About this time 20 years ago, the Altoona Rail Kings were winding up their first season in the independent North Atlantic Baseball League.

The team played at Vets Field and averaged more than 1,200 fans per game, making it a summer happening prior to the arrival of Blair County Ballpark (now Peoples Natural Gas Field) and the Curve.

Occasionally, you’ll still see a token from days gone – a license plate, a pennant, an old hat – but most of what is left are just the memories.

And to those involved, they’re fond.

“I never thought I’d be saying things like ’20 years ago,’ but I guess I’m at that point in my life,” Altoona product Ray Schmittle, a pitcher on the inaugural Rail Kings team, said from his home in Virginia. “Anytime you get a chance to play ball beyond the college level, it’s a blessing. Just the memories of engaging with the crowd, I miss it. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about wanting to play baseball still.”

For almost all of the players, it was a last chance to be paid, however modestly, to put on a uniform and play before a crowd in a final bid to hook on with an affiliated team.

“Really good memories,” Mike Cacciotti, a pitcher who’s currently the athletic director at Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic High School, said. “The best memories were being able to play in front of your hometown. Those home games were special and being a piece of our history and always be linked to that is special.”

While the home games were special, the road games sometimes were not.

When the Kings went from the North Atlantic League, mainly in the northeast, to the Heartland League, which had more teams in the midwest, the trips got much longer.

Schmittle said he played in Rockford, Ill., home of the Rockford Peaches in “A League Of Their Own.”

“I’m still looking for the picture when I was standing under the scoreboard,” he said. “I tell my daughters, ‘Your dad pitched on that field.”’

After the team moved to West Virginia, Schmittle was traded to Kalamazoo, Mich., and later had an invite to the Pittsburgh Pirates’ camp in Bradenton.

“I stayed three-four days and worked out, and it didn’t pan out, he said. “From there, I decided to use my degree (criminal justice).”

Paul “Duke” Neatrour was feeling the same vibe.

“I enjoyed it for a while,” said Neatrour, a Johnstown native and one of the team’s outfielders who later relocated to Altoona. “The first month was fun, but then when the grind set in, it was tough. One night we were on the bus for 12 hours. It teaches you how tough it is to make it.”

Neatrour’s nickname made him a crowd favorite as the Rail Kings atmosphere – Vets Field sold beer for $1 – was informal and fun.

Craig Schaffer did his part. Schaffer worked at WRTA with the late Charlie Weston, who handled the radio broadcast. Schaffer was recruited to handle the public-address announcing, and he creatively would implement walk-up music tied to a player’s name.

“It was low, low, low tech,” Schaffer, still laughing at the memories, recalled. “We were using cassette tapes, and I’d have one for each player. No one ever came to me and requested any songs. I went old school like the old organists.”

When Neatrour stepped to the batter’s box, Schaffer, of course, would play “Duke of Earl.”

“My wife’s father, when I started dating her, always said about the Duke of Earl,” Neatrour said. “Then when they played it here, he got a kick out of it.”

When Karun Jackson was introduced, Schaffer hit “Jackson” by Johnny Cash. Ditto “Rollin’ on a River,” for Will Rollins. And the between-innings themes, such as Alabama’s “Ride the Train,” captured the city’s railroad history.

“It was always a fun night,” Schaffer said.

The biggest name the Rail Kings had was former major leaguer Eric Yelding, who played parts of five seasons in Houston, where he stole 64 bases in his second season, and with the Cubs before being released in 1993.

Cacciotti roomed with him on the road.

“He used to tell stories about how they prepared,” he said. “You could see flashes of when he was younger. He was a character.”

Yelding was brought here by Michael Richmond, the team’s general manager who had ties with the Houston organization.

Tommy Hearn was the Curve’s first manager and was succeeded by Walt “No Neck” Williams for the club’s second season here in 1997. (Team owner Eric Reichert then relocated the Kings to Huntingdon, W.Va.)

“Walt was a really good guy,” Cacciotti said of the ex-big leaguer who passed away earlier this year. “I learned a lot from him.”

About the only ex-Rail King that Cacciotti has run into is Neatrour since the two are still local. All the others – Yelding and Eric Burroughs, Doc Mirabel and Farley Love, Billy Reed and Howard Hill – he’s got no idea.

“I’ve lost track of all those guys,” Cacciotti said. “But it was fun. The fans got to come down and be real close with you after the games. It’s funny how many people still talk about it.”

Tom Seasoltz is among them. He was the batboy for the team during both of its seasons. Fast forward two decades: Seasoltz and his wife are expecting their first child any moment now.

“I still have a lot of autographed baseballs, a lot of broken bats that I accumulated and I still have all my apparel that I wore,” Seasoltz said. “Time flies. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long ago. (But) when you look back and think about it, it seems on one hand that it’s gone by just like that.”