Two cities will be seeing an abnormal amount of dice rolling and card flipping on the same date, roughly between 9am and 6pm.

For the first time (to my knowledge), there are 2 “Regional” APBA Tournaments occurring on the same date.  Saturday, April 1st, 2017.  In Maple Grove, MN, The Neil Ess Memorial Twin Cities APBA Baseball Tournament – VII, and in Champaign, IL, the 2nd Annual Prairieland APBA Baseball Tournament.  2 cities which are approximately 527 miles apart by car.

It appears each tournament, by coincidence, is ending up with 25 entrants.  That is a total of 50 APBA fanatics going at it, face-to-face, on April Fools’ Day, 2017.

The 2 tournament formats differ:  TCABT is and always has been any MLB team between 1901 and current day, who has not won a TCABT event previously while the Prairieland Tourney for its 2nd event, is any team between 1970 and 2000, with 1 “draft pick” from the dead-ball era between 1900-1919.  Some of the organizers of the Prairieland Tournament have been regulars at previous TCABT events (Eric Berg has made several TCABT events and John Kalous made TCABT-VI last October).  The Prairieland Tournament organizer is Tom Nelshoppen, author of The APBA Blog.

With other Regional Tournaments being run around the country, there are a variety of different formats available as well.

Even the APBA Game Company keeps an updated list of the Regional tournaments around the country in their weekly newsletter.  Also, there is a folder for Regional Tournament activity on the APBA Between The Lines Delphi Forum.

Other regional tournaments being run around the country include:  The Chicagoland APBA Baseball Tournament, last held in Des Plaines, IL (run by Rob Spatz, and formerly run by Doug Schyuler), The Greater Michigan APBA Baseball Tournament in Jackson, MI (run by Pastor Rich Zawadzki), The Linda B. Schulz APBA Baseball Tournament in Slippery Rock, PA (run by Ken Schulz), The APBA Lancaster World Series Baseball Tournament (run by Dale Shreiner), The Toledo Glass City APBA Baseball Tournament in Toledo, OH (run by Ron Emch).  And just recently, The Capital of the Confederacy APBA Baseball Tournament in Richmond, VA (run by Jim Saska) and the Florida RollAPBAplooza Festival in Palm Harbor, FL (not sure who to credit for running this tourney).

We need someone out in the western United States to begin a tournament …