A real throwback

Mike Carey has a dream, and it is populated by grown men wearing bibs and outsize collars, umpires with top hats and tails, and cheering “cranks” yelling “nice ginger, behind!” as catchers chase down ricocheting balls.

Carey dreams of base ball (two words), but in a world where batters carry their flimsy fielding gloves in their back pockets and hidden-ball tricks are a routine part of the game.

What’s more, Carey thinks it can happen in Sonoma County.

“I found about six players without really searching,” he said recently. “And if you just show up and practice in these outfits, people want to look at the bats and gloves.”

Carey is a retired Amador County school superintendent who has lived in Sebastopol for 32 years. His drive to Ione or Jackson for vintage base ball games takes about 2½ hours. So if he finds enough players for just two teams, he said, he will end his involvement with the Mother Lode Miners and bring his peculiar brand of ball from Gold Country to Wine Country.

If you’ve never seen vintage base ball, think Civil War re-enactments on an athletic field. Players don period uniforms, play with outdated equipment, compete under 19th-century rules and even use lingo and customs from the days before the Babe was even a babe.

There are between 200 and 300 vintage base ball teams nationwide, though most of them are on the East Coast or in the Midwest. California has 10 teams, five in Gold Country and five more in the immediate Bay Area. Many leagues opt for 1860s rules, which feature underhand pitching from a friendly “feeder,” one-hop putouts and no fielding gloves.

The Gold Country Base Ball League — which Carey started three years ago and has grown to five closely clustered teams — uses the 1886 National League rule book. The fielders wear gloves, but they have no webbing and little padding. (Some simply use leather gardening gloves.) The batter must designate either a high strike (belt to underarms) or low strike (knees to belt) before he steps into the box. Seven balls result in a walk, foul balls count as nothing, and taking a pitch in the ribs brings only a ball, not a base.

The pitcher throws from a four-by-six-foot box with its front line just 50 feet from home plate. That’s where the expression “hit one through the box” comes from. And because the pitcher can be anywhere in the box when he delivers the ball, quick pitches are frequent.

Vintage base ball players come from all walks of life — Gold Country players include the retired mayor of Jackson and a strip club DJ — and bring varying motives. Some, especially the older players, take a keen interest in the historical perspective and search old photos and documents for clues to authenticity. But there are younger players, too, and many of them simply enjoy the game.

Phil Lowery was a star pitcher at Casa Grande High in the mid-1990s before playing at Arizona State and entering the Florida Marlins’ farm system. He left the sport when faced with the prospect of a fourth elbow operation in 2000. Lowery has played in various softball and baseball leagues, but usually found them either too drowsy or obnoxiously competitive. Vintage base ball was the perfect middle ground.

“I like the pace. It’s quick,” Lowery added. “There are no catchers giving signs. You’ve got to get right back in the box. I think it’s the way a lot of people think the game should be played now.”

The ball Lowery throws looks much like a modern baseball, though the seams sit a bit lower. The big difference is that it has no cork center. The idea is to use only one or two balls per game, and during the course of nine innings, they soften and deform.

“We played the second game of a doubleheader once, and the field got watered in between games,” Carey said. “The ball looked like a potato.”

The bats are hardly an advantage. They are comparatively narrow-barreled wooden sticks that generally weigh somewhere near 40 ounces. The batters don’t wear helmets or batting gloves. In the field, the meager gloves encourage basket catches in the outfield and discourage bullet throws across the diamond — the first baseman couldn’t handle them.

“In my second game, my catcher threw me the ball and I went to catch it like I’ve done for 20 years,” said Lowery, who now lives in Jackson and works as a California Highway Patrolman. “I was thinking about the next pitch, and I tried to catch it in the web — but there’s no web. It went right through the glove and hit me in the nose.”

The catcher’s glove, mask and chest protector are minimal. Even that is fudging a bit.

“Back then, the catcher wore the same glove as the fielders. But we tried that and we had two broken fingers,” said Steve Gazay, who founded the Bay Area league with his son after becoming intrigued by a vintage game on ESPN Classic. “So we get reproduction 1920s gloves and cut out the webbing.”

All of those quirks were on display July 27, when this sleepy foothill town hosted a California all-star game and then a championship game, the latter a battle between winners of the Gold Country league (the Amador Country Crushers) and the Bay Area league (the Santa Clara Stogies).

About 50 fans watched the action, ranging from an elderly man in top hat and suspenders to young boys playing on Sony PSPs with headphones in their ears.

The title game was for a spot in the Vintage Base Ball World Series, held in Westfield, Mass. Adding to the buzz: The winners’ airfare and lodging would be subsidized by the financial angel of vintage base ball, former major league pitcher and popular author Jim Bouton.

Once the game started and you got accustomed to the shifting strike zones and the dandy uniforms, it didn’t look a whole lot different from a modern baseball game. Players pitched, hit, fielded and ran four bases. Despite codes to the contrary, they also gave the lone umpire plenty of grief.

Playing with an archaic rulebook does bring complications. In the all-star game, a center fielder tumbled and somersaulted going after a ball. Just about everyone thought he caught it on the fly, but no signal came and, after some hesitation, runners wound up thrown out at second and third.

“I think you have to tag me,” the runner at third said, looking a bit perplexed.

“The ump should have said something,” a fan complained.

Tempers got warm toward the end of the Stogies’ 8-5 victory in the title game, but that didn’t dampen the overall feeling of timeless sportsmanship. Before the game, players from both teams had wandered among the spectators to shake hands and thank them for attending. Afterward, they threw their high-sided vintage caps into the air and shouted “huzzah!’ for their opponents.

Carey can hear those huzzahs in his head. And he’s ready to bring them to a diamond near you.

You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com.