Let’s play the game like it’s 1864.
It’s a beautiful day for base ball. No, that’s not a typo. That’s how the game was spelled until around 1902-03, according to Matt “Brandywine” Stone, founder and director of Central Valley Vintage Base Ball, which has four teams, including the Aetna Base Ball Club of Dixon, California.
Stone doesn’t call it a league because it focuses more on history, education, culture, and community. He prefers the term “association.” But the 15 men who came out for Saturday’s open scrimmage at Northwest Park in Dixon had a blast. The association includes three other clubs: the Oleta Vintage Base Ball Club of Davisville, the Sacramento Vintage Base Ball Club, and the Athletic Base Ball Club of Woodland.
Rick “Crash” Rohrback, the president of the Aetna team, said newspaper accounts reveal there was an Aetna Baseball Club in the mid-1870s. The club in Davis then was the Oleta Baseball Club, a rival to Aetna. Stone learned that a game was played on the Jerome Davis ranch in 1857 before Davis or Davisville even existed.
The games are played according to 1864 rules. Stone chose that specific year for a couple of reasons. First, before 1864, the umpires were only called strikes, not balls. So a “striker” could be at bat for 20 or 30 pitches, and the game could drag on. Secondly, the “bound” rule had disappeared by 1865. That rule said that a ball fielded on one bounce was an out.
Rohrback noted that the bound rule makes the game more inclusive. Players did not use gloves back then, so nobody used them in the association’s games. The very young and very old (he says they’ve had players from ages 8 to 80) are less intimidated fielding the ball because they can let it bounce once.
Stone called the ball was used in 1864 as the lemon-peel ball. It contains an ounce or so of India rubber wound with cotton or wool thread and wrapped in one piece of leather cut into the shape of a star, folded up on itself, and stitched.
The clubs only use one ball per game (they cost $20 each). Rohrback noted that the ball is hard at the beginning of the game (they play nine innings) but has been bashed around so much that it is much softer by the end. So smart outfielders play shallower as the game progresses because the ball will not travel as far.
When the clubs played vintage teams from 1845-57 outside their association, they switched to a dark ball, which Stone called a quartered ball. It is made from four pieces of leather, contains no rubber, and is what he termed a “dead ball.” And in 1864, the typical bat was the wedge bat. It had no defined handle or barrel, a flat top, and was made from ash, maple, or hickory.
Saturday’s scrimmage included some team members and some newcomers. Pitching is underhand from 45 feet, and bases are 90 feet apart, so it is a mix of softball and baseball. The pitcher may not wind up and must have both feet on the ground during delivery, so getting enough leverage to throw the ball very fast is difficult.
But Stone noted that there wasn’t a pitcher vs. batter mentality back in the day. “The idea behind 1864 baseball is to put the ball in play, to let everybody participate,” he said. “And it still is. That’s what we’re trying to do with this program.”
The Aetna club’s roster is almost full, but Stone said the other three clubs desperately need more players. Although only men turned out to play in Saturday’s scrimmage, all the clubs are co-ed and welcome women players. Rohrback said there is evidence that women played in the 1860s, although on all women’s teams.
Dixon resident Chris “Pops” Thaiss joined the Aetna squad last summer after seeing a photo in The Dixon Tribune of some players with an invitation to come out to Northwest Park.
Now, about those nicknames…. All the Aetna players have one. “Crash” is a California Highway Patrol officer specializing in analyzing car crashes as part of his office work. Matt is “Brandywine” because he first got interested in vintage baseball in 2014 via the Brandywine Vintage Base Ball Club of Westchester, Pennsylvania. When he moved to Davis and founded Central Valley Vintage Base Ball, he kept telling his fellow players about Brandywine — the beauty of the Brandywine Valley, the history of the Revolutionary War Battle of Brandywine Creek, and the base ball club there. So the players dubbed him “Brandywine.” “Pops” is so-named for a simple reason — his age. Chris “Express” Taylor works for Federal Express.
A self-described “history nut,” Stone had never played baseball. But he was intrigued when he heard about the 1864 Base Ball Club of Brandywine. He played with them, even though he knew nothing about the game. He loved it. When he moved to Davis, he wanted to establish 1864 baseball here. His is now the only 1864 base ball association west of Denver.
Rohrback was more of a baseball nut. His father-in-law, Tom Andres, makes wooden bats. Stone happened to contact Andres by email about the bats, and when Rohrback heard about it, he “hijacked” his father-in-law’s email, as he put it, reached out to Stone, and is now hooked on vintage base ball.
Thaiss said he is “a baseball guy going way back” who coached baseball for 15 years. But he also loves history. He lived in Virginia for a time and developed a strong interest in Civil War history.
Stone started Central Valley Vintage Base Ball in late 2017. In 2018 he started developing the clubs and recruiting players. His association now has officers and a board of directors. Noah Plueger-Peters, the president of the Oleta Vintage Baseball Club, is also communications director of Central Valley Vintage Base Ball.
Stone has obtained a grant from California Humanities, the Schwemm Family Foundation, and the Yolo County Historical Society. This enables him to buy uniforms for all players and to reserve the fields for games so that players do not have to pay any dues.
Matt Sieger, now retired sports reporter/columnist who worked for New York State and California newspapers, did his undergraduate work at Cornell University and received a master’s in journalism from Syracuse University. He is the author of The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978. This article first appeared in The Vacaville Reporter on February 18, 2019.
