The word "crank" will take on new meaning, and word "baseball" gets a split.

Above all, the old adage that says there is no "I" in team gets batted about when league founder Steve Gazay gets the ball rolling with his new base ball club.

"Poor sportsmanship won't be allowed," says Gazay, who formed the Bay Area Vintage Base Ball league that will play according to the rules established in the Spalding Guide of 1886, which includes the original spelling of the sport: "base ball."

The game is essentially the same as the modern version, but there are a number of differences between the way the San Francisco Giants play today, and the way the game was played before the turn of the 20th Century.

What has drawn Gazay and those who are actively playing in vintage base ball leagues is more than just the old-fashioned uniforms they wear. For them it's a departure from the showmanship found strutting around the bases today, and the mindset—for them—of what the game is all about is as different as a called third strike and a home run.

"It goes back to being a gentleman's game," says Gary "Photo Joe" Rocha.

The No. 1 thing Rocha says he looks for in a recruit is not if he can play baseball, it's whether he is a gentleman.

"A lot of us here are here because we're tired of the behavior in [recreational] softball. We're tired of the competitiveness and the bickering," he says.

Pat "Barnraiser" McKay adds, "It's a whole attitude about baseball. For most of us it's a refreshing way of playing baseball again. The [other leagues] became competitive and were just about beer drinking. That's why we got away from it."

Nicknames such as "Photo Joe"—so named for his profession as a photography teacher at a local university—and "Barnraiser"—named for converting a milking barn at the site of the museum he directs into a cultural and recreational facility—are also part of the classic game and the nostalgia.

"We have one guy whose nickname is 'Cueball' because he shaves his head at the start of each season. He takes a marker into the audience at each game and they sign his head," McKay says.

Rocha, who plays for the Mighty River Hogs of Midland County, and McKay, who plays for the Rochester Hills Grangers Base Ball Club, have been playing old-time base ball for five and seven years, respectively. The clubs—they were not called "teams" then—are located in Michigan, which, according to the Vintage Base Ball Association has the second highest concentration of vintage clubs in the nation—the state of Ohio has the most. Both men say they have learned of at least three more clubs starting up in their areas soon.

BAVBB is the first of its kind in the Bay Area and appears to be the first in California. Gazay is pursuing getting leagues started in the East Bay, San Francisco and the Morgan Hill­Gilroy areas.

Vintage clubs typically choose an era or a particular year in which to follow the rules, which changed often.

"Back then they had a lot of rule changes from year to year," Gazay says.

In his league players will not be using modern-day protective gear and the fielders' gloves are about the size of a leather gardening glove and have no webbing. Some of players practicing at Westmont High School in Campbell had a hard time keeping the loose-fitting gloves on their hands.

"I didn't even use an old glove. I just used my bare hands," says Almaden's Warren Nagatani at his first practice. "It was not as bad as I thought it would be because the ball is a little softer than the balls we use today."

Rocha says he makes the balls for his club. "If you want to pull that yarn and string tight, you're going to make a harder ball. I tend to back off of that," he says.

The bats are homemade, too, as Rocha's brother-in-law turns the bats on his own lathe. Period bats are longer and heavier than the toothpicks today's use.

Manufacturing the old-time equipment and uniforms is a growing industry, but while today's professionals get a new ball with just about every third pitch, the vintage game is sticking to the original procedures.

"If [the ball] went into the stands, the people would have to throw it back into the fields. Basically each team would bring one ball and the winner would go home the balls," Gazay says.

By the time the same ball gets knocked out of the park a few times, it is a bit "squishier" than what it was when the first underhanded pitch was thrown, they say. Gazay says that since games were played in areas that were essentially empty fields or sometimes farmland, the fans—or "cranks" as they were known then—were also allowed to stand in the outfield. If a batted ball were to touch a "crank" anywhere on the field, the ball was still considered in play.

The balls take a beating by the 50-ounce bats the BAVBB league uses compared to the average 30-ounce bat of today.

"We use very heavy bats. It's a good one-third to almost twice as heavy, but it was a pretty easy adjustment," Nagatani says.

He may have a few other adjustments to make as he learns more about vintage-style play and culture. According to Rocha and McKay, players in the day were known to break out in song, or sometimes rhyme.

"At any point in a game you may have a guy who will stop in the middle of a game and recite a poem," McKay says. "We came up with a team song, too, and at any point in the game we may start singing it."

Antics such as singing, poem recitals, or the sometimes-rehearsed slamming of a hat to the ground followed by a reprimand and then an apology by the hat-slammer, are all part of a family-oriented community gathering and a way to show how players then would have discussions about discrepancies on the field and part with a shake of the hand instead of the fist.

It's a game for the entire family to enjoy and for players of all ages, they say. Andrew Walker, an 18-year-old Almaden resident, initially signed up for the league before discovering that a scheduling conflict would prevent him from playing this season. However, Rocha expects to be uniform next season. He says his team has players who are as young as 14 and old as his 73-year-old father, who plays second base while he mans the space on the other side of the base at shortstop.

The kinship doesn't stop with father-son infielding because feeding the opposing team and all the fans is another part of the culture, so McKay turned to local vendors to help with the cost of sponsoring the cost of the food.

He says that when he first started playing vintage baseball and opposing teams were scarce, his team would challenge the town's council or chamber of commerce to a game.

Base ball "was originally meant as a game of social opportunity," he says.

Nagatani says he sees playing in the vintage league as an opportunity for teaching, too.

"It's about sportsmanship and the love of the game. It's rare to see sportsmanship in today's sports. I think it will be good for my kids to see me playing in a game that's about sportsmanship," he says.

For more information about the Bay Area Vintage Base Ball league, contact Steve Gazay at 408.378.1872, or visit the Web site at www. eteamz.active.com/BAVBB. For more information about the Vintage Base Ball Association visit the website at www.vbba.org.