Welcome to the official web site of the GCVBB.  During the season, game results, photos and other league tidbits will be posted on a semi-regular basis for all cranks to enjoy.  The 2010 has just finished with a bang, including eight regular season games per team, an exciting new playoff series involving all five teams, the now-traditional GCVBB "Crankfest" and the California Cup Championship to cap off the season.  Take yourself out to the ball game!!
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After two very competitive matches on the first day of Cal Cup play, cranks at Stonehouse Field were treated to a sensational day of base ball.  In the consolation match between the Santa Clara Stogies and the New Almaden Quickslivers, the Stogies jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first frame and lead 7-1 before the NA squad put up 3s in the 6th and 7th frame to send it into extra innings.  After pitching 17 innings in 2 days, Tumbleweed Epperson sent a 3-run walk-off blast over the left field fence for a dramatic 10-7 win in 10 innings.  The Cal Cup Championship was equally competitive, as the Bandits won the bat toss and broke out to an early 3-1 lead, as Greg "Bacon" Jorgensen kept the Highlander bats quiet.  The Sierra squad rallied to tie the game in the sixth and it looked like another extra inning affair, when Greg "Cookie" Kitchen came to the plate with two hands down and sailed one over the fence in left for the second walk-off HR of the day.  The celebration quickly ensued and the Bandits are Cal Cup Champs for 2010!

"The way the game was meant to be played!" has special meaning when teams of Gold Country Vintage Base Ball get together.  It's more than the old-fashioned uniforms that players wear from the 1880s; it's the spirit, sportsmanship, etiquette -and, yes, some of the outlandishness that characterized the country and the game at that time.

In the inaugural 2006 season, the Crushers and Miners enjoyed a banner year, playing games in eight different counties, in two AAA minor league parks (Sacramento and Fresno), an exhibition at San Quentin Prison, and hosting the first-ever California Vintage Base Ball All Star Festival (with all five teams from Bay Area Vintage Base Ball participating).  After the Miners dominated the 2006 season, the Amador Crushers won the first "California Cup"  in 2007 and went on to represent the west coast at the Vintage Base Ball World Championships in Massachusetts, taking third place in this national tournament.

After two new teams joined the Amador County Crushers and Mother Lode Miners as members of GCVBB in 2007, the Preston Nine learned the hard way what it's like to field a team of muffins for the third season.  In 2007, the Sierra Highlanders (before the Yankees became, well, the Yankees, they were known as the Highlanders) and the Rancho Murieta Bandits became only the eighth and ninth vintage teams on the west coast.  The Highlanders spirited squad was able to wrestle away the GCVBB Championship from the Crushers in 2009. 

The field is 'regulation' baseball, 90-foot bases, but with a pitcher's box a few feet in front of where today's mound is found.  The gloves are little more than leather garden gloves, with no webbing, the ball looks like today's sphere but a little lighter and softer (and softens up as the game goes on) and bats are thick, wooden timbers that can weigh over 40 ounces.  The catcher's equipment does not include shin guards and the glove for this position (known as the 'behind') is webless and small.  Pitching speed is dictated typically by how much pain the 'behind' can absorb behind the plate.  However, most hurlers rely on quick pitches, breaking stuff and pitching from inside the box, one side to the other.

Because there is no infield fly rule, because runners can be called out for not hustling to or back to a base even after a walk or foul ball, because the hidden ball trick is an important strategy and because the pitcher can balk to first, at will, the game is fast-paced and exciting.  It is also a game where the umpire - although the sole arbitrator of the game - can also involve the players and even the fans (called 'cranks' in this period) in helping with the calls, under 'the gentlemen's rule').  Still, this did not stop cranks from shooting guns off in the air to distract fielders during the game; this is one part of 1880s baseball not 'relived'.  Come on out and join us for a Sunday at the ol' ball park.