Vintage baseball teams to play in Bisbee
3114 E. Indian School Rd. • 480-949-1888
Bisbee’s vintage baseball tournament is a throwback to the old days. The players wear retro uniforms. They play by old-time rules. Base ball is two words. Fans are called cranks.
Coordinators of the sixth annual Copper City Classic Vintage Base Ball Tournament said the intent is to stage the game as it would have been played in 1860. Abraham Lincoln was running for president. It was eight years before Phoenix was officially recognized, and Bisbee had not been founded as a mining town.
Mike Anderson, Friends of Warren Ballpark’s historian and founding member, said visitors can expect a blast from the past.
“Players dressed in vintage uniforms take the field to play baseball as it was played when Lincoln was president,” Anderson said. “A visiting team from Colorado in red, white and blue uniforms banters with the crowd. An arbitrator (umpire) in 1860 garb monitors the game and fines cranks (fans) or players 25 cents for bad language.”
Anderson said the game will be played by these old rules:
If the ball is caught on the first bounce, it is an out.
Players generally do not wear gloves. It is considered unmanly. If they do wear a glove, it is similar to a garden glove, not the padded, webby gloves of today.
If a crank catches a fly ball or a ball on the first bounce, it is an out.
The tournament a fund-raiser for Warren Ballpark, said Lance Busch, Arizona Territories Vintage Base Ball League Commissioner.
“It’s the purity of the sport. No one is getting a fat paycheck,” Busch said. “We do it for the love of the game.”
The league started in about 2007 and incorporated in 2009.
Busch said the Arizona Territories Vintage Ball League has eight teams, six of which are from the Phoenix metro area. Team names include Glendale Gophers, Tucson Saguaros, Bisbee Black Sox and Phoenix Senators. Anderson is on the Black Sox.
The ninth team is traveling from Denver, he said.
“What makes this tournament and Warren Ballpark so interesting is that Warren Ballpark, like the rest of Bisbee, exists in a time warp,” Anderson said “It looks just as it did when minor-league teams played there in the 1930s. This tournament allows spectators — cranks or bugs, as they were known in the 1800s — to see the game in one of its earliest forms.” When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, April 11-12. Where: Warren Ballpark, at Arizona and Ruppe streets, Bisbee. Admission: $10 for a single-day ticket, $15 for a two-day ticket. Free for age 12 and younger. Free for active members of the military on Sunday. Details: www.friendsofwarrenballpark.com.