For the love of the game

Kimball Wooden Bat Club brings guys together for fun, friendships, and some hits!

By Bill Vossler

Some members of the Wooden Bat Club line up at the Kimball Baseball field. Left to right: Woody Woodward, Reed Danuser, Grover Stauff, Chuck Sterling, Jeff Jacobs, and Jim Lipsiea. The club was established by John Schiffman (not pictured). Contributed photo

After the Twins moved to Minnesota in 1961, young John Schiffman of Rosemount would lay in his bed in the evenings with his transistor radio under the covers, listening to the games.

“Which I wasn’t supposed to do,” the 77-year-old Kimball man laughed. “I was supposed to be sleeping to be ready for school the next day, but kept the radio very low under the covers so my mom and step dad couldn’t hear it, listening to Halsey Hall, Ray Scott, and Herb Carneal.”

That was really how the Kimball Wooden Bat Club got started.

John got introduced to baseball as a kid through his step dad.

“As a kid I lived primarily in Bloomington, kind of a young family community with lots of schools being built because of the influx of young people. My step dad had been a baseball player in Fairfax, and when the Twins came to town in 1961, in the second game they played at home, my step dad already had the tickets for the game. He didn’t force me to be a baseball fan. They had knothole game days, and I latched onto baseball and became a die-hard fan.”

John said he used to play catch with three or four others friends at times during the summer.

“We used wiffle balls to practice batting, and then the Bloom Association came along, and my circle of friends signed up for BAA. We all got assigned to a team, and coaches, and my step dad coached me when I was in the eighth or ninth grade. After that, I worked at playing baseball and I became a pretty good hitter, but I was only average on defense.”

“Nowadays you don’t have to go up there with a wooden bat and swing it the way you used to. Instead you can learn online with videos in super-slow motion that show you the proper position of the bat, whether you should hold it real tight or relax, and the results of that, as well as how to swing the bat properly.”

Using those videos, John said, “I can hit the ball just as far as I could when I was young, although I have no physical restrictions at all. I can still hit the ball in a very competent way, and so can some of the other members. It’s fun studying the baseball swing and finding out what I didn’t do when I was young and playing. I’m a better hitter now because I’ve studied how it’s done.”

He said he would never call himself elite, “But I was always one of the topnotch hitters on my team, in Little League through playing on the baseball team at Normandale College. I was blessed with that ability, and it’s fun to be a good hitter, because your teammates count on you. Sometimes you go zero for four, but the next time you go two for four and contribute to a win.”

But there were big differences between then and now, John said.

“I remember playing catch with my friends, but I can’t remember that we actually did any batting practice, except when we were on a team. And then we’d only get 10-15 swings, so you had to be a natural hitter to be good.”

Not so today, he said.

“Nowadays the kids can go to places with batting machines, and baseball academies train you how to pitch balls, but when we were kids, that was unheard of. You had to develop on your own. Maybe some dads worked very closely with their kids, but mostly not. My parents would come to the games, but it was unheard of to have any formal training to tap into, and see if you might really be good with a little bit of tutoring. For us, it all had to come naturally.”

Once high school season was over, you didn’t play baseball, John said.

“You might play softball, but rarely did anyone pick up a wooden bat and play baseball. To do that you had to have outfielders and infielders. That’s how it was in the day.”

One of John’s favorite things to do is to watch videos about how to hit or pitch, he said.

“Things today have morphed and developed to such a high degree now. You can watch intense videos of the training academies, and tap into baseball or any sport with types of knowledge they have now. I’m glad I am a baby boomer, because I got to experience how the world was. I was  privileged to be part of those decades for a variety of reasons. Today, most people can’t say how it used to be.”

“When I moved from Shakopee to Kimball in 2019, back into the cabin we used to own and bought back, I started thinking about a baseball wooden bat hitting club. I advertised it in several places, and thought we would get more people than ten. But it is a weekly commitment.”

He said members have to be 60 or older.

Let’s play ball! Ready for the game, left to right, are Jim Lipsiea; Reed Danuser; and Grover Stauff.  Contributed photos

“All of us hadn’t picked up a wooden bat for decades. When we did, we immediately went back in time 50 years.”

John got the approval of the Kimball City Council to use the Kimball baseball field just south of town.

“We got the approval to use it once a week, every Monday starting in June for a couple of hours starting at ten in the morning.”

What they do is basically bat.

“Well, everybody pitches, but we really want to bat. We go for two rounds of batting, and batters can bat as long as they want. At one point some people thought we should only give 20 pitches, but we’ve waited 50 years, so we bat as long as we want, and then go back out in the field.”

The joy is in the wood bats, John said.

“Only major and minor leagues still use wooden bats, so if you go to other games what you hear is the ‘ping’ of the ball hitting the bat, not the sound we baby boomers want to hear, not the crack of the ball off the bat like we remember from playing little league and on.”

“It’s heartfelt seeing how people take care of their bats and oil their gloves, just like we all did many years ago. Everything we do reminds us of when we were playing baseball when we were kids.”

John said people really get fired up to bat.

“The first couple of weeks, being we had not picked up a bat in 50 years, was almost comical. Most of us didn’t do too well. But within a month members started hitting some bombs and shots. Sometimes I’m hitting as well as I ever have.”

He added that a couple of members have come up to him and thanked him for setting this up.

“They said it changed their lives, a simple thing like a couple of hours each week hitting with a wooden bat brought them back into the past, remembering those good times.”

But after three years, John said, the group started thinking of doing some other things.

“We want to play games with codified rules because with our average ages of 60s-low 80s, some can bat but not run, so we’d like a modified game format, and possibly play senior baseball for five innings at our Kimball Days celebration.”

“And for other people who would like to join us, we ask that they would be dedicated to be there every Monday morning at 10 a.m., unless they have a doctor’s appointment or something similar. People can call me at 612-741-7800 or email me at Jheeling1@gmail.com for more information, because we really are looking for more members.”

When John was playing baseball at Rosemount, his coach really knew his stuff.

“He was very serious, and you couldn’t joke around. It was an honor to play for him, and I was kind of afraid of him, maybe because I was a high school student and he was a teacher. But he made it to the major leagues in baseball with the Baltimore Orioles. But not for long. He became a minor league player. I was cool having him as a coach. He was a definite influence on me.”

John Schiffman up to bat. John formed the Kimball Wooden Bat Club to give seniors in the area an opportunity to swing the bat again and play the game they all loved as kids. Contributed photo

John says being an active exerciser helps.

“Most of the younger guys are still pretty slim, and talk about exercising, jogging, working out in some capacity, and I do a lot of roller blading, I’ve boxed, and have done a lot of things like that. But I can tell I’m older now, get a bit stiff and a little sore,  but I think I exercise enough that it never hinders my activity levels. We don’t reject anyone who wants to play, but just ask them to show up every Monday and live the dream. Live large. So when we play our games of four on four or five, if players can’t run, they walk, or we have a substitute runner take their place on base if they got a hit. So you don’t have to run. In the outfield you don’t have to run after balls. The main primary focus is having a wooden bat in your hand while you stand at home plate batting for as long as you want and hit the baseball. When you’re pitched to, your prior baseball experience comes to you, and there’s a lot of joy.”

He said he doesn’t get a lot of comments from other people.

“It’s such a specialized club that there aren’t a lot of comments, other than, ‘Oh that’s cool.’ And if they are not a baseball fan and have these urges from the past to use a wooden bat, and weren’t Twins fans from the 60s and 70s, our club is meaningless to them. You have to feel inside that you grew up with it, and crave it. All of us on the team want to hit, and I can hardly wait until my turn to bat comes.”

John said he has a history of playing baseball.

“I started in little league in the sixth grade. At that time, around the late 50s and early 60s, baseball was a simplified game. Major leagues teams were at the forefront, and there was not a lot of switching of the hometown heroes, so I kind of base my feelings about baseball on that.”

He played little league through his 9th grade year.

“I played high school ball at Rosemount, and at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. After the Marine Corps in 1966-1969, I played baseball for Normandale Junior College. They still used wooden bats, and that was my baseball career. I have lots of fond memories playing slow pitch softball, but it wasn’t baseball, not the hard ball, and those things were in the back of mind for literally decades, until I moved to Kimball in 2019, and started the Kimball Wooden Bat Club. Now, all of us are looking forward to season number four.” 

“We welcome new members, if you’re serious about hitting the baseball with the wooden bat, and we can count on your attendance every Monday morning in the summer, except for major conflicts. I always make sure I’m available for a couple of hours on Monday mornings, because I love it, and I want to play games and step up and feel that little league or high school competition once again.”

John added, “If you have a memory that you cherish, like playing baseball with a wooden bat, there’s no reason you cannot rekindle that memory and make it into a part of your life again. We know, because we have done that.”