This past Saturday the IAL stepped into the future playing the first ever series over SKYPE. The IAL is a 10 team draft 30+ year old dice baseball league, games are played using the board game APBA, a predecessor of Strat-O-Matic. You can see a complete baseball register of the Illowa APBA League here.
League members are from the Chicago area, the Quad Cities area, the Champaign area, and Pittsburgh. We play a 162 game schedule, face-to-face, we get together three times of year for the out-of-town series, and play local guys throughout the year. Our May get together will be on the May 17th weekend, I cannot make it, so we tried SKYPE.
It worked like a charm as the Green Rock Bombers hosted the Chicago Champions. Greg Maddux, the league’s all-time winningest pitcher (today’s his birthday, mine too, also the Baseball Zealot is three years old today – Happy Birthday to All!), took the bump for the Champs vs the Bombers Carlos Zambrano. Grady Sizemore opened the game with a leadoff single as Chicago took a 1st inning two nothing lead, but trailed after one 4-2. Not to be denied the Champions scored 11 enroute to a three run victory.
Last year’s first place finishers, the Bombers are retooling this year, while the Champs are poised to make a run at their 11th Championship, although we haven’t won in over a decade, boy that seems like a long time ago.
SKYPE is great technology for realtime audio & video. The picture & sound were clear, although my opponent kept asking if I could put a 25 year old female in front of my webcam. It was like we were sitting right across the table from each other. There was even the advantage of Mike being able to smoke in his basement, while my kitchen remained smoke free, blowing smoke at the camera was humorous rather than aggravating.
that is really awesome, Tedd (and Mike).
how well did it work logistically? Did it take much longer than normal FTF?
It was just like we were in the same room, minus the stank that sometimes arises during a MOB series. It took a little longer because we were talking and joking back & forth. Four hours for six games.