APBA baseball's future, at least its future potential, is expanding fast.

But APBA's rich past and present are packed into a conference room in downtown Lancaster this weekend.

APBA, a baseball board game invented in Lancaster and with a longtime cult following, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a convention at the Ramada Inn-Brunswick.

"These are our core players," said Bill Bordegon, CEO and president of APBA International Inc., Saturday afternoon, motioning to a room full of tables at which APBA fanatics were in the midst of a massive tournament.

"Their passion for this game is incredible."

About 100 people attended the convention from as far away as California and Toronto. Most entered the tournament, in which the third round was completed Saturday night and the semifinals and finals will be played today.

Many participated in discussion groups with company officials on new products and suggestions of improvements to existing ones.

There were guest speakers Saturday morning: Jim Abbott, who runs a fantasy baseball Web site, and Tom Merritt, a former NBC Sports producer who owns a computer baseball game.

"Both were interesting, and seemed to hold everybody's attention," said Skeet Carr, senior product manager for APBA. "That's a concern, because most of the guys want to start playing, and their minds tend to wander."

The crowd is almost entirely male, ranging in age from about 10 to 75. Fashion statements were baseball-themed T-shirts and jerseys with logos for Fenway Park and Wrigley Field and obscure minor-league teams. Based on logoed-clothing volume, Red Sox Nation sent a full delegation.

One father and son wore identical "Bumshooters," jerseys. The father, Chuck Simpson of Glen Burnie, Md., said they play in one of the country's oldest APBA leagues, which has an annual player draft and plays an 84-game regular season plus playoffs.

"It can be time-consuming," Simpson said. "We play four-game series, and we go to each other's houses for games. It's a lot of fun. It's a great way for us to spend some time together."

There were six inductees to the recently formed APBA Hall of Fame: President George W. Bush, a devotee of the game in his youth; Roy Langhans, commissioner of a Baltimore-Washington, D.C., APBA league in its 27th year; Ed Zack, author of a book that voluminously catalogues APBA cards; Howard Ahlskog, editor of the APBA Journal; Fritz Light, former APBA president and owner; and Scott Lehotsky, who produced a video history and primer on APBA in 1994 and is considered the game's unofficial historian.

The first member of the Hall of Fame, inducted posthumously last year, was Richard Seitz, a Lancaster man who invented APBA baseball. Seitz developed the game from a simpler, far less comprehensive version, called National Pastime, that Seitz bought from a man in Green Bay, Wis.

"(Seitz) improved it greatly, added pitching and defense, made it playable," Lehotsky said. "He is credited with developing the table-top sports game."

The game features dice and player cards that replicate the players' strengths, weaknesses and tendencies. It is said to be 92 percent accurate, based on feedback the company has gotten from serious players, in simulating the actual game.

Seitz made a good living from APBA, but his marketing methods were quaint by modern standards. At first, he sold it only through direct mail, working out of his mother's house at 118 E. James St.

Seitz died in 1992, and the company went through some rough financial times before being purchased by AbleSoft, Inc., in 1997. The New Jersey-based software company improved the product's graphics and packaging, added computer versions of the games, and has developed licensing agreements with Major League Baseball, the NFL and NHL.

Yes, there have been football and basketball versions since the 1960s. But the licensing agreements allow APBA to use team logos and player likenesses for the first time. This is crucial to the success of the simplified starter versions of the games, which the company has developed to wean children to the more complex adult games.

The big news at the convention: Software is coming that will allow players to compete online against foes from all over the world. Also, future player cards will feature each player's picture, making them trading cards as well as game cards.

The tournament is double elimination, with a 64-player bracket. Each entrant played with a major-league team of his choosing, provided it had a .550 winning percentage or less. Each round is a best-of-three series.

The champion of the last convention in 1998 was Devin Flawd of Manheim Township, then 10 years old. This time Flawd and the 1995 Seattle Mariners were eliminated in the second round by Hall of Famer Langhans.

In the first round, Randy Johnson threw a no-hitter for Flawd against the 1982 Philadelphia Phillies.

The final four, all of whom won quarterfinal series Saturday night:

Boris Bytensky (1968 Cleveland Indians), a lawyer from Ontario, Canada; Sam Adams ('70 Boston Red Sox), a financial-services adviser from Hoboken, N.J.; Paul Cunningham ('76 Oakland A's), a registered nurse from Lititz; and Dan Garner ('96 Seattle Mariners) of East Prospect, a computer specialist with the Eastern York School District.

Whoever emerges from that group, the weekend's biggest winner might turn out to be Bill Sindelar, 75, of Cleveland. A big Indians fan, Sindelar knows Bob Feller, whom he saw pitch in a Cleveland amateur league when Sindelar was 6. He annually attends the Tribe's spring training in Winter Haven, Fla.

Sindelar was honored Friday night for being the oldest conventioneer, and given a gorgeous replica of a 1948 Indians warmup jacket. That's for the winter. In the summer, Sindelar can show off the tattoo of Indians mascot Chief Wahoo on his left shoulder.

"I can't believe this," Sindelar said. "When I go home and show this (jacket) to my family, they're gonna go nuts."