Each summer, teams gather
for the Annual Vintage Baseball Tournament.
- Umpire: Strike One!
- Angela: Hosted by the Menomonie Blue Caps.
- This is our fourth year we're doing this.
We've slowly built it every year.
In the game of Vintage Baseball
we're meant to be gentlemen with each other.
Our draw to try to get teams here
is just to provide great hospitality,
along with great baseball,
you know? [bat strikes ball]
The festival this year had 10 teams:
2 from Illinois came up here, and then, a team from Kansas
and we had teams from Minnesota and Wisconsin.
So, it was a pretty big deal. - Wow!
- And everybody seemed to be enjoying it so far.
[? baseball-themed organ music?] - Players re enjoying it now
as much as the original team did
over 100 years ago.
No one sees that more
than Vice President of the Dunn County Historical Society,
who's organization works to keep Vintage Baseball
and the Menomonie Blue Caps alive today.
- The original team started in 1882
with a single game around the Fourth of July
against an Eau Claire rival.
And then, that team played ball until 1941,
and the roster was getting depleted, with guys
either being drafted or enlisting for World War II.
And they turned over the young guys to the Menomonie Eagles.
That's the best part of it.
It takes back to a time when the game was simple.
- Angela: It may look like baseball,
but the game is much different
than the sport played today.
[players conversing]
- It's the outfits we wear,
it's some of the lingo we use.
Like, when you talk about the crowd watching, they're spectators.
So. yeah, when you come in to our park
it's two bits to come in, which is 25 cents.
That was the normal cost of admission to go to a game.
Our benches are hay bales.
We use period baseballs.
We use period bats.
I mean everything's 1860's.
We don't wear gloves so it's perfect.
- Wow, do your hands hurt?
- It depends how hard the ball's coming at you.
I play second base, so it gets dicey sometimes.
- Angela: A historically accurate game
and everyone's having a ball.
- We give each other high fives
when they make a good play against us.
And we give huzzahs and we take our caps off.
Like, the whole point of the game
is just to have a great time while we're playing,
while we're trying show this game of 1860 baseball.
- Angela: It's not even the umpires job
to call plays.
- An umpire actually doesn't have to do very much.
He calls the strike and a foul ball.
If there is a particularly close play
where the two players can't decide
whether he's out or whether he's safe.
Then you can turn, I would turn,
to the audience, also known as the cranks,
and would ask them for their opinion
and they would voice whether the runner is safe
whether he's out.
So really, the umpire doesn't have to do a whole lot
and that's just the way we like it.
- Angela: But, it is everyone's job
to keep an eye on the ball.
- Like any baseball crowd we don't have nets here
and the rules of the game
are that the ball is still alive
if it were to land in the crotch of a tree
or roll off a barn roof, the ball is still alive.
So, there may be a player
come running through and grab it.
If the crowd gets involved, it's a problem,
just like in the real games.
And here comes one right now!
[laughing]
- Angela: By the end of the tournament
it's not so important who wins or looses,
but how much fun was had on the field.
- The whole point of the game
is just to have a great time while we're plying.
[hollering] - Leader: Hip-hip. - Team: Huzzah!
- Hip-hip! - Huzzah! - Hip-hip! - Huzzah!