"What's important is that baseball, after twenty-eight years of artificial turf and expansion and the designated hitter and drugs and free agency and thousand-dollar bubble gum cards, is still a gift given by fathers to sons." - Michael Chabon

There's just something to having a catch: the affect it has on a backyard conversation, the strain of effort from the shoulder and the forearm to the sting of the palm, and the toss back and forth like the ebb and flow of the ocean. There is a rhythm to the pitch and to the catch. It's the poetry of baseball. That it's a tradition handed down from parent to child dating back generations, we think it's the perfect addition to our shop.

With baseball's Opening Day comes Buckshot Sonny's Official League Ball, our first collaboration with William Peebles, the man behind Huntington Base Ball Co.

Using his hands, a needle and two colors of thread (just as they did in the old days before using two colors was seen as a waste of money), Mr. Peebles sews each of these balls himself in his workshop in Massachusetts. And to hold one of these baseballs is a regulation size-and-weight piece of perfection. They are so beautiful, such works of art in fact, that at Chicago's Dose, one of the markets where Buckshot Sonny's sells, a patron asked us to send a ball to William and have him autograph it.

There are versions of the Official League Ball that are turn-of-the-century, and older, but this style with two color stitching dates from the late teens into the 1930s. This is the type of baseball your grandfather would buy at the hardware store, when that was the primary outlet for sporting goods in most towns. A lot of the larger stores would have their own private labels as well. William felt this time frame and the spirit of the ball was appropriate for what we are doing with Buckshot Sonny's.

We couldn't agree more. Thanks, William.

Buckshot Sonny's Official League Ball by Huntington Base Ball Co. Made in Massachusetts Features - Hand-drawn logo, courtesy of Christine Mitchell - Red & blue waxed linen thread - Official size and weight of regulation baseballs: 9 inches / 5 ounces - Intended for regular use. Scuff it up!