There was a time, long before player strikes or steroids or Scott Boras, when baseball was played by farmers and miners on dusty sandlots on the outskirts of towns. It was a children’s game played by men, not for eight-figure salaries but for fun. That magic is not lost, though – games of vintage base ball can be found every summer at Old World Wisconsin and other area playing fields.
“It’s a great way to get back to baseball’s roots,” says Jeff “The Gent” Paige, who has pitched and played catcher for the Milwaukee Cream Citys since 2006. “It takes everybody back to when baseball was born.”
Games are played by the rules of the 1860s and they’re a tad different from the modern game. Marty Perkins, curator of research at Old World Wisconsin, likens it to a combination of softball and baseball, with a few extra twists. The ball is softer, players don’t use gloves, balls caught after one bounce count as an out, pitches are thrown underhanded and the terminology is a bit foreign: Runs are called aces, pitchers are hurlers, batters are strikers and fans are cranks. (And baseball is two words: base ball.) The most telling difference, however, is probably the decorum of players and fans.
“The guys play for the honor to participate. It is very much a gentleman’s game,” says Perkins. “There is a barrister who oversees the game, but he is only supposed to get involved when the players can’t solve the problem themselves.”
There are currently five vintage teams in Wisconsin (the Vintage Base Ball Association boasts more than 100 teams in 23 states and Canada), and most are modeled on real-life teams that played in the 19th century. The Cream Citys were formed in 2004 and used Milwaukee’s first professional team from 1869 as a guide. Other vintage teams soon followed. The Eagle Diamonds of Old World Wisconsin are based on the amateur 1868 Waukesha Diamonds, the Greenbush Dead Citys on a club formed in 1871, and the Milwaukee Grays on a National League team that played for just the 1878 season. The Delton Base Ball Club, which has no historical connection, is the most recent addition and joined this year.
Each team has a home field (the Grays, for instance, play at Doctors Park in Fox Point), but none have the genuine character of Old World Wisconsin, where fans are perched on a grassy hill in the shadows of the Ward School House overlooking an unmanicured pasture. Vintage base ball prides itself on such authenticity, even down to the cheers of the crowd – a lot more “huzzahs!” than you’re likely to hear at Miller Park.
“We position people in period clothing to create the atmosphere of the time and talk to the spectators about fan behavior,” says Perkins, who estimates 300 to 400 fans attend each game. “We try and make it as interactive as possible.”
The players cover all ages and backgrounds, and though some have played baseball in the past, experience is not a prerequisite. And just like the 1860s, all have day jobs.
“We’ve got students and professors, the self-employed, teachers and mechanics,” says Paige, who himself works sales for Steel Craft Corp. of Hartford. “People from all walks of life who are in it for the same
reason – they love history and they love baseball.”
