How Austin’s Sandlot Baseball Scene Became a Magnet for Indie Rockers, Filmmakers, Designers, and Brands
June 4, 2026 at 06:30PMAustin is home to a lively sandlot baseball scene. In this story for Fast Company, Max Ufberg takes us to two venues, The Long Time and The Wishing Well, and introduces us to Jack Sanders, the man who founded the home team, The Texas Playboys, and built these baseball fields, piece by piece. This is a story about art and design that serves communities, especially poor and rural ones; Black baseball culture; and building authentic spaces where people can gather and play.
Mockbee had built Rural Studio around the idea that design should involve and serve the surrounding community, and Sanders carried that philosophy forward not only in the work itself, but in the way he brought others into it. “Jack was always the creator of his own world,” Carol says, “and he was always welcoming others into it.”
That sense of conviviality makes Sanders a fun hang, the kind of guy who, during college breaks back home, would organize sprawling late-night “Olympics” involving improvised scavenger hunts, tequila shots, whatever idea popped into his head. “Anybody else that came up with that idea, you’d be like, ‘No, that’s the stupidest idea,’” says childhood friend Adam Isbell. “But when he did it, it was like, ‘I’m in.’”
Years later, Sanders even talked Isbell and a crew of old Fort Worth buddies into starting a sandlot team.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/06/04/austin-sandlot-baseball/
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