SYSTEM DAY CHALLENGE 2026:
What’s in Your Wheelhouse?
It’s hotter than hell (literally) in Texas right now, but even though the MLB World Series doesn’t begin until the last week of October this year, about now I start dreaming about baseball. This has to do with my elementary school days.
In 1968, the series began on October 2nd. Before I get to that playoff between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals, I have to back up three years. I was playing baseball on a school team for the first time in my life. The sun has just set and my 3rd grade coach is yelling at me for being such a lousy player. He’d ratcheted me down and down until left field was the only place left for me. I didn’t pee my pants but it was distinctly unpleasant. My dad was telling the coach I was just a kid and winding up for the “am I going to have to bust you in the nose?” talk with the coach. The coach, surprisingly, did shut up. All that didn’t faze me. By that time everyone in the world knew I was a capital-L Loser where baseball was concerned.
No, what fazed me was sitting in the back of the station wagon with my teammates (we won that game, incidentally) as we all got brain freeze sucking down victory Dairy Queen Mr. Misty iced slushy drinks. The other guys didn’t razz me at all. I imagine I was so numb I was simply invisible. When I got home, I walked away from participating in team sports forever.
Sad story, right? Well, don’t call the waaambulance. There is a sorta-kinda happy ending that leads to this year’s System Day Challenge.
Sparky Anderson, reading with his Peterson XL264, player, coach & manager,
who led the Cincinnati Reds (1976 & 1976) and the Detroit Tigers (1984) to World Series championships.
Back to the 1968 World Series. Kids then weren’t given standardized tests. They ate real food made by real women on real stoves in real cafeteria kitchens. Many days our classes our learning was made brighter just by the wonderful smells wafting from the cafeteria all morning—aromas so good our town had a school district cookbook printed up. But I digress. School began later and ended earlier than nowadays, running from after Labor Day to mid-May. Most of us in 6th grade were reading on what is now considered a high school level. Most comic books had about 900-1000 words on a page (now that’s dropped to around 70). Interestingly, there was always time for the World Series. When the game started, the television was wheeled out and that was our instruction for the day. This means something.
Despite the bully I had for a 3rd grade coach, I kept on playing neighborhood ball with my friends in our front yard, and my dad sometimes took me to the fairgrounds to see the Tulsa Oilers, who remain my favorite team (1919-1976).*
Fast forward decades later when Pete Geek friend Al Jones—to whom I very mistakenly and totally by accident sold an XL90 and who has kindly told me more than once that I can have it back over his dead body—he said to me one time that a particular pipe “wasn’t in his wheelhouse.” Huh? I had to ask him.
And because I can hear some of you sniggering at my ignorance (which is fine–I do that every night in front of the mirror after brushing my teeth), here’s a pop quiz:
Where did the metaphor “in my wheelhouse” come from?
Who said it?
When?
Yah, yah, yah. Not so smart as you think, are you? Here’s your hint:
From the “Peterson is a Good Pipe” ad campaign, c. 1948.
The metaphor was coined by Bill Rigney in 1959, who was coaching the San Francisco Giants. His outfielder Orlando Cepeda was in a hitting slump and when a reporter asked what was going on, Rigney said, “It just seems he’s not seeing ‘em the way he used to…He’s had a couple that came right into the wheelhouse — the kind he used to knock out of sight — and he fouled ‘em off.”
The Bill Rigney Topps Baseball Card, 1960.
My favorite cousins were massive baseball card collectors. The was already wearing dentures by 5th grade because he’d rotted all his teeth out from chewing so much Topps Bubble Gum. He said me it was worth it. He was also an amazing catcher.
Al Jones, who all these years later has inspired this year’s challenge despite his sticky fingers where certain pipes are concerned, defined “wheelhouse” for me in an almost Dickson Baseball Dictionary way for me. The dictionary defines wheelhouse “that part of the strike zone in which the batter swings with the most power or strength.”
So, all you west coast wiseguys (you know who you are), where did Rigney get his metaphor? Don’t know, do you? Hehe. Give up? Well, I’ll tell you. It was from here:
In the 1950s, a whopping 90% of America’s baseball teams traveled by train from one game to another. As Kevin Murname writes, “When a train came to the end of the line, it had to turn around to go back the way it came; this was usually accomplished by using an enormous circular turntable that rotated the train. These turntables were often covered, or partially covered, with a building so that maintenance work on the locomotive could be carried out indoors between runs. The buildings were commonly called roundhouses but were also known as wheelhouses. . . . Picture an immense locomotive sitting on the turntable. When the turntable spins, the locomotive (the bat) swings in a powerful arc (the batter’s swing) from one side of the wheelhouse to the other (the strike zone).”
So this year the challenge is straight forward: what’s in your wheelhouse? That is, which Petes do you use for the majority of your smoking time?
It doesn’t matter whether it’s two pipes or twenty, one style or size or line or another. And for our challenge it doesn’t even matter if they’re Systems or Classic Range fishtails. Include your favorite baseball team if you have one.
Rogers Imports brochure, c. 1955.
Send a photo of pipe, pipes, or pipes & self with brief answer to petegeek1896@gmail.com no later than the end of day, Sunday August 30th.
Certified Pete Geek certificates awarded to those who enter, and for those who already have their CPGs, a Merit Badge will be issued on their existing certificate.
Incidentally, in later life I learned why I love being in the ball park so much–or did until they replaced live organs with DJs. There was, especially on weekday afternoons, a strange zen thing going on. You could just sit in your sit, or wander around the stadium, listen to the game, keep up your score card, and maybe your dad would give you a puff on his pipe. Or at least two bits for a bottle of pop and a hot dog.
Intellectual Property of Kapp & Peterson
reproduced with their kind permission.
*As minor league teams go, the Oilers didn’t do so bad in their long history:
Western League Champions: 1919, 1920, 1922, 1927, 1928, 1929 & 1932
Texas League Champions: 1936, 1949, 1960, 1962 & 1963
Pacific Coast League Champions: 1968
American Association Champions: 1973 & 1974
Ken Sigel CPG recently added this beautiful Irish Free State 9s:
This is the first time I’ve been able to document how the amber stems were mounted: they had a vulcanite condenser with a bone threaded screw attaching to the amber! Good to know.
People see these vintage red stems and nearly always think, “Oh, that’s bakelite,” not knowing there was also red amber. While I can’t document it, I do know that Charles Peterson regularly visited Riga, which was in his day considered the capitol city of amber exports. If anyone could source and use red amber, it would have been Mr. Peterson. And here’s the case, just to make sure everyone interested in acquiring this pipe understood:
“Echt naturbernstein” means “Made from pure amber.” This was necessary when ambroid, made from pressed amber shavings, was in widespread use.
The HM “n” is for 1928. It’s fascinating that this pipe is in such remarkable condition. It’s obvious that the owner smoked it quite a bit from the dental chatter on the amber button, yet there’s there’s virtually no carbon on the rim, and this isn’t a House Pipe, just a shape 9. The 1906 catalog makes me believe such pipes–with two stems in a companion case–were always special ordered, so it may very well be that this was the owner’s special pipe and he took extra special care of it.
If you’re ever in Hamburg and visit the Colonnades, the Tesch pipe shop is still there, still selling Charles Peterson’s System pipes.
Incidentally, we took our daughter to a minor league game tonight. Our team has a long and storied history, even though tonight’s part of the story is the other team wiping the floor with us. But afterwards, sitting on the porch still in my supporting jersey and baseball hat, I smoked one of the Petes that has found its way into my wheelhouse. There is a wonderful coincidence, I believe, in that.
That 9S is a wicked cool
pipe🤤