"APBA, or Strat? That may sound like foreign language to you, but to many baseball fans it's a fundamental question from their adolescence. APBA and Strat-O-Matic are the two premier table baseball games in existence. Their names come back up again because APBA just issued a game for PCs and is celebrating yet another anniversary.

I played APBA as a kid and became a slave to its realistic results and captivating complexity. It was kind of a kick to learn it even hooked celebrities, such as David Eisenhower, who played the game in the White House as the son-in-law of Richard Nixon. This columnist devoted so many hours of his youth to the game that he played full, 162-game schedules every year. The demands of a career covering baseball deny me the time to play the game like that again, but be assured I'm going to check out the PC version."