's quite funny. I found myself chuckling numerous types, not just on the APBA related passages. But, in the end, you really have to know about APBA (and tabletop sports in general) to enjoy this book.
On a side note, one of my favorite passages was when the main character asked someone if he played the game for fun. The response is a rambling paragraph basically saying no, he's just trying to tweak the game down to incredible minutiae just to make sure some stat isn't too far off. If you're ever been on a certain forum, you will laugh quite a bit at this. Me, I just like to play the games.
It's not a long book and I think any APBA fan will enjoy it. 66's all....
This book has been compared to The Universal Baseball Association by Robert Coover. I would disagree with that. Yeah, it's about tabletop baseball and life in general but I think it's more like a Carl Hiassen type book. Wacky characters in wacky plots with wacky twists and turns. And it's quite funny. I found myself chuckling numerous types, not just on the APBA related passages. But, in the end, you really have to know about APBA (and tabletop sports in general) to enjoy this book.
On a side note, one of my favorite passages was when the main character asked someone if he played the game for fun. The response is a rambling paragraph basically saying no, he's just trying to tweak the game down to incredible minutiae just to make sure some stat isn't too far off. If you're ever been on a certain forum, you will laugh quite a bit at this. Me, I just like to play the games.
It's not a long book and I think any APBA fan will enjoy it. 66's all....
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