2026 Conference Presentation Guide

Willie Wilson, Keynote Speaker

Willie Wilson Willie James Wilson (born July 9, 1955) is an American former professional baseball player. He played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics, and Chicago Cubs. He was an outfielder known for his speed and ability as an effective leadoff hitter. Wilson's career total of 668 stolen bases currently ranks him in 12th place all-time among major leaguers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Wilson_(baseball)

Andrew J. Schiff

Andrew Schiff Henry Chadwick, The Father of Base Ball
Andrew J. Schiff’s biography of Henry Chadwick (1824 – 1908) is a welcome addition to the bumper crop of books on the fertile subject of baseball. Generally regarded as baseball’s father, Chadwick has gradually slipped into near obscurity. Schiff’s major contribution has been to rescue his subject from that dark hole that is our throwaway culture. In a cogently argued thesis, Schiff persuades this reader that Chadwick matters. Among his many contributions to our national game, the most important is the invention of the scorecard and the application of statistics. In addition, Chadwick served as rule-maker, historian, publicist, promoter, and moralist. Baseball historian David Q. Voigt regarded him as a modern Moses (7).

Paul “The Magician” Cunningham

Paul The Magician Cunningham The Story of PK Custom Cards and Collectibles
PK Custom Cards and Collectibles officially became a small family business in November of 2023, after years of making custom cards for youth and high school sports and for friends and family, after being encouraged by a local card shop owner. In September of 2024, I decided to commemorate and chronicle vintage base ball with a living set after playing and running the Columbus Buckeyes for nearly 20 years. My goal is to celebrate what we enjoy to do and tell the story through little pieces of cardboard. After a full year of the National Vintage Base Ball Set, we currently have almost 500 players from around the country represented.

Eric “Squarehead” Berg
VBBA Historian

Eric Squarehead Berg Dandies and Subterraneans: How the Two Came Together to Start Base Ball Clubs as the Game Traveled West from New York City
Educator, Minnesota Twins, former Philosophy Professor, Bemidji State University
I earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2005 from the University of Kansas, with this comes many years of research experience. I have taught as a college professor since 2005 and this has sharpened my communication skills. I have given many public and academic talks on the early game of baseball over the years.
I presented my work on Prince Honeycutt at the national conference in Detroit in 2022. Prince Honeycutt was an African American ballplayer that started a team in Fergus Falls, Minnesota in 1873.

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New York City casts a long shadow over baseball, and several important cultural elements from that city traveled west as the game expanded across North America. Many are well known to this audience: Doc Adam's rules, the struggle to find a space to play, base ball clubs formed in the New York City style, the development of professional players, and the formation of proper leagues. It is also much assumed that the very early game (1830's and 1840's) was played by the wealthy or"dandies" for the most part as they had both the time and social structure to play the game. And this is correct, but overstated. The dandies were not exclusive to the early game, as we all know, others played. The "subterraneans" as John Thorn has aptly labeled them played a critical role in establishing the game across North America, might I say an underappreciated role. Who are the subterraneans? They are barbers, barkeeps, soldiers, fire laddies, toughs, doormen, etc. In this talk I will illuminate the class of subterranean men that established the game in New York City. This same set of men, that needed a dandy or twowith money and political influence, established many of the first base ball teams and clubs across North American. I will look at the westward expansion of the game from New York City to:London, Ontario (Canada); Jacksonville, Illinois; Fergus Falls, Minnesota; Deadwood, South Dakota; Lawrence, Kansas; Midland, Texas; and finally Yuma, Arizona.

Educator, Minnesota Twins, former Philosophy Professor, Bemidji State University
I earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2005 from the University of Kansas, with this comes many years of research experience. I have taught as a college professor since 2005 and this has sharpened my communication skills. I have given many public and academic talks on the early game of baseball over the years.
I presented my work on Prince Honeycutt at the national conference in Detroit in 2022. Prince Honeycutt was an African American ballplayer that started a team in Fergus Falls, Minnesota in 1873.

John P. Langellier

Photo Courtesy of Steven Lenetta

Buffalo Soldiers, Bands & Baseball
In 1866, the United States Congress enacted legislation that for the first time permitted African Americans to enlist in the U.S. Army during peacetime. One hundred and sixty years later, an often-overlooked part of the story will be revealed as the bandsmen and baseball players serving as "Buffalo Soldiers" contributed to overcoming racial bias through their interactions with local communities from Arizona to Hawaii and beyond.

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From his youth in Tucson, Arizona, John P. Langellier, developed a passion for the history of both the Borderlands and the American West. During his more than fifty-year career in public history, Langellier has served as a founding team member for the Autry Museum of the American West (Los Angeles), Director of the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne, Deputy Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (Simi Valley), and Executive Director of the Sharlot Hall Museum (Prescott). He also has taught at various institutions of higher learning, most recently through Northwestern University for his online course: “The African American Military Experience.” A frequent public speaker, he likewise has served as a consultant to television and motion pictures beginning with his first film collaboration—Apocalypse Now.

He has written scores of articles and dozens of books, including such titles as Scouting with the Buffalo Soldiers: Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke, Frederic Remington and the Tenth U.S. Cavalry in the Southwest; More Work Than Glory: Buffalo Soldiers in the United States Army, 1866-1916; and his newest publication, Buffalo Soldiers in Arizona, which will be available for purchase from VVAC after the presentation.

John holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of San Diego in history and historical archaeology and earned his Ph.D. from Kansas State University with an emphasis on U.S. military history.

Patrick "The Mayor" Murphy

Patrick The Mayor Murphy Story of Historic Warren Ball Park, 1909
Patrick will present the Story of Historic Warren Ball Park. He will share its beginning in 1909 and follow the story of its different occupants since then. In addition Patrick will talk about the annual Copper City Classic Vintage Base Ball Tournament fundraiser held every April to help raise money to maintain this historic ball park.

Bill Jensen

Bill Jensen 2026 Presenter The Team Too Tough To Die: How a ball club was born in the middle of the Earps vs. Cow-Boys war in Tombstone.
Think starting your base ball club was difficult? In March of 1882, the Tombstone Base Ball squad was formed in the middle of the war between the Earps and the organized crime outfit known as the Cow-Boys. The men, mostly miners, played every day after work a patch of dirt just 400 feet from the OK Corral. Two weeks after the first pitch, Morgan Earp was assassinated just two blocks away from their practice ground. As Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday began his famous Vendetta Ride, tracking down and killing the Cow-Boys responsible for the murder, the men of the Tombstone Base Ball Club played on. Fires. Earthquakes. Floods. Nothing could stop the team in the Town Too Tough To Die. And eventually, they started winning.

Mike Phillips

Mike Phillips VBBA 26 Conference Presenter Early History of Arizona Base Ball & Copper Mining
Well before Arizona was a state, baseball played a significant role in the region's social, recreational and economic development. Even while the Indian wars raged and outlaws roamed the territory, there was baseball. Mike Phillips, board president of the nonprofit group Arizona Baseball Legacy and Experience (ABLE), will recount the story of pioneer Arizona baseball, plus the rowdy and competitive mining leagues, the barnstorming days of Major League Baseball, the beginnings of the Cactus League and the current era of sprawling baseball campuses that support a billion-dollar industry. He'll also discuss the fledgling Arizona Baseball Trail, a self-guided tour of landmark sites around the state celebrating baseball and the characters who played here.
http://www.ABLEAZ.org