ROCKWALL — Rockwall resident Bob May has been a baseball fan his whole life. Born in the baseball-crazed Northeast, May’s personal athletic career was short and sweet.

“I played Little League baseball, but I was afraid of the ball,” he said. “I think they kept stats one season, and at one point I was 0 for 34.”

Undaunted with his lack of success, May found a new outlet for his passion when he saw an advertisement in a baseball magazine as a teenager for APBA. The board game allowed May to simulate a professional game.

“When I was a teenager, I played well over a thousand games,” he said. “I was a shy, insecure, typical teenager, but I loved getting out my board game.”

May graduated from Northeastern University in the middle of the Vietnam War, and entered officer-training school. After the war, he came back to the Northeast to live with his wife, Michele, and work at American Optical, a company he was with for 31 years.

In 1987, May discovered Pursue the Pennant, a baseball simulation board game that utilized copies of real-life baseball stadiums to add even more detail and complexity to the games. In 1989, he was frustrated in his marketing director position at American Optical in Southbridge, Mass.

“We were also praying about possibly moving to a warmer climate further down the east coast (Virginia or North Carolina), if God made it clear, this was His will,” May said.

May was considering an investment in the Pursue the Pennant Game Company, but there were two major drawbacks: the company was located in Brookfield, Wis., and the company’s financial situation would not be able to compensate May to replace loss of his current income.

“God provided the answer,” he said. “God moved the company to Greensboro, N.C., and he allowed me to take on the sales director position at American Optical and live anywhere on the East Coast. Our prayers were answered.”

In 1993, May as president of Pursue the Pennant and his staff created a 400-player card set of all the great baseball players from the period 1881 through 1987 (no active players, as of 1992 were included in the set). Without knowing it, players of the steroid era were avoided.

“We had decided to include all of the Hall-of-Famers in the set,” May said. “We also added the players who we thought would eventually get there, as well as 100 players who had great individual years, but didn’t have an outstanding career. The set included twenty-one players from the Negro Leagues/independent black baseball teams from 1900 to 1950.”

May had to shutdown Pursue the Pennant in 1995.

“However, God had plans to use this player card creation (1993) as the seed for my book,” he said.

In 2010, May used the baseball card set as the basis for his new book, “The Best Season - The First Ninety Games.” May is in the process of writing “Book Two, The Best Season – The Challenging Finish.” Both books are historical fiction.

“There are many great historical books written on the Negro Leagues,” May said. “However, there is limited information of actual ‘on the field’ exploits other than anecdotal comments.”

The book is a way for May to honor Negro League players.

“I asked myself ‘How would these 21 stars of the Negro League want to be honored?’” he said. “I believe they would have answered in unison “let us put on the spikes and uniform again, let us play the greatest players in baseball history for a full season, then write about it and talk about it.”

May kept detailed statistics of each game and wrote reports from each game, similar to those produced by sports journalists. He also included brief biographies of famous Negro League players and his meetings with Dr. Bill Blair and Monte Irvin, both former Negro League players.

The book, which he self-published, is available at Amazon.com in both hardback, softcover and a Kindle. For more information, visit www.honoringblackballbookone.net

Bob and his wife live in Rockwall, where he subsitute-teaches for the Rockwall Independent School District. They have three grown children and eight living grandchildren.