Buck opens the trunk of his light blue minivan. Rummaging through old baseball equipment, he finally finds what he’s been searching for: ibuprofen.
“I’m 60 years old,” he says, laughing, before popping two little red pills into his mouth.
Buck – known off the field as Pres Pieraccini – is about to stand over home plate, a wooden bat in hand, and lead a practice for the Whately Pioneers vintage baseball team.
The ibuprofen is just a precaution.
“I used to be a really good player. I’m still a pretty good player, but …” He pauses. “I’m 60 years old,” he says again, a smile still on his face. “I just love baseball. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Buck loves the sport so much, in fact, he’s playing on four teams this summer, including the Pioneers, which draws players from Northampton north to Vermont, ranging in age from 19 to 61.
The Pioneers put on the puffy three-quarter pants and oversized, button-down baseball jerseys that many fans of the game have seen only in pictures. They swing heavy, wooden bats and use gloves that look made for weeding the garden, rather than catching a ball.
“We’re 15 brave baseball players,” says Buck, the team’s captain. “We do it because we just love doing it.”
And it means following a whole new – or old, rather – set of rules.
They date back to the 1880s, when baseball was known as a gentleman’s game. Not surprisingly, vintage baseball comes with a vintage code of ethics. Players must address the umpire as “sir,” and showboating or taunting is forbidden.
The Pioneers play in the New England Vintage Baseball League, now in its first official season.
The team is one of 225 clubs in 32 states affiliated with the Vintage Base Ball Federation, headed by former New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton, which organized the Vintage Base Ball Northeast Regional Playoffs starting this weekend and the World Championship next month.
“We’ll have to fight our way in,” Buck says. “But the Whately Pioneers at this point, I’m going to say, are officially a pretty good team.”
Its players are drawn not only to the league’s high level of play, but to the game’s gentlemanly aspect.
“Once you put on the uniform, it’s like you assume the persona. You step back in time and you become these players,” says assistant captain Tom “Hammer” Hamre, 61, of Easthampton. “People are playing just as hard, but you don’t see the arguments” that mark today’s sport. The players “approach the whole game differently.”
One modern addition
Whately’s roster includes someone who likely would not have been playing in the late 19th century: a woman.
“I haven’t seen any other” women playing vintage, says Melissa Frydlo of Northampton.
Nicknamed Albie, the 36-year-old says that being the only female Pioneer doesn’t deter her from appreciating the competitive yet respectful nature of the game.
“Vintage is pretty much a different sport to me. You have to play fundamentals. I’ve been playing baseball for 25 years, so I try my best,” says Albie, adding that she thinks more women would play if they knew the league existed.
Jay Sadowski of Montague City, known to his teammates as Spider, says he was aware of the league, but was skeptical at first.
“When I first heard about vintage baseball, I thought it was kind of silly,” Spider says. “I didn’t realize that you had to be twice as good a player to do it.”
By way of explanation, he reaches into a long black baseball bag, stained white with infield sand, and pulls out what looks like an oven mitt.
“The gloves are tiny,” Spider explains, tossing the brown leather glove in the air. “We don’t wear helmets, and the rules are tough to remember. They’re so different” from modern baseball.
Still, Spider says that he was hooked on vintage baseball after an experience straight out of “Field of Dreams” when he played for the Westfield Wheelmen at last year’s inaugural Vintage Baseball World Championship.
“We went through the woods to get to the field, and the whole thing was all grass. It was all painted up,” describes Spider. “It was like stepping into another world. I was pretty much hooked since then. It was a great experience.”
Some 6,000 fans watched the 2007 playoff and championship games in Westfield.
And while the World Championship is complete with costumed actors, vintage signs and posters and period music, regular-season games are also appealing, say the Pioneers.
“People stop their cars along the road when we’re playing,” says Buck, adding that at last year’s championship, the Pioneers signed autographs for fans. “Thirty to 40 people watch our vintage games usually. It really is an entertaining game to watch.”
Buck explains, “For those people who don’t get it, it’s just being more obvious about how timeless baseball is. We turn the clock back 100 years, and you see it’s the same game. And that’s unique to baseball. I can’t imagine not playing.”
Hammer adds, “The people who enjoy vintage and stay with it have a respect for the game.”
The oldest Pioneer jokes that the only reason he’s on the team is because he’s the only player who can remember the late 19th-century rules.
“I’ve played baseball for over 55 years now,” Hammer says. “I’ve used wood (bats) all my life. We didn’t even have full batting helmets when I played Little League.”
His goal, he says, is to play until age 75 and “then drop dead on the field.”
Buck feels the same way. “They say you have two deaths. Your baseball death, when you can’t play anymore, and your real death. And (my baseball death) is coming sooner rather than later.”
