[Puckett guy]

I am brand new to this Board, but a real golden oldie when it comes to simulating baseball games. I'm sure I was shaking APBA dice long before most of you were you. If you don't know what "APBA dice" are then you certainly weren't "simulating" baseball games back in the 60's and 70's.

In its day the APBA board game was one of the best simulations of baseball that you could find, in fact the last time I looked, a copy of the game had a small place in the Baseball Hall of Fame building. The game was very addictive and very time-consuming. (Sound familiar?).

Anyway, back in those days we dreamed about a machine that would help us run our leagues, keep track of our lineups, player stats, etc, but still allow us to create the type of game that we wanted. Well, eventually some folks invented the machine we needed and called it a "computer". So I bought a computer, telling my wife I could balance the checkbook with this thing, but secretly thinking this will be great to use for that new baseball game program that I see advertised.

In the following years I'm sure that I bought and tried just about every baseball game that was made for the PC. Starting with Earl Weaver Baseball and continuing right on through High Heat 2000whatever. Some of these games were fun for awhile, others were a total waste of time and money.

It wasn't until OOTP4 came along that I could truly say that I was playing the game on the machine that my buddies and I had dreamed about more years ago then I am willing to admit. So in a line Markus, thanks for making a very old ball simmer quite happy.

(Sorry about the long post, but this was my way to say hello to ythe community. From now on I'll stick with present day comments and questions.)