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At least in its contemporary form, sandlot baseball-as distinct from other adult baseball and softball leagues-is what Sanders calls “the slow food of sports.” It’s played not at well-lit sports complexes, with their public address systems, concession stands, and ample parking, but off the grid, on private property or unclaimed lots, with few amenities and often no bleachers. This is the ethos of American sandlot baseball, a community-based, slightly makeshift sporting tradition that Sanders has been helping to revive across the South. The Playboys at bat against Los Jardineros de Austin. Legend has it that when the Newbern Tigers from Hale County, Alabama, were short a player, they gave a bat to a woman from the stands who’d come straight from church. Players on the rival Los Yonke Gallos de Marfa once showed up for a game wearing prison uniforms they’d borrowed from the local sheriff. It’s not unusual to see his teammates on the Playboys wearing cowboy boots at home plate. When Sanders steps up to the plate, he sometimes adjusts an armadillo belt buckle he describes as “modest sized,” which in Texas-Sanders grew up in Cleburne and now lives in Austin-means slightly smaller than a hubcap.Īnd yet among Sanders’s fellow players, his game-day apparel is comparatively low-key. On the diamond, where he alternates between the mound and first base for the Texas Playboys, he wears a felt Stetson Open Road hat.
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He’s six feet tall, with a big brown lumberjack beard that would look a bit overstated on an ice climber. Jack Sanders makes for an odd-looking baseball player.