A man named Richard Seitz created a baseball board game in 1951 called APBA, which stands for American Professional Baseball Association. This year, the company that has created a cultlike following is celebrating its 50th birthday. With the oficial celebration set for Aug. 3-5 at the Ramada Inn (formerly the Hotel Brunswick) in downtown Lancaster, we caught up with APBA executive Marc Rinaldi to ask about the past and the future.

DN: What celebrities have said they either played or play the game?
MR: Locally, Thacher Longstreth has played for years and still plays today. So does the sports agent, Arn Tellum. Angelo Cataldi, who's on WIP, loves the game. He played the game growing up. He had me on the radio a couple years ago to talk about APBA.

DN: One celeb we read about on your web site is the president, George Bush. Do you know if he's turned a room in the White House into an APBA room?
MR: We haven't heard that. Before his inauguration, we gave him a game and a big mounted version of his card. Whenever there's a speech in the oval office, we keep looking to see if we can find it anywhere.

DN: Have any players complained about their cards?
MR: No ballplayers, but we hear from APBA players all the time. On our web site (apbagames.com) you'll notice a card discussion section. Occasionally, based on what we hear from our fans, they'll prompt us to make a change.

DN: The game was always played with dice, but the new versions can be played on computers. How hard has the adjustment been for players?
MR: Some people haven't switched. A lot of the old-timers love the sound of the dice, the idea of being able to read the dice roll. But there's actually a big piece of the market that prefers the computer game, mostly for the ease of keeping stats.

DN: Do people still descend on the place the first week the crads come out?
MR: They do. We'll come in and there will be a line around the building.

DN: Does the company have anything else planned?
MR: In the future, we'd like to be a trading-card company as well. However, immediately we're planning to have the player's picture on the back of their card. We're hoping to start that with the MLB 2002 set, that releases this December