Year in the Rearview

Etymologos.com defines nostalgia as "a sentimental longing for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations". As we prepare for our fifteenth season since the re-birth of the Club following almost a century of dormancy, it's always fun to look in the rearview mirror to recall the special moments that defined the season. It's like what Archibald "Moonlight" Graham (played by Burt Lancaster) says in that ever-so-poignant scene in "Field of Dreams"....Graham says "We don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they're happening". So, this is my way of capturing them in our digital scrapbook. Hope you enjoy 'em as much as we did! Hey Mr. Spaceman The lead-off hitter of our season was none other than Red Sox HOFer and the oldest man to win a professional baseball game, Bill "Spaceman" Lee. Following his brushes with a dirt nap in recent years, he found a heart surgeon who got him back on track and thus he was able to join us at the Vintage Base Ball Association Annual Meeting held in the fabled Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown, NY on March 29th. And he didn't just deliver a rousing keynote address, but he also joined in our all-comers match after driving several hours through a blizzard from his home in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont! At 78 years young, Bill is the epitome of the famous quote by George Bernard Shaw, "We don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing." And believe me, Bill is still playing! I was blessed with the opportunity to interview my friend Bill for the evening's banquet. The full interview with plenty of candid comments from his seven decades in baseball is all right here! Sidenote: While the day commenced, we learned that evening that the NY Yankees had connected for 9 round-trippers with the benefit of a "torpedo bat" that had been made for the Club. Spaceman told me that this design has been around since the 1970's when it was introduced by Mizuno (MIT eat your heart out). He shared that he'd used a torpedo bat to outhit and defeat the Soviets in a game held somewhere in the Eastern Bloc in the 1980's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvzArCCZtjg

All Aboard!

Our match in June with the Kingston Guards was met with a rousing crowd of 100 or more set about the banks of the Catskill Mountain Railroad. It may be the closest we get to having rail-riders step off the train to catch a glimpse of 19th century base ball. We took the opportunity post-match to fix ourselves in the caboose for this great snapshot....You can see that our MAC was out-numbered two to one and it was for this reason that later on, the team would break to form two additional teams: Rip Van Winkle Base Ball Club and the Ulster Nine, both now charter members of the Ulster County Vintage Base Ball Association.

Shucked Again! Over a Father's Day weekend, we made our second consecutive appearance at the New England Base Ball Festival at the historic Hilltop Farm once owned by the founder of Indian Motorcycles. We left a little battered having been smashed by a defecit of over 25 runs in our first match, narrowly escaping defeat in our second match with the formidable Providence Grays and being trounced once again by the ever-skilled Canton (OH) Cornshuckers in our final match.

Miller Takes a Ride on the D&U

To celebrate the re-opening of the Delaware & Ulster Scenic Railroad in Arkville, we gave a history talk on the origins of M.A.C. prior to our home match with the Bovina Dairymen. It was fun to bring our life-size cutout of former M.A.C. and 1964 HOFer Miller Huggins showing off his M.A.C. uniform circa 1900 (likely a portrait shot made in Huggins hometown of Cincinnati prior to joining the Club). I'd learned of this fantastic image from fellow Fleischmanns and Hudson Valley baseball historian, Bob Mayer who'd seen it in a book titled, "The Colonel and the Hug" by Stephen Steinberg. I reached out to the author and he provided me with this crisp image of "Hug" in the M.A.C. jersey that he'd acquired from the estate of Huggin's agent after he passed. BaseballReference.com says Miller was 5'6" but others say it was 5'4" so I split the difference. At 5'5", the life size cut out scared the heck out of my wife when I hid it behind the bathroom door. Hehe...

Celebrating 200 Years of Base Ball in the Town of Hamden Probably among the favorite moments of the summer of '25 was being a central part of the Town of Hamden Bicentennial celebration. After all, it was here in this Town where a challenge was issued on July 12, 1825 to a game of BASS-BALL (sic) for a $1 per game. The same printing press used to make the Delhi Gazette in 1825 (still in use today at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown) made us some commemorative prints of the original challenge! We don't know whether the game ever really happened, but we partied around the theme just the same by hosting a game of our own at the fabled Crawford Field playing by what we thought the rules may have looked like in 1825 - nearly 20 years before the Knickerbocker Club wrote down the first official rule set. One highlight we'll never forget was all the smiling faces along the parade route as we handed out our souvenir trading cards. We even won "Most Entertaining Entry" with $100 prize which was promptly spent on post-game libations. Among the biggest smiles was from the parade's Grand Marshall and long time baseball booster, Hamden resident Alice Blackmon (now 100 years old and counting).

Not the first time the five teams of Delaware and Ulster County Vintage Base Ball Associations have been in one place, but the first high quality image taken of us. Thank you to Schuyler Meyer of the Kingston Guards!

Walking In His Footsteps

On August 23-24 we made our second appearance at the Rocky Point Nineteenth Century Base Ball Festival hosted by our longtime friends, the 1884 Providence Grays. The grounds on which we played were once home to an oceanside amusement park and the original Grays who, for a time in 1913 rostered a lanky up and coming pitcher at the time, George Ruth. He would make his professional debut at Fenway Park the following season. Another giant in our game was honored in a pre-game ceremony with his own poster and a pocket watch as he "sets the standard" for hustle and sportsmanship...that man is our friend Christopher "Grit" Moran who made his vintage baseball debut for the Grays over 25 years ago. He's the only guy we'll probably ever know to have played for a televised audience in vintage games twice: once in '04 playing for the Hartford Senators and '05 playing for the Birmingham Black Barons, both contests were featured on ESPN Classic. And it is the first time I ever shattered a scoreboard...I'd like to say it was over the wall in right center field, but alas, it was behind the plate and from a ball I fouled straight back. Following the last game on Sunday, our friends the Athletic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia presented us with a DELCO flag as they're from downstream aways,

but still in Delaware County (PA).

Doin' the Pidgeon We made our first appearance in Saugerties playing the Pidgeon Pennant on a gem of a diamond out off the Glasco Turnpike. You could almost hear the cheers and jeers of days gone by when every section of town had a ball team and in the more recent years when the local parks & rec sponsored softball leagues. Our friends, the Brickmaker Base Ball Club of Saugerties said they'd found the place and it hadn't been kept up in many years, but with the advent of vintage baseball taking shape in the community, the local yokels got behind the plan and all are doing a great service to help this team get established in the Hudson Valley. After all, the tournament is named after Saugerties' native son, Frank Pidgeon - the most dominant pitcher of the 1850's for the Eckford - among the first dozen or so organized teams in early NYC base ball.

A Perennial Favorite Bids Adeiu Among the most anticipated events of the vintage baseball season in the Northeast over the past several years is the Historic All Star Series at the fabled Muzzy Field in Bristol, CT. It's where Ruth hit the first home run at the grounds and many years later the old brick ballpark gave a start to HOFer Jim Rice. Hosted as a benefit for the charity Compassionate Care ALS in support of families who are assisting loved ones with Lou Gherig's Disease, the All Star game is less about the "best" players coming, but a way for many of the clubs organizers and influencers to gather with others and enjoy a day of comraderie and sport. This year, the MAC selected our artist-in-residence Chrissy "Showtime" Skubish to join the squad and we had a blast despite her dislocating her finger. Thankfully, we had a nurse in the crowd who was able to reset her finger. But it's the second year in a row, that a MAC has suffered injury to their hand at this event. Maybe it's for the best that this was the last hurrah for the event after an eight year run.

If You Are Going to San Francisco One of the most fun times I've ever had playing this great game was joining with some of our MACs to take part in the inaugural Northern Coast Classic 1886 Base Ball Festival. Hosted by the San Francisco Pelicans and Bay Area Vintage Base Ball, this event brought together ballists (in addition to our MAC) from Minnesota (St. Croix Base Ball Club of Stillwater), Massachusetts (Westfield Wheelmen), Michigan (Flat Rock Bear Clan), Hawaii (Aloha Vintage Base Ball Ass'n), Florida, Seattle, Northern and Southern California. The East All-Americans were a dominant force on the grounds of Big Rec Field at Golden Gate Park. In continuous operation since the 1880's, the field was host to three local brothers nearly a century ago as they honed their craft. Vince, Joe and Dom DiMaggio would all go on to thrive in the Majors one day.

"The Baseball Statue" - "Presented to the Golden Gate Park By a Friend of the Sculptor as a Tribute to His Energy, Industry and Ability."

Back in March when I told Bill Lee I'd be playing out there, he said one of his favorite places to play outside of Fenway Park was Big Rec and that he'd like to put a team together to join us. And that he did! In fact, he brought along three generations of ballplayers from his family and called them "The Strong Annabelles" in honor of his Aunt Annabelle Lee, a brilliant leftie in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League who he attributes to teaching him how to pitch. One of Bill's sons who joined us was Andy Lee, a former Red Sox farmhand, who's coming off an undefeated season as head coach for Northwest Florida State University softball and the school's first ever National Championship.

Bill pitched 4 innings giving up only 2 earned runs in the Saturday night game in Oakland versus the Dublin Aces and played first base in the second game on Sunday. It was amazing to watch a man thirty years my senior take charge of a baseball game the way he does. His heart may have gone on the fritz a few years back, but during the weekend we got to play ball with him, he didn't skip a beat. Great images of the second day of the event including The Strong Annabelles team are located here on Stan The Rocker's Flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/19159227@N06/albums/72177720329616846/with/54851442544

What a way to end another wonderful season of vintage baseball and begin the next. See you in the Spring...It's almost here...No, really...I promise! New schedule drops right here, right now!