He helped make theater organ fun!

He passed away at age eighty on 12-30-2021...and he was the very first person I saw play a theater pipe organ in person.

His name was Jack Moelmann. In November 1984, he did a concert at Nebraska's Bellevue Little Theater, a playhouse that, at the time, had a two-manual, five-rank Wurlitzer theater organ. After the concert, I was invited to what turned out to be an organizational meeting of the River City Theatre Organ Society. I've been a member of RCTOS ever since. And Jack was one of the biggest reasons I joined the club.

At the time I met Jack, he was an Air Force colonel who was stationed at Bellevue's Offutt Air Force Base. He'd been in the Air Force since 1965, the year he received his Bachelor of Science degree from Bradley University.

Chicago-born Jack got started in music in 1949, the year he turned eight years old (he not only took to the piano, he also sang in the church choir). He was hooked for the rest of his life, thanks to the many gigs he played in high school and college. Theater organ fans around here were very fortunate that Jack lived here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area during 1984-85, a time when RCTOS was in its infancy. This highly-accomplished (both in the Air Force and in the world's concert halls and movie palaces) man helped make those early meetings fun, due to his vast repertoire AND his trademark humor.

Jack joined the American Theatre Organ Society in 1967; in 1983, he launched a 23-year period where he served on the ATOS board of directors in one capacity or another. From 1985 to 1988, he ran ATOS...then became its secretary in 1993, keeping that gig until 2006. Two years before becoming ATOS secretary, Jack retired from the US Armed Forces. All the time he was in the USAF, Jack earned hardware such as the Air Force Commendation Medal, the Air Force Meritorious Service Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit. Jack eventually left the Omaha Metro and moved to the St. Louis area...where he turned everything up a bunch of notches. He became a lifetime member of ATOS in 1994, an inductee into the organization's Hall of Fame in 2008, and ATOS Organist of the Year in 2018.

The crowning touch (well, I like to think so!) came in August 2008...when he headlined at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. (If I can find that on YouTube, well...)

Jack, I'm glad to have been a part of your life.

I'm glad you were a part of mine.

Strongest Division 1-A playoff field ever!

I guess it's more than fitting to write this on the eve of the so-called CFP championship game.

And I won't get to give you the results until at least this coming September, since the folks at Dave Koch Sports won't release the 2019 college football files for the company's Action! PC Football game until this coming September.

But the field for this season's "shoulda-coulda-woulda" NCAA Division 1-A football playoff is mind-blowing for this one reason:

All but one of the 24 teams won at least ten games apiece in 2019. 

And that's not counting the actual bowl games.

By contrast, last season's 1-A playoff field featured 18 ten-victory squads (not counting the bowl games).

Well, anyway, here's how the 2019 Division 1-A field shapes up:

1. Ohio State (13-0; Big Ten champ)/2. Louisiana State (13-0; SEC champ)/3. Clemson (13-0; ACC champ)/4. Boise State (12-1; Mountain West champ)/5. Memphis (12-1; AAC champ)/6. Oklahoma (12-1; Big 12 champ)/7. Appalachian State (12-1; Sun Belt champ)/8. Georgia (11-2; SEC at-large)

9. Oregon (11-2; Pac-12 champ)/10. Baylor (11-2; Big 12 at-large)/11. Utah (11-2; Pac-12 at-large)/12. Notre Dame (10-2; independent at-large)/13. Penn State (10-2; Big Ten at-large)/14. SMU (10-2; AAC at-large)/15. Navy (10-2; AAC at-large)/16. Air Force (10-2; Mountain West at-large)

17. Alabama (10-2; SEC at-large)/18. Minnesota (10-2; Big Ten at-large)/19. Florida (10-2; SEC at-large)/20. Cincinnati (10-3; AAC at-large)/21. Wisconsin (10-3; Big Ten at-large)/22. Florida Atlantic (10-3; C-USA champ)/23. Louisiana-Lafayette (10-3; Sun Belt at-large)/24. Miami (OH) (8-5; MAC champ)

Okay...how'd Ohio State slip in ahead of LSU?

All twelve of the Buckeyes' 2019 foes (Wisconsin and Ohio State tangled twice; the second time was at the Big Ten title game) were in Division 1-A; a club earns 50 quality points for defeating a winning D-1-A squad and 45 quality points after beating a Division 1-A team that had a .500 or worse campaign.

On the other hand, Louisiana State took on a Division 1-AA team, Northwestern State of the Southland Conference. The Tigers crushed the 3-9 Demons...and earned just 35 quality points for doing so. (Had the Demons enjoyed a winning season, LSU's victory would've meant 40 quality points.)

Now...about Boise State and Memphis skating ahead of the College Football Playoff committee's fourth choice, Oklahoma.

First of all, the MWC champion Broncos and AAC kingpin Tigers each saw their D-1-A opponents rack up 77 victories apiece...while all the Division 1-A teams that met the Sooners totaled 76 wins.

And so, the next tiebreaker kicked in: Conference records. 

That's how the team from Idaho won out. Boise State went 9-0 in Mountain West play...while Memphis turned in a American Athletic Conference mark of 8-1.

One interesting season, 2019.

Usually, nine wins would be enough to earn a 1-A squad an at-large berth. Instead, San Diego State, UAB, Central Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana Tech, and Virginia- to say nothing of Auburn, Iowa, and Michigan- couldn't get in this time. (And the Blazers, the Rainbow Warriors, and the Cavaliers would've gotten automatic bids if they'd won their conference championship games.)  

And one of those nine teams would've been crying had the field been expanded to 32 contingents.

One interesting season, 2019.

Can't wait to play these playoffs. 

And the champion is...

Well, I finally got around to it.

I wanted to get this done way back in January, but lots of circumstances (including my joining the creative community Stage 32) took precedence.

So did a change from using Lance Haffner Games' old 3-in-1 Football to Dave Koch Sports' Action! PC Football. (Don't worry...all the games I played using 3-in-1 still count.)

Folks, without further ado, this is how the coulda-shoulda-woulda 2018 NCAA Division 1-A football playoffs shook out (seeding in parentheses):

FIRST ROUND: Appalachian State (9) 20, Northern Illinois (24) 14; Boise State (16) 38, UAB (17) 21; Louisiana State (20) 38, Army (13) 28; Cincinnati (12) 26, Kentucky (21) 14; Utah State (14) 28, Penn State (19) 21; Syracuse (22) 42, Fresno State (11) 34; Washington (15) 28, Buffalo (18) 14; Washington State (10) 35, North Carolina State (23) 30

SECOND ROUND: Clemson (1) 44, Appalachian State 38; Michigan (8) 45, Boise State 10; Oklahoma (5) 42, Louisiana State 31; Cincinnati 24, Central Florida (4) 21; Ohio State (6) 21, Utah State 16; Notre Dame (3) 33, Syracuse 17; Washington 31, Georgia (7) 28; Alabama (2) 31, Washington State 17

QUARTERFINAL ROUND: Michigan 28, Clemson 27; Oklahoma 38, Cincinnati 21; Ohio State 38, Notre Dame 17; Alabama 31, Washington 3

SEMIFINAL ROUND: Oklahoma 33, Michigan 7; Alabama 16, Ohio State 14

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: Alabama 31, Oklahoma 24

This set of playoffs resulted in the second straight season with an SEC team in the driver's seat...and just the second shoulda-coulda-woulda title for the Crimson Tide (the first one took place in, surprisingly, 2014).

And it made an MVP out of the Tide's field general, Tua Tagovailoa.

Well, that's it. Time to go back and see how the current season shakes out...so that a 24-team field for 2019 can be determined.

I'm Jim Boston, and thanks for reading this blog!

A tale of two ragtime festivals (Part 2)

Just going on how the Saturday session of this year's Ragtime to Riches Festival went, I had high hopes about the Sunday leg- the 7-14-2019 turn at Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ.

In a nutshell, we didn't get the kind of crowd that assembled at the Pink Poodle Steakhouse the day before.

But all four of those who paid to come to see the First Central leg of R to R 2019 still had fun.

At 2:00 PM (Central time), I was supposed to give a workshop. 

I gave it, all right...but it wasn't the one I hoped to conduct.

Ever since last year, I've been wanting to showcase some of the work of four ragtime composers: Sadie Koninsky (1879-1952), Charlotte Blake (1885-1979), Julia Niebergall (1886-1968), and May Aufderheide (1888-1972).

I brought notes with me.

Yours truly forgot to bring sheet music.

So...I went the autobiographical route instead. (Next year, I want to build my concert around works like Sadie's "Eli Green's Cakewalk," Julia's "Hoosier Rag," May's "Dusty," and Charlotte's "That Poker Rag." And leave the workshop to another performer.)

Speaking of concert...Faye Ballard was the first to give one at this year's R to R.

Hers was a workshop in itself; the Champaign, IL native started her concert with favorites "The Entertainer," "Puttin' on the Ritz," "Sailin' Away on the Henry Clay," and "It Had to Be You."

The former University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana office manager put her tribute to ragdom's Big Three smack dab in the middle: Scott Joplin's "Pineapple Rag," James Scott's "Frog Legs Rag," and Joseph Lamb's "Cleopatra Rag." 

Faye went ahead and did one of May's followups to "Dusty" ("The Thriller") and followed it up with Adaline Shepherd's "Pickles and Peppers." "Raggity Rag" and "12th Street Rag" closed Faye's sixth R to R concert out.

Faye's mom, Erma, gave me the inspiration for my own concert.

Last year, Erma wanted to hear "Angry," a 1925 hit for a singer-pianist named Art Gillham, from me. I didn't have the sheet music with me at the time.

Fixed that here in 2019.

Matter of fact, my version of "Angry" led off a concert consisting of tunes whose titles have just one word apiece: Fellow 1925 hits "Cecilia" and "Collegiate," two compositions from 1927 ("Chloe" and a tune that somebody should've had a hit record with, "Beautiful"), 1920's "Margie," and two rags- Nellie M. Stokes' 1906 "Snowball" and another piece Scott J. came up with in 1902, "Cleopha." 

I felt better about my concert than my workshop, I'll tell you that. I'm glad the concert worked out.

Marty Mincer accompanying Buster Keaton's 1920 short, "One Week," worked out great.

We were hoping Erma and Faye would come back for the 7:00 PM showing of "One Week," and Marty vamped for a while so that the Two Ballards could see the film in its entirety.

Oh, well...

But the audience enjoyed "One Week..." as well as Marty's handling of the music.

The apple farmer from Hamburg, IA had time left in his set to fire off his version of "The Entertainer" before he took R to R 15.0 out in style with "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

Well...now it's back to the drawing board to get the word out about Ragtime to Riches 2020.

Hope you can make it!

A tale of two ragtime festivals (Part 1)

Well...it seems as if two ragtime festivals took place here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area last weekend.

But one and the same got on the books: The 2019 Ragtime to Riches Festival.

This year's was the first two-day version since the 2010 edition...the fourth and last R to R held at the Strauss Performing Arts Center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. (UNO priced the Strauss Center out of the Great Plains Ragtime Society's reach not long afterwards, so the local rag club had to find another place for the fest.)

Since 2011, R to R has taken place at Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ. 

This year, First Central got a Saturday partner: The Pink Poodle Steakhouse in Crescent, IA.

On 7-13-2019, at 5:00 PM (Central time), a "Tune-Ups Party" took place at the legendary Crescent restaurant...the eatery with some of the best prime rib in the Omaha Metro and three working antique upright player pianos.

And all three old uprights got a workout...especially the middle one, a 1913 Bellmann. (The others are a 1919 Gulbransen and a 1916 Ricca & Son.)

In the photo above, the Bellmann is on the left, the Ricca's on the right.

In the publicity for the "Tune-Ups Party," it was said that at least one of this year's featured R to R 15.0 performers would play at the Pink Poodle during an event modeled after a similar one...the Thursday night tune-ups that kick off the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival.

If it hadn't been for two little girls (Maddie and Brooke) and the mother of another little girl (a youngster named Echo; I wish I knew her mom's name) stepping up to tickle the keys, I would've played the entire length of the Pink Poodle tune-ups.

Three hours. 

I still had lots of fun at the Poodle, and- equally important- the restaurant's dining room was half full of customers.

 

When I come back, I'll tell you what R to R's 2019 Sunday session was like. 

 

"Jim Boston, how could you skip a month from your own blog?"

Well, here's how:

Last month, I stumbled onto the world's biggest social network and educational center for creatives in movies, television, and the stage.

And I got hooked!

It's none other than Stage 32, and right now, it's up to 500,000 members worldwide...more people than live here in Omaha (by itself, not counting the suburbs). 

For almost three years, I've been trying to kickstart a pursuit that hooked me from 1980 to 1994: Screenwriting.

When I was still attending Iowa State University, I bought a paperback copy of the script to the 1973 classic "American Graffiti." I really liked the way George Lucas (the movie's director...that's right, that George Lucas!), Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck wrote the story.

Bought a couple of handbooks on writing for TV and for movies...and I've still got one of them to this very day: "The Television Writer's Handbook," a 1978 publication Constance Nash and Virginia Oakey teamed up to bring to the world.

Then in 1979, as an elective, I enrolled in a screenwriting class Joe Geha conducted. The chief project for each class member was a 30-minute script...and I ended up concocting a TV sitcom pilot called "Long Way," about two women who drove a truck for a Central Iowa soft-drink bottling company. (I worked at such a company during the summers of 1976 and 1978...and liked it!)

The next year, I moved here to the Big O, where I tried and tried and tried to come up with movie scripts (when I wasn't working for a local inventory service). I subscribed to Writer's Digest as well as something called Hollywood Scriptletter, a newsletter that, in the mid-1980s, was renamed Hollywood Scriptwriter.  

Through WD, I found out about the Peggy Lois French Agency. Armed with another TV sitcom pilot ("Edna's Garage," about a New Orleans auto mechanic and her crew), I tried to get representation through that Sun City, CA firm...but I was told: "You haven't had enough life experience." 

Not even working for my dad at his own Des Moines auto-reconditioning firm during the summers of 1969-72 and 1977 (as well as most Saturdays from 1969-72) supposedly counted to the PLFA staff. 

Well, in the middle 1980s, I joined a screenwriters' support group. In those pre-Internet days, we mainly wrote letters to each other. Things were fine...until a letter from a Phoenix member named Willi Waltrip stated that I should give up trying to write scripts and, instead, peck out novels.

OUCH!! 

I dropped out of the group, stopping trying for a few years to write scripts, then got back into it by 1990- two years after I'd moved from Omaha to Sioux City, IA. 

Between 1990 and 1994, I'd typed out four more screenplays...then packed it in as I started hitting the unemployment lines as the used-record-and-tape-and-CD store I moved to Sioux City to help launch got ready to call it quits.

I was through trying to cook up screenplays. That was it.

Until 2016.

Three years before that,

Nick Holle (who teamed up with Michael Zimmer to helm a 2012 documentary about the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival, "The Entertainers") gave me his Power Mac G5 computer...originally purchased by a former OTPP contestant,

Brent Watkins (who teamed up with his wife Jackie to help produce the documentary).

This Power Mac had- and still has- a copy of Final Draft 6. (Yeah, I know...that was five Final Draft iterations ago.)

But since 4-18-2016, I've been using that copy of Final Draft 6 to get back in the screenwriting race, cooking up a fresh-out-of-the-box, 2010s effort and refurbishing three others (two from the 1980s and one from the 1990s). 

I've learned a lot from logging onto Richard Botto's claim to fame

...especially when it comes to how a spec script should look. First of all, I learned that, in today's screenwriting, you don't refer to camera angles in a spec script. You keep character descriptions to, basically, age and traits. 

And every scene, in addition to being "EXT." or "INT.," must also be labeled "DAY" (if not "MORNING" or "AFTERNOON") or "NIGHT."

I've never been more fired up about writing scripts than I am right now, thanks to Stage 32 (named after Paramount's Stage 32, a property that previously was in the hands of the old RKO Studios; in fact, "Citizen Kane" was filmed on that very stage).

And I can't wait to pitch my stuff, either. Stage 32, matter of fact, has a page full of listings for pitch sessions.

Well, all I can say after that is: Log onto stage32.com to see what all the hoopla is. And if you'd like to see any (or all four) of the screenplays I've loaded onto Stage 32, just visit stage32.com/profile/673680/scripts_screenplays. 

Thanks, thanks, thanks for reading "Boston's Blog!"

And what's more, the school didn't look the same!

Well, it was Sunday, 9-23-2018...the third and final day of the Class of 1973's 45th get-together in the Des Moines area.

This time, the final major activity of the reunion was scheduled to take place at the very school itself: West Des Moines Dowling Catholic High School. 

Nope...not a pep rally.

No, not another sports event.

It was a Mass.

And two of our classmates- now men of the cloth- were tabbed to say that morning's Mass.  

But first...it was time for interested classmates to tour the very school that gave so many of us so many great, great memories. (This was the tour that was originally scheduled for the previously Friday afternoon.)

And, thanks to a recent construction project, the physical plant at 1400 Buffalo Rd. is bigger and better than before. 

Our host for the understandably brief tour was Ron Gray...the longtime (and legendary) DCHS head wrestling coach who's now the longest-tenured teacher in school history. 

He's been at it for a whopping 41 years!

We got a chance to tour the hallways (lockers, trophy case, and all) and Ron's classroom. (By the way...in addition to currently being the school's head boys' golf coach and head girls' golf coach, he teaches economics and social studies.)

What if we'd had this kind of a classroom back in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

Okay...it's not really the size of the classroom (or style of classroom) that counts.

Now it was 10:30 AM...and time for Mass.

I hadn't been to an out-of-town one since Saturday, 6-11-2005.

It's a long story (and a possible blog post in itself), but after high school, I largely stopped going to church (only to go back to Mass on visits to Des Moines while an Iowa State student). 

I'd had my fill of the downbeat messages the monsignor at the Catholic church I was going to in DSM was giving his parishioners. (Whenever the church wasn't taking in enough money to suit the monsignor there, he'd tell the churchgoers: "You're throwing defiles in God's face!")

I switched to the Unitarian Universalist Church not long after I first moved to Omaha in 1980...only because First Unitarian is within walking distance of where I first lived when I moved to the Big O on 8-2-1980. (I moved back here on 3-29-1997.)

Moved to Sioux City, IA on 6-30-1988 to manage a used-record-and-tape store...and spent the next five years and two months shunning church services.

All this time, though, I'd still go into church basements and get some practice in on those congregations' old-fashioned upright pianos (something I started doing in October 1976, back in Ames). 

Well, that all changed in February 1994.

That was the month I decided to fill up the hole in my life and join the United Methodist Church.

I've felt more comfortable as a United Methodist than I ever did as a Catholic. 

Even so, that wasn't going to stop me from participating in a Mass that Jim Gould and Dennis Wright were to preside over.

It was supposed to be Mike Peters teaming up with fellow Catholic priest Jim G., but Mike P. got called away to another assignment.

So Dennis W., now a deacon in the Des Moines area, took Mike's place. (I remember Dennis' cartoons in the school newspaper...the publication originally called The Aquin but renamed The Paper once the old, all-boys' Dowling merged with the all-girls' St. Joseph Academy in time for the 1972-73 school year and set up shop on Buffalo Rd. in the 'burbs.)  

The Mass took place at DCHS' brand-new St. Joseph Chapel, a much bigger one than the chapel that originally came with the new Dowling.

And it went beautifully...from Julie Russell Craven's music (she played the hymns on an electronic keyboard) to Jim G.'s homily to everything else. 

Once the service- meant to honor the 29 classmates who've passed away- was finished, we went right to the school lobby for coffee and donuts.

This coffee-and-donuts session was more enjoyable than those I was able to attend when I was younger and going to a church whose top priest railed away about all those defiles. 

Tom Meyer, Ron G., Jim G., Dennis W., Julie R., hubby David Craven, and I got together with Joni Hockins Edwards, Lisa Lamberto (one of Joni's fellow cheerleaders), Meg Tibbetts Williams, Margo Munoz O'Meara (never had a chance to see her at the other reunion events), and so many other classmates to talk up old memories and current goings-on. 

We had such a great time that our time together ran into overtime...and the DCHS Class of 1973's 45th Reunion broke up around 12:15 PM.

All I can say is:

Please, please, PLEASE let circumstances allow me to get to the 50th Class of '73 get-together! 

About that Mass I went to on 6-11-2005: The Mass was actually a wedding of Matt and Liz, a young couple I met earlier that year at the Omaha Children's Museum. (From October 1997 to June 2006, I volunteered at the OCM, where they let me entertain visitors of all ages on an old-fashioned upright piano in the museum's music room. The best part of it all: When I wasn't playing, I got a chance to hear the children and some of the adults they brought with them tickle those ancient keys.) 

After they heard me play, Liz and Matt invited me to perform at their wedding reception. I said "yes," and on the second Saturday in June that year, I traveled to Shenandoah, IA, to watch the two of them become husband and wife.

I'm Jim Boston...thanks for reading this blog!

We still didn't look the same

Well, it was Saturday, 9-22-2018...the second day of the Dowling Catholic High School (West Des Moines, IA) Class of 1973's 45th reunion.

It started out with a golf outing put together by classmate Mike Chenchar.

But not for me. (I'm not a golfer at all. My younger brother is.)

Instead of trying to embarrass myself at eighteen holes, I had my heart set on going bowling with my younger brother Mike and my thirteen-year-old nephew Jordan (my younger brother's and younger sister-in-law's son). 

Last year, our favorite Des Moines-area bowling center, Plaza Lanes, burned down due to an electrical fire.

So, this time, we got together at Air Lanes (4200 Fleur Dr., Des Moines, IA 50321; 515 285-8632).

I'd never been to Air Lanes before...despite the fact that the bowling center opened in the late 1960s, at a time when I was finishing my growing-up years right there in America's Raccoon River City.

You know how at most bowling centers here in America, the large-screen TVs show you sports events in between the scores the customers are rolling up?

Well, at Air Lanes, in between the scores its customers are racking up, you get music videos.

That's cool, too!

On 9-22-2018, Air Lanes became the very first place where I ever won a game in a family bowling outing...and it came down to the very last ball Mike B. rolled in the third and final game.

Speaking of firsts...all the time I was a Dowling student, I'd never gone to a "mixer." 

Well, back in June, when classmate (and former varsity cheerleader) Joni Hockins Edwards sent me the letter announcing the 45th get-together, I not only said "Yes!" to the invitation, I decided I was going to, at long last, get to that "mixer." 

The reunion's "mixer" took place at another Des Moines landmark, Christopher's (a restaurant at 2816 Beaver Ave., 50310; 515 274-3694).

Jeff Gass and I arrived at Christopher's party room just before 6:00 PM, the "mixer's" start time. Already, a good-sized crowd had gotten seated, awaiting the chance to eat the great food the Saturday-night event promised...while some hits from the 1970s poured out of the stereo speakers in the party room. 

I was able to recognize Dwayne Carter, Chris Adams, Rick Vasquez, Paul Koester, Ann Gladfelder Lawson, Rick Benson, Meg Tibbetts Williams, Bill Lawson, Tom Naughton, Paul Duwelius, Mark Cooper, Ron Gray, and Dan Mueller from the night before at Fire Creek Grill in West Des Moines.

But the Christopher's get-together attracted some classmates I didn't see (or don't remember seeing) at Fire Creek: John Nesbit...Kelly O'Brien (I ran track alongside him)...Mary Manning Bracken (she works for Iowa Public Television; she and I took photography our senior year)...Mary Gallo Eckerman...and two classmates who go back to the eighth grade with me: John Duffy and Greg Murray.

It was fun, fun, fun being able to reminisce (as well as being able to dish on what we've been doing since 1973)...and Jim Gould (he's now a priest in Virginia),

Sue Boesen, Jim Conway (ran track alongside him, too), Cecelia Kirvin (a classmate from senior-year business math), Molly Maloney (she was a varsity cheerleader), and Joni herself came in to the party room to join in on the fun. 

The food was, according to the reunion brochure, supposed to be "heavy hors d'oeuvres."

It turned out to be one heck of a spread instead.

Besides the hors d'oeuvres, Christopher's offered a veggie tray, two kinds of pizza, meatballs, and four kinds of cupcakes...as well as your choice of alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks.

Among other things.

And then- among the other things- there was the table full of yearbooks and old newspapers in the tap room. 

Some of us- especially John N., David Craven, Julie Russell Craven, and I- just got lost in the yearbooks and old Des Moines Register copies. 

Matter of fact, it got to the point where those of us who'd turned the tap room into a library were the last ones to leave Christoper's. 

So...it was off to the bar at Christopher's, where we watched Iowa blow a 17-14 fourth-quarter lead and end up coughing up a 28-17 decision to Wisconsin.

That bar's also where I caught back up with CeCe Lynch...and caught up with Larry Quijano. (Larry and CeCe run their own eatery, too. It's Quijano's Bar and Grill, at 1930 S.E. 6th St., 50315; 515 243-9595.)

Not long after the Wisconsin-Iowa football game came to an end, it was time for me to go back to the hotel (EconoLodge Inn and Suites on Merle Hay Rd.)...and time for me to get ready to do something else I hadn't done in ages.

I'll let you know what that was when I come back. 

    

I've found the right one, baby! Uh huh!

And I'm proud to say I'm not alone. 

If it weren't for a coworker at the plastics factory where I'm employed hipping me to Markus Heinsohn's Out of the Park Baseball seven years ago, I wouldn't have been able to experience what so many of the computer game's users have been raving about all these years. 

I've been playing computer sports games since 1992 (the very year I bought my first PC- a used Commodore 64); all this time, I've been trying to put my own pro sports leagues to the test.

[Each circuit consists of teams whose Real Life players had brief (or solid-if-not-spectacular) pro playing careers or didn't get to make it to big leagues at all. And the clubs largely represent sizable American and Canadian cities that don't have major-league pro teams in this or that sport. Nonetheless, the leagues I've made up also have squads in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago...America's three biggest media centers.]

 

Out of the Park Baseball came on the market in May 1999, a year after Heinsohn wrote the text-based game up in an effort to wed a realistic baseball simulation with career play...and gain the favor of hardcore gamers and casual ones.

Markus developed his own product after four years of playing computer baseball games couldn't yield a management-based simulation he liked.

  

A sportswriter named Sean Lahman teamed up with Heinsohn to get OOTP into people's computers, and at first, you could buy a copy of the new game through Lahman's own Website, www.baseball1.com. 

OOTP gained the attention of several online gaming sites, but didn't really break through until 2001, when OOTP 3 came out. 

Over the next decade, improvements got made to Out of the Park; along the way, Computer Games Magazine bestowed the 2006 version of OOTP with that year's "Best Sports Game" award.

The first OOTP copy I received (the coworker I mentioned gave it to me on a CD) was 11 (released 4-14-2010). 

I just couldn't get over the game's statistical accuracy. In fact, it beats that of the three other baseball simulation games I've tried.

I really liked how I could replay a past American League-National League baseball season in a minute or two...but I was still unable to set up my own Continental League-Federal League baseball seasons, the way I wanted to.

That finally changed with OOTP 18 (out since 3-24-2017). 

I'm perfectly content with 18...and I'm glad to stick with it.

With OOTP 18 and the current version (OOTP 19 was introduced 3-22-2018), you can stock your baseball leagues with fictional players or with historical, Real Life ones...be they actual AL-NL players or ones who never made it out of the minors. 

Any era in baseball's long history is, well, game. And that means you can see what Satchel Paige would've done to Babe Ruth...or see if Walter Johnson could prevent Hank Aaron or Barry Bonds from driving one out of the park. (On top of that, you can see if Jose Altuve or Giancarlo Stanton could hit Roger Clemens or Bob Gibson.)

Now that I'm actively playing OOTP, I've developed a rule of thumb for stocking CL-FL rosters: If a player isn't listed in www.baseball-reference.com, I won't put him in.

Unlike the three other computer baseball games I've tried, OOTP entices you to think about a baseball team's front office. As a result, I've been busy poring over my copy of Baseball America's 1998 Directory (subsequent directories are available online) in order to populate the CL-FL teams' front offices with people who actually were in professional baseball.

After all, if a team's going to have historical players, why shouldn't it have historical executives?

All I've got to do is go to an in-game database (it recognizes www.baseball-reference.com) to get players...and that way, I can use OOTP's artificial intelligence to control the squads. 

OOTP 18 was the first version to add minor leaguers to the in-game database. (Before that, you had to choose solely from the roughly 19,000 players who put on AL-NL uniforms.)

And since an entire schedule can take as little as a minute or two to play, I'm able to play a season per day if I want to...

but since I'm trying to keep such a tight rein on personnel and trying to keep the fictional players out, I've decided to play a season per month.

I've just completed the 1998 CL-FL campaign, and this month, I'll launch the 1999 season.

At this rate, I'll be caught up by May 2020...when I'll be able to get my 2020 Continental-Federal campaign off the ground. 

If you'd like to learn more about a baseball simulation game even lots of people inside the majors (like Boston Red Sox owner John Henry) rave about, just log onto www.ootpdevelopments.com.

And once you start playing OOTP, you'll start raving about it, too. 

[By the way...I'm curious to see how OOTP handles the 2001 CL-FL baseball season (especially when September comes around).]