Set Review: All American Girls Professional Baseball League

I indicated on my first blog post for Red 11 that I was interested in and collected odd APBA (or APBA compatible) sets..  I am going to start a series of blogs reviewing them, mixed in with other topics as the spirit strikes me. I  have several Japanese sets, Negro League, and odd Minor League sets. I am always on the lookout for these sets-not strictly to collect them, but I play them.  Much like APBA issued sets, I don't collect to have original sets, I collect sets to play.  

Note: this set is not an official APBA product.

This set comes from Archrivals baseball.  Here is a link to their web page.
The All American Girls Professional Baseball League. 1934-1954
With this set you get: the 1945 season with 6 teams plus you get 5 All-Time Great teams (1944 Milwaukee Chicks, 1946 Racine Belles, 1949 Rockford Peaches, 1951 South Bend Blue Sox and the 1953 Fort Wayne Daisies).
Here a link to the roster. 

Below are some photos of the cards.  They come to you as PDFs and it is up to you to print them.  I ordered perforated card stock from the Perforated Paper Company that had an option for 9 squares per sheet.  The card stock is nice and heavy (another option to click when ordering the paper) however, they tend to stick to one another as there is no surface coating on the paper.  I use individual baseball card sleeves to keep them in good shape and to stop the annoying sticking. 

Here is a link to the company I ordered from:  Perforated paper.  The quality of the cuts were varied, when the machine was sharp, they were great.  When the machine got dull I needed a scissors.  I would say about 20% of the total cuts were unacceptable.  I emailed the company and they responded but did not offer any compensation. I may speak to them in advance of an order next time. 
Each team comes with a handy roster card, printed in color with team logo, and that is a nice touch. 

I should mention the owner of the company Bruce Norland as I have found him to be helpful and typically Minnesota Nice. 

The roster cards give you a good initial way to play the team and a feel for the limited number of players that were on a AAGPBL team.  As you see here with the Rockford Peaches, a three person rotation is standard and that is what I use when they play each other and against the 1977 Twins.

This is a fun set to play, mostly in a tournament of all the AAGPBL teams as they are normalized for each other and not for MLB, but who will stop you from running these women out against the 1977 Minnesota Twins, as I did. 

Here we have a top-shelf arm for Rockford.  "Flash" Florreich is rated an A/B with the alphabet kxyz.  Nasty stuff.  She earns her APBA honors from a 22-7 record with a 0.67 ERA with 94 walks against 201 Ks in 269 innings pitched. 

Here is a look at an arm toward the normal side, but I liked using Flash against that '77 Carew card!  "Lefty" Applegren is a B with xy-w, earned with a record of 5-12, 3.09 ERA, 124 walks and 64Ks over 131 innings.  

 Typical outfielder, "Squirt" Callow is a F-3.  Her offensive # are earned with 387 at bats, 88 hits, 2 HRs, a .227 average (these players are typically low) and a .307 slugging percentage. 

11 is 0-1
15 is the vaunted RED 11!
Mostly 8s where you want to look
and 66 is a 0-1
Three second column 1s
Seventeen second column 2s

And here is the card you are looking for, the 1954 Dorothy Kamenshek. 1B F 5

It is a great card from my personal view.  It has three first column Red 11s and four 14*s in the first column.  Made famous in the movie A League of Their Own by Gina Davis.

We have lived in Springfield Illinois for 11 years now and I was happy to learn that we had a team, the Springfield Sallies.  They played on the same field I can be found at most summer nights watching the Springfield Sliders. A team photo below.

The 1949 Rockford Peaches went 1-4 in a seven game series against the 1977 Minnesota Twins.  Not to be surprised Flash took the win for the Peaches.  They could not muster enough offence to hang with the Twins, with the closest gap being 2 runs after any third inning.  They are a blast to hit and run and the very act of entering their names onto a scorecard brings out the baseball historian in all of us.  I highly recommend this set.

Play-ability: 9 of 9 innings

Company to deal with: 9 of 9 innings

Aesthetics of cards: 7 of 9 innings

Note: it will take some tinkering to get the printing process just right and remember, you get PDFs, not cards.  

Also, I recommend not sharing the PDFs, pay for them. It is the right thing to do, and I teach ethics for a living.