Exhibition games

Rather than a hall-of-fame game, I'd rather see the Pirates take on a lady's softball team, as they did in the old days.

The highlight of the [1899] camp for some was the exhibition played against the "Bloomer Girls," a barnstorming, all-female baseball club which had just arrived from a West Coast tour. In what was reportedly the first game between a National League ballclub and a team of women, the latter fared poorly, dropping the game by an estimated score of 47-14. The male fans were unusually well-prepared for the spectacle. According to one account, the "the bald heads in the audience used opera glasses to a man with deadly effect." (64)

That's Arthur D. Hittner again. Here Hittner describes another exhibition played in 1900:

With a five-day break in the schedule, the club prepared for a constumed "field day" exhibition on October 5. The program was modeled after the players' benefit staged in Louisville two years earlier. Like its predecessor, the show was "a howling success." Wagner appeared in traditional German garb puffing a long pipe. Fred Ely "played the ballet girl to perfection" and Rube Waddell was "in his element" as Uncle Sam. (82)

In the baseball game played in the middle of this field day, Wagner played shortstop for the first time in his career. Afterwards, he caught the greased pig and won the long-distance baseball throw contest by heaving one 388 feet.

If there's no greased pig at the Hall of Fame game, I'm not interested.