I am 8 years older than my brother Mike. So when I was 20 and he was 12, I would wake from a drunken stupor and stumble downstairs to the family room and there would be Mike and a kid named Dave Schmeding playing either strat - o - matic baseball or APBA. And since I was way to numb to do anything else, I would watch the play. Schmeding some might remember managed the Carolina franchise in seasons 23 and 24. Dave's family had moved to SC before high school. Dave got married and moved to NC and saw an ad in the ABPA journal for the MDTL. We were kind of re-united until the yoke on his shoulders placed there by his new spouse got too heavy for him to lift. She said something about this stuff being childish.
Somehow I became hooked. As did Greg. We had a family league made up of team named after obscure NJ towns and cities (HoHoKus?). While Greg was at William and Mary, Mike and I (on a dry day) would drive down to Williamsburg and play some games. It was only a 6 hour drive. It wasn't like we lived in Texas or anything. After Greg got married and even after I did, Mike and I would drive to Newport News and Virginia Beach to play a few series. In '84 Greg moved to Roanoke and Mike and I stopped going. It was a 10 hour drive and my bladder couldn't do a trip that long anymore. Besides I was a new dad and I was forced to become somewhat responsible.
Every year, we would drive to Lancaster to pick up our cards. Greg would drive up from Roanoke and Mike and I would drive to Lancaster in 3-4 hours depending on the fickle traffic lights along US 202. We stayed in the now fabled Treadway Motor Inn. The same Treadway that had cut Greg off on the "all you can eat breakfast". The same Treadway that Mike showed other diners how to properly eat the "all you can eat seafood buffet". Greg always wanted Mike and I to bring him a sausage and pepper sub, or a meatballl sub, or a pizza or all three from our home in NJ. Apparently, there are no good eats below the Mason Dixon line.
When Liam was one, Mike and I drove to Lancaster with Liam in the car seat. My wife had told me that I couldn't go. TOLD ME. Yeah, right. So Liam made his first pilgrimage at the age of 1. We stopped into a McDonald's and looked at the cards. Liam was all about the cards and the stats until the time he got his first team, nine years later.
Mike and Greg and I were each in PRO 3 for a number of years. Greg longer than the rest of us. I was the commissioner of the Blue Mountain League for awhile. My opponents were dairy farmers and wanted to play at 3 am or 7 pm otherwise they were working the barns. I learned a lot about synthetic hormones in the milk though
There is no place like MDTL though. Greg got in first. I don't know how but it was through the Tidewater connection. Then he got me in and I got Mike in. Then Mike left. Then Mike came back. Then Liam joined as a 10 year old. We took the train to Newport News. Don picked us up. Liam looked up to Don. And up and up some more. Mike left again. After my wife Margaret passed away, Liam and I didn't feel like doing anything. We were carried for a year by our good friends in the league but finally we asked out for a couple of years. Greg stayed the longest of any of us. He has left but once. And when he did, I came back and Liam came to manage Uncle Greg's team. And hey, Mike came back again. The boy is like herpes in a way. And here we are.
Liam is on the verge of a World Series date with Terry, provided he can ever get through the first round of the playoffs. Me? I just stay in for entertainment value. That's my story. I am certain that Mike or Liam will tell you that I am full of crap and have their own versions. But this is how I remember it