By Nicholas David

To even the most uneducated in the rules of modern baseball, a home run is the thing to get. Knocking one over the fences and out of bounds is maybe the most iconic image associated with the sport, and the fastest way to earn points in a game.

So, Big Rec’s two open diamonds – with their fenceless, overlapping outfields extending far beyond the reasonable field of play – might seem to most players like a necessary drawback, the price of admission to play on not one but two great public baseball fields, grandstands and pitcher’s mounds included.

Not so for the members of the Bay Area Vintage Base Ball League (BAVBB), who cherish the diamonds at Golden Gate Park’s Big Rec for their resemblance to those played on in the 19th century. The league’s five San Francisco teams all call Big Rec home field on Sundays during the season, and most recently it was the site of its postseason Golden Gate Cup tournament.

Big Rec “is the most legit vintage baseball field in the City because it doesn’t have fences, it’s just a field. And that would have been accurate to the way it would’ve been played in 1886,” said Matt “Ranger” Petty, president of the league and longtime San Francisco Pacifics player. The Pacifics were the first San Francisco team in the league, formed shortly after Corey “Pup” Gazay and his dad founded BAVBB with the San Jose Dukes.

“We started off in the early days with the Spalding Guide,” Gazay said, referring to the official 19th-century rulebook. “Thankfully, digital copies of that still exist.”

BAVBB adheres to the 1886 edition.

“We’ve tweaked some of the rules in the name of safety, just to make sure that a bunch of old guys can come out here and not get hurt all the time,” Gazay said, cracking a smile.

To be sure, the league is not just “a bunch of old guys.” Players range in age from 20s to 50s, and younger players often discover the league simply because Big Rec puts BAVBB on display.

“I was walking by the field one day and I saw guys playing baseball and I was like, this is amazing,” said Paul “Pickles” Rambaud, who just finished his second season with the Pacifics. Rambaud played in high school and college. His story is not an uncommon one, and it is not hard to see why. Players sport thin leather gloves, fasten their string-tie pants just below the knee, and some teams wear emblazoned front-button bibs. That is to say nothing of mustachioed umpires (called “Sir”) who make calls on the field dressed in three-piece suits, accessorized with top hats and pocket watches.

“Is this vampire baseball?” I heard a passerby cry out, referencing the twilight movies. In a sense, she was not far off.

Others discover the league online, like Keegan “Deadeye” Tatum of the Mission Reddingtons, who discovered it on Reddit, and Peter “Chowder” Kohli of the San Francisco Pelicans, who read about it in the news. Tatum said he feels like he “fits in a lot better here” than in modern men’s softball or hardball leagues, a feeling shared by many of his league mates.

Everyone emphasized the league’s culture. Players regularly give themselves up on close calls as the “Gentleman’s Code” calls on them to do, and teammates give each other fitting or ironic (but always vintage) nicknames – “Chowder” hails from Boston, “Union” used to work for the labor department. League members use vintage vocabulary (“good ginger,” a term of encouragement, “Texas League” a type of hit), and opposing teams congratulate each other with sincerity. Games end with three cheers of “Huzzah” – one for the opposing team, one for the “cranks” (fans), and one for the Sir.

“We had some awesome cohesion this season, and that’s what makes a team win,” SF Eagles Manager Will “Smalls” Lyons told me after his team’s first-ever playoff victory in September. Early on in the game, he called himself out at second base to end an inning.

As for those drawbacks when compared to modern baseball, BAVBB players relish the challenge of their form of the game. “Classic vintage play,” Kohli commented after some excitement on the field.

“Looked like he was gonna make the play, but it popped out of his glove,” he said.

In the flurry of post-pandemic running clubs and pickleballers that seem to be the San Franciscan’s only refuge from Zoom calls and email work, BAVBB offers a unique alternative. It is a friendly community for athletes, showmen and history buffs alike, and a place for friends to gather over food and drink to support each other as the sun peaks in and out of the fog. For President Petty, the pandemic “really put into focus how important it is to be able to get together and do that on Sunday, not just for playing baseball, but the friendships and the close games and figuring out the lineup.”

Newer players echo this sentiment.

“That’s what the allure and the draw to this is. It’s not just baseball, it’s the community that it brings together,” said recent Pacifics recruit Andrew “Boo” Deaver.

Playing at Big Rec has even been an act of “connecting generations” for Pelicans player and Outer Sunset resident Kenny “Switchblade” Cantwell, who retired from the league after this season, his 10th and final. He said a relative of his played on these fields for the Mission Reds, an early professional team in San Francisco.

“So my mom was really excited that I play out here,” he said, “because she used to watch him play out here.”

Bay Area Vintage Base Ball is comprised of 10 teams, five in San Francisco and another five in the East and South Bay. The 2025 season is set to begin in March.

Players interested in joining the league can find more information at BAVBB.com.