At the Stockton game the other day, we had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of guys who play Vintage Baseball, circa 1886. This stuff is the real deal. The guys play with gloves that are as padded as a batting glove, and the pitchers throw about 60 MPH (or faster) from 50 feet away. The only person with a thicker glove is the catcher. There are a lot of crazy rules—7 balls constitutes a walk, if you get hit by a pitch you still have to bat, and the pitcher can throw the ball whenever he wants, regardless of whether or not the batter is ready for it. After the Ports game was over, these guys took the field to play a game.

Glossary of terms

Ace—run crossing home base
Boodler—ungentlemanly maneuver
Cranks (or Crankettes)—fans
Hippadroming—cheating
Hurler—pitching
Huzzah!—hooray
Muffin—enthusiastic but unskilled player

We were fortunate enough to have a chance to interview one of the players, Barron “Claw” Peterson. Yes that is his real name. If you are not sure what we are talking about, please reference the terms listed above.

As for the game, it was highly entertaining. The umpire/referee used a microphone to explain a lot of the rules of the game as it was happening for all the fans who stayed to watch. I took some pictures, and you can view all of them in my Flickr Set entitled “Vintage Baseball.” It includes one of my favorite pictures that I’ve taken on the trip thus far. Thanks to Dirty Dan, Claw, and Salami for introducing us to vintage baseball.

Now many of you might be familiar with this due to the infamous Conan skit. The main difference is that Conan profiled players who played by 1864 rules (no gloves). If you haven’t seen this yet, I HIGHLY recommend viewing it now: