Members of the APBA baseball cult, you have a friend in a very high place: The White House. Yes, President George W. Bush is one of you.

And it isn't just Dubya. David Eisenhauer, Ed Koch, Peter Gammons, the late Danny Keye, Joe Torre and Curt Schilling are or have been devotees of APBA baseball, a board-and-dice game which simulates real major league baseball through cards of numbers that reflect each player's strengths, weaknesses and tendencies.

APBA was born in Lancaster, fathered 50 years ago by Richard Seitz. The company still has an office in Lancaster, although i is now owned by New Jersey based AbleSoft, Inc.

The fiftieth anniversary will be marked in style here next weekend, with a convention/celebration at the Ramada Inn-Brunswick in downtown Lancaster. Included in the festivities will be a tournament of 45-50 players that will begin Friday, Aug. 3 and conclude Sunday, Aug. 5. Each entrant will play as any team of his/her choice in big-league history, provided it had a winning percentage of .550 or less.

The 1927 Yankees, for example, might take a lot of the drama out of it, or end up playing themselves in the finals.

The celebration will also feature speakers and discussion groups, and induction of charter members of an APBA Hall of Fame. President Bush is one of six inductess. He has been invited, but does not plan to attend.

Bush got into APBA in his youth, playing with his friends and cousins. The game was said to be the rage amoung the younger set at Bush family gatherings.

At a family dinner following Bush's inauguration in February, Hap Ellis, a cousin of the President's mother Barbara Bush, presented George W. With a personal APBA player card.

The card was produced for Ellis by APBA. Very few copies were made, and none of them were sold by the company.

However, Skeet Carr, a Senior Product Manager for APBA, said Tuesday that, "one was recently sold on e-Bay. I have no idea how that happend."

The game is a spruced-up version of a game Seitz played with friends as a teenager. Seitz and his gang called themselves the American Professional Baseball Association. That's where APBA comes from.

The game is decidely lowtech by modern standards, but does something better than any known baseball simulation: statistically duplicate player and team tendencies.

This allows the '27 Yankees to play, for example, the 1999 Yankees with a plausible result relative to the respective strengths of the players.

Or, a Phillies fan could compare his managing skills to Dallas Green by playing the Phils' entire 1980 schedule, or to Larry Bowa by playing the current schedule. Think the 1969 World Series, Miracle Mets over Orioles, was a fluke? Play it again.

The product was never professionally marketed by Seitz, who died in 1992. APBA went through chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1997 under its previous owner, Microleague Multimedia, Inc.

The company in generating about $1 million per year, but AbleSoft projects revenues of over $25 million by 2002. This will be accomplished by, in business parlance, "growing the brand." There is now a computer version of the baseball board game and a football board game. A hockey game is in the works.

The company has fomed partnerships with the NFL and NHL and is in discussion with the NBA and WNBA. A simplified version of the game has been developed for 4-to7 year olds. Eventually, the plan is for every player card to also be a trading card, with the player's picture on it.

For more information on APBA or the convention, call 1-856-488-8200, or visit the company's web site, www.apbagames.com