Bring your own beer.. and glove
Under Austin's merciless sun, adults are playing sandlot baseball. No, not softball — baseball. Real baseball. Stolen bases. Plumes of amber dust. Pickles. Blue skies. Line drives. Pop flies. Dingers. Double plays. Good eyes. Big gas. Meatballs. Night games. Filthy curves.
The whole 60 feet and 6 inches, with a whole lotta fun to boot.
In the late 1990s, while studying architecture at the Rural Studio, Auburn University’s off-campus design-build program, Jack Sanders was introduced to the Newbern Tigers — an all-Black baseball club deep in the Alabama country. In a small town with a microscopic population to match, hundreds would turn up to watch baseball on the weekends. The games he saw and later took part in were full of revelry. A shindig with music, families, food, and a side dish of baseball. In the mid-aughts, Sanders brought this easygoing rendition of America’s pastime to Austin and founded a sandlot team of his own with some friends, the Texas Playboys. In the beginning, a few sandlot teams like Los Yonke Gallos de Marfa and the East Austin Jardineros began to trickle throughout Texas. In the last couple of years, though, they've spread at a rapid pace all over the country. There’s the Lockhart Hawks, Austin Grackles, Tulsa Breeze, River City Honey Busters, East Austin Ramblers, Nashville Dollys, NOLA Pelicans Baseball Club, and Jack White’s Warstic Woodsmen out of Dallas, to name a few.
Dabbling in athleticism and playing a timeless game is only part of sandlot’s draw — it’s not just about baseball. I joined a sandlot team in March (Y’all’s Texas Tallboys) because I missed the game I played up until high school. I was nostalgic for the days when I was too stupid to realize that with each fading minute, life would never be as simple, just you and your friends tossing around a ball. The world isn’t always entirely rosy for seventeen-year-olds, and it sure as shit wasn’t for me, but I was lucky to play a game I found poetic almost every single day, and not have to worry about credit scores, lay-offs, and aching bones, things I didn’t fully realize were charging at Mach speed in my direction. Sandlot affords men and women the opportunity to escape the dull trappings of adulthood. For a couple of hours, we turn back time, toss around a ball with friends, and relive the spasms of mirth found in adolescence. Or is that just the beer?
Because it’s firmly rooted in Austin culture, it’s only right that sandlot baseball is free-wheeling and, at heart, a little more old-Austin than new. A cast of characters from different walks of life and drastically different skill levels and experiences come together and build community, digging deep into the purest aspect of team sports. Underneath all the competitiveness is a propensity to form unwavering bonds. At The Long Time — a field Sanders designed and built in Southeast Austin, that begs the question, what if Wooderson built the quaint Field of Dreams field? — the spirited atmosphere he was introduced to in Newbern county is alive and well. Live bands provide music, beer flows freely inside and outside of the dugout, toddlers scamper about, dogs are tethered to their owners, and a lively version of baseball captivates your attention. Out at Govalle Park on the Eastside, it’s more of the same, with the occasional barbeque and between me and you, possibly the aroma of the devil’s lettuce.
Sandlot baseball is taken seriously enough that some teams are decked to the nines in crisp uniforms, but it’s casual enough that some players wear cut-off jeans, skirts, overalls, and swim trunks. If an umpire isn't available, somebody trots out behind the pitcher, with a Lone Star in one hand and a cigarette in another, calling balls and strikes. This flavor of baseball is more of a quaint social club full of musicians, writers, artists, designers, teachers, and service industry vets than a try-hard men's league full of dude's trying to relive their glory days. It’s about feeling like a kid again. Making new friends and getting closer to the ones you already had. It’s about beers at King Bee after night games. It's about having fun, first and foremost — winning isn’t everything here, but who are we foolin’, it’d be a lot cooler if you did.
