How The TCBA Began

Jim Lafargue, by 1975 a veteran of seven years in APBA draft mail leagues, had reached some strong opinions about what he liked and didn't like in leagues, and decided to form his own league by advertising in a newsletter called the APBA Journal. He planned to start an 18-team draft league with the current season's players, organized in three divisions of six, since the major leagues had 24 teams then and 18 teams seemed to allow for a good distribution of player strength. The idea was to run a current-season draft league but to allow for replays of past seasons later if enough people were interested. In order to encompass the possibility of later using the entire range of teams published by APBA (1906 to present), the name Twentieth Century Baseball Association was chosen. In 1975, of course, there were no computer baseball games, and APBA produced only what is now known as the "basic game."

This plan was soon modified for two reasons. First, there was no strong interest in replaying past seasons until Stu McCorkindale brought that idea to life in 1994 in the TCBA Yesterday league; second, the response to the APBA Journal ad for a present-day draft league was overwhelming. Over 60 people inquired about the new organization, so a screening process was developed, consisting of a questionnaire and test of sorts. The questionnaires asked about APBA Baseball and league experience as well as general background, while the test was directed at ability to keep a boxscore, put together a team (out of two real-life rosters combined) and come up with some trade proposals. About half of the 60 who inquired actually completed the application process, leaving a dilemma: 26 of the applicants were too good to exclude, but there were only 18 franchises. All 26 applicants couldn't fit in one league, but there weren't enough for two, and Jim couldn't bring himself to reject any of the best 26.

TCBA history tells that the solution chosen was to start two leagues at once. We drafted two 18-team leagues (all by mail, using preference lists) and left five franchises idle, with full rosters, in each league. The recruiting and draft had taken from February to May of 1975, so we had just enough time left for an "experimental" 126-game 13-team schedule for each league. Based on the constitution of an older league and, adding democratic procedures for voting on rules and league administration, Jim used his newly-learned drafting ability from Boston College Law School to put together a 6-page TCBA Constitution. Both leagues continued to operate independently using a full set Major League players, under identical rules, making contact only in the TCBA World Series, until there was a complete separation many years later. The leagues were designated NL and AL (now known as "TCBA Today").

The charter managers were an interesting group, differing considerably from the present roster both in age and diversity. The average age was about 25, ranging from 16 to over 40 (very unusual then!), and the geographic spread was impressive. We soon had teams from coast to coast, in both French and English speaking parts of Canada, at a classified location on board a navy ship in the Pacific, and later in Saudi Arabia and Europe. Probably the most outstanding member in those early years was Dave Brown because of his superb and tireless efforts producing the TCBA newsletter, which became our trademark to the APBA community.

Formation of the TCBA was a major development in the 1975 APBA world, as it instantly, with 26 members, became the largest APBA mail-league organization in history. Nevertheless, even more surprising developments were to come that season. We recruited the managers for the 10 idle teams, and adopted the newly-announced but still unseen APBA Baseball Master Game for exclusive league use. This sent us into the bicentennial year with 36 teams, using a new game product none of us had ever tried. We succeeded, and the venture in friendship and competition which many have helped to build had been launched.

It is with great pleasure that we reflect on the many changes which have taken place since 1975 and find ourselves still having fun at the same hobby, which keeps us intimately involved with baseball, the greatest game ever invented, and gives us the pleasure of communicating with you through this medium as yet undreamed of at our inception.

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