There are physical rhythms that are so ingrained as to feel inherent, and there are occasionally plays no one has seen before. There is the history and the capacity for surprise. There are the aesthetics-“the grass and the leather and the actual ball and bat,” Sanders says. There is the cadence of it, the natural pockets of reflectiveness and the profound, delightful bursts of drama.
#Old sandlot games full
(There are now enough sponsors for a full concession stand offering not just beer but tequila, wine and more.)Įven as Sanders notes other places where he’s felt a sandlot-type energy-a cricket game he stumbled across in Houston, soccer he witnessed in Brazil-he comes back to everything that makes baseball suited to this ideal. Every city park had a sign that read no beer allowed, not such a big deal if you were just bringing a few coolers into the dugout, but a little more complicated if you had become such an attraction that local breweries were inquiring about sponsorships. Sanders’s purchase in 2012 of the five acres that would become the Long Time was practical as much as it was philosophical. It’s perhaps no surprise that a group so skeptical of authority would seek a physical space where it could play by its own rules. The latter was started by a longtime Playboy, a film producer who plays catcher named Howard Carey, and is now used nationally by more than 50 teams. Now there are a dozen in Austin alone, with others scattered around the state, a coalition joined physically on the field and digitally by a hashtag: #SandlotRevolution. But there were people intrigued by the Playboys, and as word spread and interest grew, so did the number of teams. There weren’t other local clubs that identified as sandlot at the time. (There are no formal tryouts, but there are “vibe checks,” as one visiting South Austin Parakeets player puts it.) Throwback uniforms, whimsical team names and elaborate pregame rituals are critical. Joining the Playboys or another sandlot squad is less about playing ability than cultural fit. It’s more important that everyone is on board with the spirit of the thing. The logistics that might otherwise be handled by a league infrastructure all get worked out eventually.
The Playboys don’t belong to any formal organization so much as to a loose confederation of teams joined by “a common thread,” says Dave Mead, a photographer who has been on the Playboys’ roster since their first game, in 2006. It’s meant to evoke the baseball you played when you were a kid, even before Little League, when all you knew was that you loved the game. It doesn’t have to be played on an actual sandlot, but it does have to feel as if it could be, with the same energy and possibility invited by a vacant neighborhood patch. But sandlot ball is its own particular category. There are adult baseball leagues of varying structures and flavors all around the country, some tethered to tradition and some freewheeling, some competitive and some very much not. It’s how he sees the brand of baseball that has grown here, too-freer and kinder and more interesting than anything he ever imagined. “It finds its own special story.” That’s how he sees the field that he has built in this stretch of floodplain. “The best of design, and of art, is something that’s way beyond what we’re capable of imagining,” Sanders explains. He reached for a term that an architecture professor of his would use: more-than-ness.
On a sticky July night Sanders looked out at the field after a doubleheader, sipping a beer to a soundtrack of crickets while the last of the sun slipped away behind him. Every part of it is thoughtfully constructed-the hand-lettering on the outfield signs, the modest stage behind the bleachers, the bistro lights strung behind the backstop. The place is made largely from found materials, with scrap metal salvaged from a vodka distillery and a home dugout that used to be an old chicken coop. Hundreds of season-ticket holders come not only to watch the Playboys face teams from around the region but also to catch whatever other performances might be in store from a club full of creatives-say, an acoustic set from a player’s new record during the seventh-inning stretch.įor Sanders, 45, the Long Time is an extension of his architectural practice. But for five years now they’ve made their home at the Long Time. The Playboys existed before they had a diamond of their own, playing in Austin parks and going on short road trips. Their captain is first baseman and pitcher Jack Sanders, who is also the team founder and the man who built the ball field from the ground up. The Long Time is the home park of the Texas Playboys, a sandlot club of mostly musicians, photographers, filmmakers and other artists.
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