Chris “Tickles” Dillon flicked his wrists to make two looping practice swings with an old wooden ball bat, fanning the broad red neckerchief of his cotton poet shirt.
The Denver fireman ripped the first toss from the police department’s hurler straight through the infield toward the headstones to the west in Riverside Cemetery.
The ball darted like a pony past a bare-handed second base tender and through the gap between the mid and right scouts for the first home run in an exhibition match between the “Denver Metropolitan Police” and the “Denver Fire, Hose, Hook & Ladder” Saturday afternoon.
After racing around the bases, Dillon rang a bell and asked the tally keeper to “tally me one,” like a 19th century ballist would, and replied for a comment in new millennium cliches fit for “Sports Center.”
“It felt good out there. Couldn’t do it without my team; just one man out there playing his heart out,” he said, cracking a joke.
Fans, or cranks, as they were called, gathered around, some in period costumes, including , a criminology assistant professor at Regis University, who threw out the first pitch in the character of John C. Moore, Denver’s mayor from 1859 to 1861.
The Colorado Rockies donated hot dogs and lemonade for the event that marked the dedication of grave monuments for Wilson E. “Bill” Sisty, Denver’s first elected marshal, and famed lawman and gunfighter Mart Duggan, who was shot dead in a Leadville saloon in 1887, after he had served as the town marshal for a decade.
Duggan’s unmarked grave was discovered at Riverside Cemetery in September 2005.
Many of the Denver’s first peace officers and fire crewmen are buried at Riverside, the city’s oldest operating cemetery.
The vintage game is in keeping with the spirit of the 1800s, said Patricia Carmody, executive director of the Fairmount Heritage Foundation, which helps care for Riverside.
In the 19th century, it could take a year or more to get a headstone for a grave, and families and friends would gather at cemeteries for picnics and, often, ball games, she said.
Saturday’s game was a fund-raiser for the Heritage Foundation, the Denver Police Law Enforcement Museum and the Colorado Vintage Base Ball Association, which helps put on about 25 exhibitions across the state each year and sends all-star teams out of state.
“People get into the history of it,” said Ed Phelon, the league’s commissioner. “And the get into the fact it’s different than the game they know.”
For more information about the league, visit .
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
