The Oldtime Baseball Game is a celebration of our national pastime, played each year at beautiful St. Peter’s Field on Sherman Street in North Cambridge. From its humble beginnings in 1994, the game has grown considerably over the years, yet has remained loyal to its mission of offering a glimpse of what it was like in the old days, when hundreds of fans would turn out to root for their “town” team in various local semipro leagues.
What makes the Oldtime Baseball Game so special is our dazzling collection of flannel uniforms that represent virtually every era in baseball history. Used just once a year for the Oldtime Baseball Game, and then returned to storage by our friends at Royal White Laundry of Somerville, the uniforms include such long-ago teams as the Boston Braves, St. Louis Browns and Brooklyn Dodgers. Teams from the old Negro Leagues are represented by the Kansas City Monarchs, Homestead Grays and Baltimore Elite Giants. Cuba is represented by the legendary Cienfuegos Elephantes. We even have a uniform from a team that never actually existed: The New York Knights, for whom Robert Redford’s Roy Hobbs character played in “The Natural.”
Players from the game are chosen from colleges and universities from the Boston area, with an occasional high school player or retired big-leaguer added to the mix. Over the years, former Red Sox pitchers Oil Can Boyd and Jim Corsi have played in the game, as has former New York Yankee Mike Pagliarulo. More than 25 participants in the Oldtime Baseball Game have gone on to play professional baseball, including former Northeastern University star Carlos Pena of Haverhill, the first representative of our game to play Major League Baseball. Pena now plays for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
But the Oldtime Baseball Game is, and always will be, a charity event. Since we work so hard each year to gather more than 1,000 people to watch our game, it just makes sense to use the event to raise money for a worthy cause.
Charities through the years:
- 1994 Eddie Fitzmaurice Scholarship Fund
- 1995 Cambridge Cares About Aids
- 1996 Gilpatrick Medical Fund
- 1997 The Cam Neeley Foundation
- 1998 The Heather Foundation
- 1999 Rosie’s Place
- 2000 Joselin Diabetes Center
- 2001 Crohn’s & Colitis
- 2002 Joselin Diabetes Center High Hopes Fund
- 2003 Massachusetts Special Olympics
- 2004 Mount Auburn Hospital
- 2005 Lupus Foundation
- 2006 C2 Mission
- 2007 C2 Mission
- 2008 “For Todd” Jimmy Fund
- 2009 Hospitality Homes
- 2010 SIDS Foundation “First Candle”
- 2011 C2 Mission
- 2012 Eastern Mass American Red Cross
- 2013 Scleroderma Foundation of New England
- 2014 ALS Foundation/ Pete Frates #3 Fund
- 2015 William “Dummy” Hoy Scholarship
- 2016 Boston vs. Bullies
- 2017 TK
- 2018 TK
- 2019 TK
- 2020
- 2021 TK
- 2022 TK