It took almost four years to get this story published, but I finally did it. Before heading off to college I was working at a restaurant trying to put some money in the bank for a trip to Mexico with my best friend before I left. I overheard a man sitting at a bar in the back party room talking about a baseball game he had played in the day prior and how his hand was killing him. As I walked by, overhearing bits and pieces of the conversation as I mixed drinks for my tables, I began to piece together that this was no ordinary baseball league. This man played for what appears to be a now defunct club in Perryville, Maryland that belonged to the Vintage Base Ball Association (VBBA). After a brief chat with the man later on, I learned this baseball league played by a baseball rulebook I didn't even know existed. I knew baseball was over one hundred years old, but I figured it started around the turn of the 20th century. I was sadly mistaken as this team played by rules from the early 1860's. Back then there were no gloves, no helmets, no cups, and if you took a fastball to the head it was too-bad-so-sad, suck it up. I was intrigued and began researching the VBBA and it's member clubs, but was quickly wrapped up in a visit from my girlfriend now of four years and my trip to Mexico with Ryan. Then school started and vintage baseball was quickly forgotten about. The next summer I found myself in Scotland and again found an intriguing baseball league. This one was modern by rules, but not very American at all. I followed a pitcher who defected from America shortly after finding the league on a vacation. Jason Derr, a former Oregonian, threw nine different pitches and none of them over 75mph. I even played a little third base for the team in a rain soaked game in Glasgow. The fun that summer reminded me of the league I had heard about a year before and the next school year I decided to find a story I could do on it. Alas, my sophomore year at Ohio University produced no vintage story. I found myself bogged down in schoolwork and was locked into a horrible position as an RA that ruled my free time. It wasn't until I took the Spring quarter off to do a brief internship at The Cecil Whig that I would have an opportunity to do the story. In fact, what better place to do it, right? Back home where I knew teams existed, a paper to publish it, and the freedom to pursue it. Except, The Whig was purchased by a larger media conglomerate, my pay was slashed to a per assignment compensation and I stopped getting any at all shortly after covering a race at Dover International Speedway in early June. The rest of that summer I was stuck working my tail off trying again to put money away and left with no time, nor anyone to publish a story. Another school year came and went and I put the story into the back corners of my mind. It wasn't until covering a professor at Ohio University that taught the history of baseball in America that I remembered the story I had been putting off. There was a team in Columbus, I was entering Spring quarter and I would be taking multimedia for the first time. I thought it was the perfect scenario to do the story... but another hitch arose.... Their season wouldn't start until late in the Spring, too late to do it for class, and I quickly became absorbed in a story on The Last Chance Corral, spending almost every Friday, Saturday and Sunday there in the Spring. That Summer, though, I had an internship at The News Journal, and I knew my best chance to do the story would happen there. I found a team in Delaware City, just 10 minutes down the road from the office. I pitched the story to my editors and the loved it. Finally, I was going to get a chance to cover this baseball league that eluded me for so long... until three days later I saw a five-column photo by Fred Comegys run on the cover of Sports covering The Diamond State Base Ball Club... Whether the story had always been in the system, Fred had been assigned by mistake or signals were crossed somewhere I never understood, but my chance was gone once again. The school year came and with it VICO 486. There was no time in the fall to cover the league in Columbus as they wrapped up their season and I graduated in March. Returning home I worked 40 hours a week for my dad at Mark Trece trying to put money away for my internship this summer. I had completely forgotten about vintage baseball until one day I was sitting in the newsroom at The Bee during my first week here. I was hungry for stories as Lisa eased me in to the routine at The Bee and I started looking around for my own pet project I could do to hopefully impress my fellow photographers and editors. The little light that had been flickering in the back of my head for three summers lit up once more and I thought, maybe, just maybe there is a team out here. I googled, researched, and found much more than I could have ever hoped for. Not only was there a team, there was a league, two leagues in fact. One was based in the Bay Area, an hour-and-a-half away. The other was right down the road in Rancho Murieta, a small town in the middle of nowhere California. Initially I tried to cover the Bay Area league, but it was much harder to coordinate with their schedule and justify traveling that far. I'm glad I chose to take the short trip to Rancho Murieta one 105-degree day in June as I finally got to see what I had been wondering about for years. Men ranging in ages from 25 to 65 playing baseball the way it was 125 years ago. The Gold Country Vintage Base Ball league plays by the 1886 rules of baseball, the first year gloves were introduced, but that's giving the things they wear on their hands too much credit. The gloves are little more than gardening gloves. The balls are specially made and softer than a normal baseball. The bats are wooden and range in shape and size compared to traditional modern bats. The uniforms are wool and hot. The umpire is "the sir," the batter is "the striker," the pitcher is "the hurler," and the fans are "cranks." If you're hit by a pitch you suck it up, it's just one of seven balls you can get before a walk. Fouls don't count as strikes and you can pick your strike-zone: high (head to waist) or low (waist to knees). Foul balls can be caught on a hop for an out. There's no such thing as a balk and quick pitches are common. There is at least one out or "hand" drawn per game from "the hidden ball trick," and someone will most likely break or dislocate a finger. I had the pleasure to cover this all summer and finally that work comes together in the Sunday "Living Here" section of The Sacramento Bee complete with a multimedia piece, 31-image gallery and a six-column photo on the front of the section. I couldn't have done this without The Bee or the great people I've been able to work with. Thank you Tim, Mark and Lisa (my editors), for giving me the time to cover this and helping me get my vision out of my head and in to Final Cut. Thank you Scott Craig for the awesome "aged film" filter and the flash encoding today. Again, I could not have done this without you all. Story: Dixie Reid's Awesome Story Gallery: Vintage Gallery Video: Vintage Video