Images from America’s Hometown Thanksgiving..

On Sat Nov 25th the Essex Base Ball Club participated in America’s Hometown Thanksgiving Celebration in Plymouth MA. The Rockingham’s Jim “Fullmoon“ Leopardi and his wife Tonya along with Jim “Champ” Champey and his son Camron manned a table displaying vintage equipment, items from Jan’s Pitch, and several books including Matt Muise’s photo books. They and even handed out popcorn to the crowd all day which numbered in the hundreds as they filed passed the display. Countless people were intrigued and stopped to ask questions and even a few were interested in playing next year. Members of the Mudville Nine made a surprise appearance about mid afternoon and the crowd gathered even more. There were two major highlights of the day, the first being an invitation by an employee of the Red Sox to have vintage teams from around the region play at Fenway next year. This may still be a long shot so we hope to hear more about this in the upcoming weeks. The second highlight was a brief impromptu interview by former WBZ sports reporter and former olympian Alice Cook now of NESN. The interview is intended for a new show called Life Is Great New England which premiers on NESN on Dec 1st . Hopefully we’ll make the final cut. http://lifeisgreatnetv.com/life-great-new-england-now-nesn/

Essex Base Ball Organization to Expand…

We will also be adding another travel team made up of members of the current Lynn Live Oaks and Portsmouth Rockinghams. We are still debating a team name but some of the options include the Hawkswood BBC of Newburyport, the Ironsides BBC of West Newbury, the Eagle Club of Newburyport, the Georgetown Samosets, or the Bradford BBC of Haverhill.

If you are interested in hosting a game or in joining a team contact Brian Sheehy at historyball@yahoo.com