How much does Pete Reynolds love Wiffle ball? It was the summer of 1969. Reynolds was 20 years old, and several of his buddies were fired up about a concert in upstate New York at some guy’s farm.
“They’re making their plans to go to this concert everybody was talking about,” said the Wheeling resident. “The Who, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, lots of great bands. I thought long and hard about it, but I decided against it.”
Woodstock went on without Reynolds. But he had fun anyway. “A friend and I had plans to play Wiffle ball that weekend and replay the 1957 World Series in my back yard,” he said with a hearty laugh. “You know, Eddie Mathews, Henry Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Lew Burdette, Whitey Ford. And I’ll tell you, we had a blast.”
Now Reynolds has rediscovered his love for the game he prefers to call perforated plastic baseball. Not only does he play on a team that goes to tournaments through the Midwest, he also is putting all of his prodigious energy into the business side of the game. His home-based company, National Pastime, produces large screens that can be used as outfield fences and backstops, adding an air of authenticity and nostalgia to a game of perforated plastic baseball.
His first screen re-created the Brooklyn Dodgers’ extinct Ebbets Field with the Schaefer Beer sign on the scoreboard and memories of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe.
Jerome Coyle of Granite City, Ill., has been a competitive Wiffle ball player for 18 years and has been to several of Reynolds’ events. “The Ebbets Field backdrop makes the game worth playing,” he said. “The aesthetics of the ballpark that Pete creates make for a great game. It gives you the feeling you’re in a major league ballpark, which is the reason you play Wiffle ball. I wish I had one in my back yard.”
Reynolds started designing his first outfield fence in 1996, and he unveiled it on May 17, 1997, at an event in Homewood he called Picnic at Ebbets Field. The plastic mesh is 90 feet long, foul pole to foul pole, and 15 feet high, and it’s hung on a metal frame.
“People absolutely loved it, and we knew we were onto something,” he said.
He has since created a mini-Ebbets Field at several Chicago-area perforated plastic baseball tournaments, summer festivals and kids’ birthday parties. He is also working on similar backdrops for Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, Fenway Park and the Polo Grounds.
To create the backdrops, Reynolds uses computer-generated art, photos and paintings. He resizes everything on his PC using a software program designed for the printing of billboard-sized ads. He then takes the computer disc to Transport Graphics in Schneider, Ind., which enlargers the computerized artwork and prints in on a vinyl surface.
Reynolds started playing Wiffle ball in 1960. “It was easy to imagine you were in Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium, and you were Ernie Banks tickling the bat with your fingers, or a switch-hitter like Mickey Mantle, or a pitcher with a high kick like Juan Marichal, or you could bean the guy like Sal `the Barber’ Maglie,” he said, his enthusiasm rising. “I played all the time until 1972. Some of the (most fun) times in my life involve Wiffle ball. But then I had to get a life.”
His team, National Pastime’s Boys of Summer (“More like the Boys of Autumn,” he says), plays against Chicago-area teams and goes to tournaments throughout the Midwest. And yes, they wear the baggy flannel uniforms that by the end of the game are dripping with a combination of nostalgia and sweat.
John Patty, 36, an accountant from Roselle, is a teammate of Reynolds. “I played informally for 30 years, then Pete got me hooked on the game at the organized level a few years ago,” he said. “He lives and dies with the game, and he has the connections to help make the sport grow. I never knew there were fanatics about our game until I met Pete. And he’s a true fanatic.”
Reynolds, 50, was born in California and grew up in south suburban South Holland. He went to Drake University and studied journalism. After graduation, he worked as a freelance reporter and custom carpet installer. From 1982 to 1992, he worked as a courthouse reporter for Star Publications in the south suburbs.
He then worked in marketing for Leaf/Donruss baseball cards when the company was based in Lake Forest, and he was bitten once again by his favorite bug, baseball.
“It got me thinking, `I need to do something with the game of baseball,’ ” he said. “That’s where my passion is. And that was the beginning of National Pastime.”
Reynolds’ foray into the business side of perforated plastic baseball has also brought him in contact with other like-minded entrepreneurs. There’s Coyle, whose JTL Bat Co. is developing the first aluminum bat to be used to play perforated plastic baseball.
There are the Speek brothers from Joliet, Mike and Frank, who play for the Joliet 8-Balls and are developing five acres of land in Mokena into a perforated plastic baseball Field of Dreams. “We’re going to build four fields, and it’s going to be great,” said Mike, a 30-year-old fencing salesman. “And Pete’s going to do the fences for each of the fields. They add so much, provide a great feeling. Pete has been a big help for us, with lots of great ideas. He’s energetic, he knows what he wants and he goes right after it.”
Then there’s Pat Vitale of Arlington, Mass., who has developed the Action Ball, which is like the Wiffle ball, but pitchers can do lots more with it and put more movement on the ball. Vitale, 47, works in his family’s seafood business and has spent the last nine years developing the Action Ball, working on the design by using the wind tunnels at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, creating molds, marketing the product, securing a patent and working to link up with Major League Baseball. Vitale hopes to have the Action Ball available in stores sometime this summer.
For the last few years, Reynolds has acted as a consultant to Vitale, after they met via the Internet. “What you see is what you get with Pete,” Vitale said. “He’s the real McCoy, a diehard baseball guy, and there aren’t many guys left who have the depth of feeling about baseball that Pete does. He’s like a carnival barker for the game.”
Reynolds is convinced he’s discovered his true calling. One of the signs was a meeting with Carl Erskine, a former pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers who’s now a banker in Anderson, Ind.
“I called him up and told him what we had, and he said to come on down for a visit,” Reynolds said. “When I showed him the photos, he couldn’t believe it. He said it looked just like he remembered it. That was another signal for me that maybe, just maybe, we were onto something here.”
