The Pecan Park Eagle

June 25, 2011: Long Live The Houston Babies!

The Houston Area Vintage Base Ball Confederacy does not presently exist, but some of us feel that it, or something like it, is necessary for the sake of stable growth in the local movement of attraction to the game of 19th century-rules vintage base ball. This whole brief column is a proposal to that end. Vintage base ball is the greatest game to come along since the sandlot baseball games that many of us played back in the pre-little league world that many of us knew as kids.

The difference between sandlot baseball and vintage base ball goes way beyond the differences in rules and equipment. Both dropped into our lives as a gentle rain of joy, but sandlot ball had little competition from the world of other commitments. We played the game until the either the sun went down or our parents called us into the house at suppertime. The raindrops of vintage ball, on the other hand, fall onto the heads of adults who have all kinds of other competitive commitments to the world.

Organization of vintage ball is a way of giving the game a basis for joyful commitment by folks who need to build the pursuit of happiness into their lives on some kind of planned basis. For now, at least, that opportunity does not exist for vintage ballplayers in the Houston area. We only play intermittently, when the opportunity arises, and we have to work the scheduling of games into schedules of people who already are overrun with many less joyous commitments in life.

Organization, in this case, aims to make fun and joy more easily available as an act of commitment. And it has really taken over my thoughts since the great weekend we just concluded in Katy with vintage ball.

This past Saturday was hotter than an exploding cigar, but not quite as incendiary as the Houston Babies, who took a doubleheader win at the Katy Heritage Festival from the also talented Katy Combine, 4-2, and the feisty and athletic Tusculum Free Thinkers, 8-3. Because of weather and other interferences to scheduling, the twin bill was the first game action for the Houston Babies in the 2011 calendar year, but we are hoping for a resumption of play during the cooler weekends of this coming fall.

Vintage Base Ball is beginning to really take hold in the Houston area, but what we sorely need is a commitment by a minimum of four teams, 0r more, to a round robin schedule of games in a two-part season. The first part of the schedule would play out on weekends in the fall and the second part would schedule for the following spring. The winners of the two split seasons would be the two clubs with the best records. If a single club were to win both splits, that club would then play the team with the overall second best record for both splits in a championship game played around the Fourth of July. Otherwise, the two separate split season winners would meet for the vintage ball championship of that year.

The reason we would start play in the fall of the previous calendar year is simple: Using this format, we can plan enough time to arrange for the championship game during the summer and make a big deal of it in the middle of the normal baseball season. – And maybe, just maybe, we could build enough interest and gate-drawing credibility with the new Sugar Land Skeeters, or even the Houston Astros, to play the championship game at either of their parks prior to one of their professional games. The other championship game plan would be to tie it into something like the Katy Heritage Festival that just concluded. That would be a great future setting for “the big game” – or “best two of three games” series on the same day. All we would need then are enough well players for a possible triple header on a very hot day.

If you are interested in organizing the Houston Area Vintage Base Ball Confederacy, get in touch with me through this website, or through my e-mail address (houston_buff@hotmail.com) for further discussion. As “general manager” of the Babies, I can talk enough for our group to help us get started.

Based upon our three-year experience as an active team since 2008, here’s why several of us on the Houston Babies club think it’s important to organize a league for the life of ongoing play: When we first started, the novelty of the uniforms and the 1860 rules were enough to attract a crowd of people who all wanted to play. Over time, however, it gets harder to get people to come out for individual games that are always being scheduled into the lives of active folks who have other commitments. We feel that anyone who starts an independent vintage ball team is headed eventually for the same experience we encountered. – Eventually, vintage ball either becomes something people want to commit some time to playing – or else, team leaders end up in the spot of recruiting new players for each sudden game opportunity that arises. We believe that organization and a clear plan for league play of some kind will give our players a fair reason to commit.

If you share this interest, please let me hear from you – or leave a statement here on this website as a comment upon the proposal offered in this column.

Thanks, Bill McCurdy

Tags: The Houston Area Vintage Base Ball Confederacy, vintage base ball proposal

This entry was posted on June 27, 2011 at 11:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.