Jan. 20, 1881, the Prescott Weekly Miner documents how the Fort Verde Excelsiors challenged “any club in the city of Prescott to a game of baseball,” resulting in the Prescott club’s “inglorious defeat,” 66-27.
“In the first of the second inning,” the story recounts, “the Verde boys, by heavy hitting, and mismanagement, errors and carelessness on the part of the Prescott club, secured 21 runs.
“From this on, it was plainly seen that it was a one-sided affair, the Prescott club being terribly discouraged and showing no disposition to retrieve their lost honors.”
Seven months and 134 years later — give or take a week — the Excelsiors, now purely from the Verde Valley, have returned, in their original burlap and wool uniforms, to challenge all comers to a vintage baseball game.
The Bisbee Bees took up that challenge Jan. 13. But while the score was far lower, the winner was the same — the Excelsiors by seven “aces,” 13-6.
Robert Jennings, a veteran soccer player, coach, and assistant park manager for the last two-and-a-half years, has preserved the tradition of being Arizona’s only vintage baseball team to still play on its original field.
“This fort, at one time, had quite a few teams, because you had 350 enlisted men here,” Jennings said. “All the forts and camps in Arizona at that time — if there was enough men — this was a way for them to have something to do while they were here.”
As they did originally with such events as rabbit and dog races, five more games in the next nine months will coincide with fort festivities. Fort Verde Days, Corn Fest, a Dutch Oven Challenge and even a Buffalo Soldiers reenactment will be celebrated around the Excelsiors’ games against vintage baseball teams from Phoenix, Tucson and even a jail team from Florence with striped prison outfits known as the Inmates.
“The guys did a lot of gambling,” Jennings explained. “So they would be, like, ‘Oh, no, I just gambled all my money away.’
“So they needed something to pass the time.”
Bud Bowersock, 78, moved to Camp Verde from Tucson to retire and volunteer at the fort before he got talked into his first game Jan. 16.
Although Bowersock prefers not to travel for games, the Excelsiors, Jennings said, are “taking steps slowly” to enter Arizona’s competitive league, based in Phoenix. As early as Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017, the Excelsiors could be playing in the Vintage Baseball World Series in either Dodger Stadium, in Los Angeles or Boston’s Fenway Park.
Tommy Kling, Camp Verde High School’s Class of 2013 and another volunteer at the fort, was the speediest player on the team for the past three years.
That is, until Jan. 16, when his classmate, fellow 20-year-old Justin Reay, joined the Excelsiors prior to their Jan. 16 win.
“Our team had no uniforms,” Kling recalled. “Three, four games a year — if that. There’s no real rivalry. We all know each other by name.”
Now Reay is a welcome burst of speed at the opposite gardener from Kling. Speed is not required in this version of the American pastime, as pinch-runners can be employed as soon as the batter gets to first “sack,” or base.
But the quickness of the Fort Verde outfielders gives the Excelsiors an edge, Jennings explained.
“We got speed,” he said. “Other teams have some heavy hitters, but what helps is out is we’ve got legs in the [out]field.”
Of the rest of the 13 players on the team, only one lives outside the Verde Valley.
“Teams want to come here because they want to play on a part of history,” Jennings said.
For more photos and the full Excelsiors schedule, please see the Wednesday, Jan. 27, issues of the Camp Verde Journal and Cottonwood Journal Extra.
