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Greetings from the Cowtown Vintage Baseball Club in Wichita, Kansas; home of the Wichita Red Stockings & Bulldozers. (Website address http://www.cowtownbaseball.org/index.html) Our season is just about to get underway with a makeup of a rainout game this coming Sunday at our adopted away field in a city park that hosted us last year at a neighborhood get-together. Our vintage baseball game was quite the centerpiece of that function & we're planning to support a similar neighborhood function there again this year. Our annual business meeting resulted in - among other things - the election of "yours truly" as Club president for the upcoming year. It's quite an honor for me - it's only my 2nd year with the Club - to be involved in a leadership role of such a fine organization of such enthusiastic & dedicated volunteer re-enactors. As our homefield has several unmovable obstacles to play around, this meeting also discussed how to play the ball off of & around such obstacles & resulted in a few minor rules changes. If any other vintage clubs have any historical insights as to how 1860s & 1870s baseball rules addressed such issues as playing the ball as it bounces off a feedshed or thru or off of trees, we'd love to hear them. Additionally, we elected a couple of great Events Coordinators from amongst our ranks who have set us up with some great events this year. As to our schedule, we're an active little club & have several games planned in the farmyard of our host museum - "Old Cowtown Museum" in Wichita, Kansas - coinciding with their various theme weekends as well as several away games. We will be playing against local media personalities in our state capitol (Topeka, Ks) at the state historical museum. The following weekend we'll be in the other half of the state playing some cavalry & infantry re-enactors during a re-enactment weekend at a frontier fort (Fort Larned). As for any "appearances at 'real' baseball stadiums," Cowtown Vintage Baseball has a couple such appearances planned. The county historical museum in our neighboring Butler County is hosting us to play on a real field against their local National Baseball Congress team. Later in the summer our club will be traveling to our neighbor state of Missouri to play at another re-enactment event at a musuem in the St Louis area. While there, we have tickets to attend a St Louis Cardinals game. We're working on some additional sponsorships this year. And as for publicity we have been getting more & more positive publicity & will even participate in a parade along with other re-enactors from our host museum. Unfortunately, that museum is under a lot of political pressure these days & bravely continues endeavoring to effectively meet those criticisms by showing improvements in needed areas while demonstrating the positive benefits it contributes to the community. Other publicity for our club includes some magazine article coverage in Kansas Magazine (http://www.cowtownbaseball.org/docs/kansasmagarticle.pdf). Though we're a young club (about 3 seasons, I understand) we're very blessed to have been able to recruit guys who are playing because they like baseball and re-enacting the game first instead of playing to win. Additionally, we've got some great researchers in our group who've done a lot towards helping us look very "period correct" & historically accurate which helps us get invited to participate at other museums where such requirements are mandatory. I'm told that wherever we have traveled to, we're complimented a lot on how good (& accurate) our uniforms & gear look. Hopefully this lengthy listing isn't a case of TMI, but I'm sure you'd agree that our little vintage ballclub is a very active one, not letting much moss grow under our vintage cleats & boots. (A lot of dust and a little cow manure maybe, but not much moss due to inactivity). Regards, Dave "Cubbie" Norris, President Cowtown Vintage Baseball Club Wichita, Kansas |