Wendy's Classic Corner.

Wendy's Classic Corner.

Hi, this is Wendy from Wendy's Classic Corner.

And today we're in the beautiful Avella, PA at the Meadowcroft Vintage baseball game.

Have you ever wondered what 19th century baseball was like?

There's a great big difference between 19th century vintage baseball and current day baseball.

So let's go catch a game and check it out.

I am, the director at Meadowcroft Rock Shelter and Historic Village, which is part of the Heinz History Center family of museums.

We do the Vintage Baseball Day once a year.

So it's an annual event, typically in August.

And this year, we'll have three teams for the first time.

Typically, it's a two team event.

We play a couple of games, but we'll be playing three games today, and, so that, happens every, summer.

Baseball in early western Pennsylvania history starts at about 1858.

A gentleman named Uncle Al Pratt.

We have his first account, on Allegheny City's, which is now the north side next to Pittsburgh.

So base ball, which is two words at the time, starts then and soon, 1860, we see the first season.

And when we say season, these are local teams.

That's the Fort Pitt team, the Allegheny team, the Duquesne team.

Really Pittsburgh names and localities.

So in 1865, we see what is called the Great Baseball Tournament in Allegheny City's North Side.

North of Pittsburgh.

So that is the first time that a local team or that a traveling team, the Philadelphia A's, come from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

It's a great honor.

We have banquets, for them.

And then there are three local teams that play, and they play.

And charge the first admission.

They build the first grandstand, although it's temporary, and they enclose the field because dogs and people were walking through the game.

So what we take as long standing traditions, they were kind of having to figure out locally at that time.

Hello.

And your name is Jeannette.

Jeannette.

Hello.

And you are a member of which team, the Addison Mountain Stars.

And you, you must be one of the only women in this league.

Or do you?

Or is there more?

I am one of the few.

There are definitely are more when you.

Because we play teams from all across the country and that you find a couple more here and there, but there definitely aren't too many of us.

And what made you want to start playing this vintage baseball?

Well, I've always been a big fan of sports.

And then, my dad actually started this team, so I've been around it ever since I was real young.

And then just as I got old enough, then I started playing, and I kind of kept it going from there.

And do you feel like you're very accepted in this by the other men, since it's such a male dominated thing, do you feel that they accept you as a woman?

Oh, yeah.

I actually probably get the opposite.

I get some false praises just for being a woman who can handle myself a little bit out there.

So, Yeah, it's been a good environment.

Hello.

And your name is Jason Rookie Bell.

Hello, Jason.

And you actually make the vintage baseballs, is that correct?

Yes it is.

I've been, I've been making baseballs since 2019.

2020.

Give or take.

I got bit with the vintage baseball bug, and I love it.

And this has become my winter hobby to make the balls.

And can you tell us a little bit about how the balls are made?

Of course, of course.

What I would, the first thing I do is I actually go out and either, you know, Walmart, Amazon, whatever.

And I start with rubber bands and I make them to, about the size of a golf ball, which is about 2.6oz.

From there, I just sit down, probably watching maybe some Pittsburgh Steelers football or in winter time and, I start wrapping it up with some acrylic yarn.

I get that all up to a size where I just go out and I buy a leather hide at my, local leather shop, and I use a laser, and I cut all my patterns out to size, and I just take that, and I wrap that around the ball.

And the way I try to explain it to the younger generation is it's just like your lacing up your center shoes.

Basically, just start with two needles, and I lace the entire way up over the ball.

Once I get to the one side, I show my needles through the ball and I come 90 degrees back up over the other side.

And I take that needles and with the string that's sticking out at that time into the night, and I just suck at night behind a ball.

And it disappears.

Oh, that's so interesting.

So how how similar are these to regular baseballs that they use a major or a regular ball?

One of the first things in the rule book is that the ball needs to be the same, which is five and three quarter to six ounces and a nine and three quarter to ten inch circumference.

So another thing I do is I like to carry around a regular baseball so I can show people comparison.

And I also carry around a, softball just so that people have an idea on.

Exactly, you know, the size difference between your modern day softball and your modern day baseball.

It looks a little softer then.

Oh, I guess it isn't.

I can I feel it?

Yeah.

Of course.

Yeah, I guess it isnt.

And it looks softer, but I guess it it is kind of pretty firm.

Oh, you would be surprised.

The ball actually still flies pretty good.

And, being a little bit softer is kind of okay, because I, as you guys may not know, we all play with our gloves.

Just how it was back in 1860.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't want to get hit with that, really hard ball without a glove.

Of course, of course.

All right, well, thank you very much.

That's really interesting.

And how did you get started making these?

Do have you been doing this for a very long time?

Did you do this when you were a child?

How did you get started with it?

Well, I got started up in, I found out about vintage baseball back in 2017 at a place called Greenfield Village up in, Dearborn, Michigan.

I come home, jumped on the internet and just started searching.

And, luckily I found in the team the Out of Sand Mountain Stars, which is based on out of Addison P.A., and I got bit with the bug and I started making, balls.

And I also make my own belts.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for your time.

We really appreciate that.

Thank you and have a wonderful day.

Hello.

And your name is, Alex Catfish Minnick.

Oh, my goodness.

You guys all have such interesting names.

Yeah, it's kind of one of the, things about vintage baseball.

We all go by a nickname.

Oh, I see, and you're a different team than the other team.

What is your team?

We are the Somerset Frosty.

Sons of Thunder.

Where did you get that name?

Well, in, back in the 1800s, Somerset was known as Little Siberia because it's always so cold and we get so much snow.

And, one of the, he held multiple political post, Alexander Ogle, deemed the, the civil War, I guess Civil War soldiers, from Somerset as the frosty Sons of Thunder because they fought so valiantly in the cold weather.

Oh, I see, well, that's a good that's a good story.

And then you're, one of the.

Are you the captain of this team?

Yeah, I am the captain.

Kind of by default.

It was kind of passed on to me.

How did you get involved in vintage baseball?

Our former captain, Lush he was a coach when I was growing up in Little League and stuff.

And when I came back to Somerset from college, he asked if I wanted to join the team, and I started playing, and that was probably about ten years ago.

And what what is I mean, we're going to see some of the baseball, but what's like some of the major differences between like professional baseball in this, the biggest thing you're going to notice is that if the ball bounces and the outfielder or the infielder catches on one bounce, the, the batter is still out.

You can catch it on the air or in the bounce.

On on a bounce.

If it bounces, though, runners do not have to tag up like you'd see in professional baseball.

The other thing, two other rules that are very different is, in Little League and growing up, if you've played any baseball, you've always been told to run through first base.

You cannot run through first base, or you could be tagged out.

And the other thing is, wherever the ball lands, first is determines if it's fair, foul.

So for example, there's a tree in left field.

It could hit the tree bounce foul lands foul.

It's foul ball.

It can hit the tree next time.

Land fair would be a fair ball.

So just all depends where the ball bounces first.

You got to be really paying attention in the game or else you're like what's going on.

Yeah it can be a little bit confusing as a spectator if you don't know all the rules.

And then when you first start playing, like if you stick around and watch much of the game today, some of the newer players that may have not played much, you'll see a run through first base.

It's usually the mistake that every new player makes.

You're like, now we're going to get you.

Yeah.

We usually just tell them, hey, if you make that mistake, just start going to second and hopefully they make a mistake and you get second safely.

All right.

Well thank you very much for your time.

We look forward to seeing you in the game.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Hello.

And your name is Adam Dirtbag Johnson.

Okay.

And what team are you with?

I'm the captain of the Addison Mountain Stars.

And how did the Addison Mountain stars come to existence?

We're actually based off a team from Altoona.

In the 1860s.

There was a team called the Altoona mountain cities.

They became the Altoona Star baseball club, then the Altoona mountain Baseball Club, and finally the Altoona mountain Star Baseball Club.

Our originator of the team, the guy who started the team, which will be my wife Nettie's dad, he's from Addison, so he kind of just took that historical name, and we ran with it and renamed the Addison Mountain Stars.

And is that how you got into baseball, or did you just start out a little league and you just eventually got into this?

I've been playing baseball for as long as I can remember.

All of, you know, wiffle ball when I was like a little kid.

There's one of my earliest memories with my dad.

Tee ball, little league, junior legion, senior Legion, high school ball.

I've been playing ball my whole life, and we actually used to like when we were warming up in high school ball.

We used to throw the ball at each other as hard as we can and catch it barehanded just to see who was tougher.

It was like a chicken thing, so this was a natural for me.

When I first saw it, I was like, I got to get in on this.

Yeah.

Speaking of that, you don't use any protective equipment.

Like, do people get injured a lot in this?

All the time.

Actually, Nattie gave two knees to this game just this year.

So, knees sometimes.

But mostly fingers.

You see a lot of broken, twisted, dislocated fingers in this sport.

Not to discourage anybody who would want to try it out.

It's perfectly safe.

But yeah, yeah, there are injuries.

I guess if people do want to try it out, what do they do?

Just contact you?

Yeah.

There's a website called vbba.org and that's the best place to go and find contact numbers for teams.

Learn the rules and yeah find the equipment.

So that has all the information you would need.

And you know I don't think we talked about the bats.

They're not like regular baseball bats.

They're a little different.

Can you tell us a little bit about them.

Yeah.

They're generally longer.

And they're thicker.

The handles specifically are thicker.

The tapered handles and cupped out ends.

That's a modern, bat thing to reduce weight.

But back in the in those days, they swung heavier bats that were generally bigger.

And, obviously all wood.

The composite stuff wasn't invented until way later.

So yeah, they're they're definitely different and should should I, should I try to bat?

I absolutely think you should try to bat.

All right, well, give it a whirl.

All right.

Let's see.

I'll get you a pitcher.

All right.

Thanks.

Hi.

And your names are Thomas, Gregory, Thomas and Gregory.

And you came here to watch the vintage baseball game.

Have you ever been here before?

Yes.

And why do you like to come to the vintage baseball game?

It's definitely a different game in some ways than modern baseball.

It's definitely the only place that you can say that the the tree was interfered with that.

And but it also shows that baseball might have changed a lot for almost 200 years.

But it is in most ways very similar.

They are still three outs, nine innings.

Once those things came and those essential parts, once they came into play, then they just stayed there and did not change.

And you, you keep score.

Can you show us your scorecard there?

Yes.

This here it is.

This is Somerset.

They were away.

This is Addison.

They go home.

Somerset and Addison.

The way that they decided to play to find out who's at home, by the way, is kind of like they want to do.

Decide who starts in football.

They flip a coin ball.

Thank you for coming.

And I guess we'll see you here next year, I guess so.

We'll be here.

All right.

Great.

Thank you for your time.

Pittsburgh Pirates.

Basically around 1891, they start to become known as the Pirates.

They're very deep and nuanced history, but simplified.

The team is the allegheny's of the American Association.

In 1882.

So they, for the next decade or so, are in relative obscurity and are known as one of the hardest drinking teams in the league.

The American Association at some point, towards the end of the decade, a players union gets stronger and stronger, called the Brotherhood.

And that team, that organization, they formed, they're a new professional league.

And that's called the Players League.

So that takes American Association and both that's a major league and the National League at the time they kind of steal some of the players from them and all the other teams that lost players there to submit lists of who they want back, who they were, reserved players, they owned those players.

So Philadelphia omits Lou Bierbauer, the best second baseman in the league, and the Alleghenies recognize this.

The Alleghany's manager, Ned Hanlon, says, oh my gosh, we could get the best second baseman.

Oh, I know he's up wintering on Lake Erie, so he takes a train from Pittsburgh to Lake Erie, commandeers a schooner on Presque Isle, goes across the ice and signs Lou Bierbauer simplified.

The story is once we got bierbauer, Philadelphia said this is an act of piracy or a piratical act.

That's the great ten second soundbite.

There's a gentleman in Washington, in the American Association, he says.

We are now pirates and have hoisted the black flag against the National League for the Good of Baseball.

That's the earliest and strongest quote I've found.

But the idea of pirates, piracy, Corsair?

Buccaneer, that all starts to be an insult.

And then it turns around into a source of pride.

Look how resourceful we are in securing the best players.

Meadowcroft is an outdoor museum.

We have 275 acres here, and the signature element is the Meadowcroft Rock shelter, a National Historic Landmark archeological site that has produced evidence of people, using this piece of real estate, 19,000 years ago.

So we do that through different, outdoor interpretive areas.

So we look at the rock shelter and the evidence of the first people there, the hunter gatherers that first used the site.

We recreated a 16th century Monongahela Indian village, that tells the story of after agriculture was introduced, but prior to any Europeans.

And then we look at the 18th century where, Europeans have arrived and now there's this commercial trade with the American Indians that are here.

And then finally our 19th century village that looks at rural life in Western Pennsylvania as the Industrial Revolution is taking hold, in addition to our annual vintage baseball event, we also have, an annual event in June, our atlatl competition.

The atlatl is a prehistoric hunting weapon.

It's a spear thrower that was used for thousands and thousands of years prior to the invention of the bow and arrow.

We don't have any evidence of bow and arrow in western Pennsylvania any earlier than about 500 A.D.. So for thousands and thousands of years, the weapon of choice was the atlatl.

It's a stick that launches a long, arrow like dart.

And visitors that come can even try using the atlatl as well.

So those are two annual events that we do that are related to a sports theme.