Three Quarter Century Baseball Club

Every month or so I get a email from Old Cardboard featuring interesting hobby news, events, etc. This past weeks email featured an interesting real photo postcard (RPPC) of the Three Quarter Century Baseball Club. Check the story link here.

We recently ran across an interesting 1930s real photo post card (RPPC) that pictures a group from St. Petersburg, Florida. The subjects in the group photo are all members of the "Three-Quarter-Century Baseball Club." The postcard is well labeled and indicates that the average age of it's members is 80 years young!

Old Cardboard subscriber and baseball postcard collector Dan Yaw, who lived in St. Petersburg for a number of years, tells us that the team was formed in 1930 and continues even today. According to Yaw, the postcard (shown above) can be readily dated to 1934. That's the year that Capt. Eldridge, labeled on the postcard as "103," celebrated his 103 birthday.

Babe Ruth himself is known to have umpired at least one of the team's games while Ruth was training with the Yankees in St. Petersburg. Lou Gehrig and Connie Mack were also active supporters of the club.

The "quarter century" club name recently took on a second meaning. In addition to restricting it's members to being three-quarters of a century old or older, the club itself reached the three-quarter century mark in 2005. The group is now playing in it's seventy-eighth year.

The club is perhaps better known today as the "Kids and Kubs" league, still in St. Petersburg.

The league is now organized into four teams. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday during their regular season, the four teams face off in a double header. Two teams face off at 10:30 am and the remaining teams play at 12:00 pm. In the league's heyday, games were attended by as many as three to four thousand supporters. Today, however, the games are much more modestly attended and played mostly for the enjoyment of the players.

The Kids & Kubs dedication to their league is not born out of competition but for the love of the game. If one team wins too often, they trade players around to "even things out."

The Kids & Kubs play all regular season games at the North Shore Park located on Tampa Bay at the foot of 8th Ave. NE. Anyone interested in joining Kids & Kubs (only if you qualify) should call 727-893-7108 to arrange for a try-out. Be forewarned, however; the competition is keen.