The Ball (19 page)

Matches between clubs were arranged by written challenge. The clubs would agree upon an umpire, a place, and a time. The prize in interclub matches was typically the game ball, which was inscribed with the date and score and put in a trophy case in the club room. The ball was a fitting prize given the difficulty and cost of making one before the era of mass production of sporting goods. While the average life of a ball in today's major-league games is just six pitches, in the early days one baseball was used for the entire game unless it was lost or completely demolished. A ripped ball was cause for a break in the action as needle and thread were brought to the field for repairs. A ball that got whacked out of shape would be remolded to a usable form. A lost ball could cause a serious delay to an already long game as players and fans set off to scour bushes and high grasses. It became enough of a problem that in 1877 a five-minute limit was put on such searches before a second ball was introduced.

As reported in the
San Francisco Examiner
in 1888, one of the first matches ever played in that city was nearly canceled owing to the lack of a suitable ball. With both clubs and spectators gathered and the threat of postponement looming, one industrious club member approached “a German immigrant who was the possessor of a pair of rubber overshoes. These he bought, after much dickering, for $10, and with the yarn unraveled from a woolen stocking and a piece of a rubber overshoe the first ball ever used in this city was made.”

Until the 1860s most balls were homemade from rubber, yarn, and leather, though players were known to get creative with whatever materials were available. In the lake regions of the Midwest, where fish were more plentiful than rubber, baseballs were reputedly made from sturgeon eyes! As baseball historian Peter Morris recounts, the eyes of that fish were rubbery in texture and the size of walnuts. Players wrapped the eyeballs with yarn and covered them with leather or cloth to make for what was said to be a “lively ball.”

Daniel “Doc” Adams, a lesser-known father of baseball and early president of the Knickerbockers in 1846, reminisced a half-century later about the challenge of securing suitable balls for play:

We had a great deal of trouble in getting balls made, and for six or seven years I made all the balls myself, not only for our club but also for other clubs when they were organized. I went all over New York to find someone who would undertake this work, but no one could be induced to try it for love or money. Finally I found a Scotch saddler who was able to show me a good way to cover the balls with horsehide, such as was used for whip lashes. I used to make the stuffing out of three or four ounces of rubber cuttings, wound with yarn and then covered with the leather. Those balls were, of course, a great deal softer than the balls now in use.

So soft and lightweight was the ball that even the strongest arm couldn't get it from the outfield all the way to the pitcher. Doc Adams's solution in 1849–1850 was a new non-base-tending position called the shortstop designed originally to intercept and relay weak throws from the outfield. Adams, one of baseball's unsung heroes, also deserves credit for setting the base paths at 90 feet.

For the Knickerbockers and other clubs in the mid-1800s, the awarding of the game ball was just the beginning of the festivities. No matter who won or lost, the visiting club was invited to a sumptuous meal hosted by the home club at a local tavern. Kegs of lager fueled toasts, speeches, and songs well into the night. The farther a club traveled for the game, the more lavish the treatment. In 1860, the Brooklyn Excelsiors traveled to Baltimore, where they were met by their hosts and “escorted in carriages to the various places of interest throughout the city, every attention being given them by the gentlemanly members of the Baltimore Excelsiors.” When it was game time, a streetcar decked with flags and drawn by four horses was arranged to take them to the playing field.

By all accounts, however, the Knickerbockers were “more expert with the knife and fork at post-game banquets than with bat and ball on the diamond,” as the great baseball historian Harold Seymour put it. Their skills were put to the test on June 19, 1846, in what is often heralded as the first true interclub baseball game in American history (though scholars have since discovered reports of possible games played in New York a few years prior). With green space becoming scarce in Manhattan, and their old spot on Park Avenue and 27th Street under development as a railroad terminal, the Knickerbockers took their games across the river to Hoboken's Elysian Fields (named, fittingly, after the mythological resting place of ancient Greek heroes). That June Friday they boarded the ferry in their freshly pressed blue woolen pantaloons, white flannel shirts, and straw hats to face a scrappy team known as the New York Nine. They were crushed, 23–1.

A team called a “nine” or “picked nine,” as opposed to a club, usually meant they were made up of tradesmen who worked together, drank in saloons together, and played ball together. The most common baseball nines of the period were drawn from volunteer fire companies and from pressmen and typographers in the print trade. In 1840s New York, these were among the tightest social fraternities and unions, with their own activities and rituals. As Warren Goldstein points out in his compelling social history of early baseball,
Playing for Keeps
, the names of early baseball teams and fire companies were nearly identical. The New York Mutuals, which became one of the leading clubs of the 1870s, was started in 1857 by the Mutual Hook and Ladder Company No. 1. Even the earliest baseball uniforms, like those sported by Jeff and his teammates, were derived from firefighter uniforms, with their distinctive shield-shaped shirt panels embroidered with the insignia of the team or company.

After being throttled, the Knickerbockers retreated with their coattails between their legs and didn't play another interclub match for the next five years. No sooner had the rules for baseball been set forth than a struggle for the game's soul had begun that, in a sense, continues to this day. Would baseball be a respectable game of gentlemen, played “just for enjoyment and exercise,” as Doc Adams fondly recalled from his Knickerbocker days? Or would it be a game of scrappy upstarts, played hard, played for money, and played to win?

W
hen I next dipped my toe into the embattled past of baseball, it was five years earlier—1861—and I'd chosen a more idyllic and period-appropriate setting. It was a blustery fall day at the Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm in the picturesque New England town of Newbury, Massachusetts. The main farmhouse, which sits on 230 acres bordering the Merrimack River, is the only 17th-century stone house in New England with its outside walls still intact. Beyond a stately row of maples, Big Dave and Little Romeo, the farm's resident pigs, rooted around behind home plate for hot dog scraps. An old-timey cheer—“Huzzah!”—was raised without a hint of irony to signal the end of a successful inning of vintage ball. The crisp white uniforms of the Essex Base Ball Club and Lynn Live Oaks stood out against the arboreal wash of reds and golds.

Jeff Peart, the bespectacled , gray-bearded umpire, stepped forward to make a request of the fleece-wrapped spectators—known in the lingo of the times as cranks, bugs, or rooters—“Please do not stretch in the seventh inning. That hasn't been invented yet. Please do not sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame.' That has not been written yet.”

Jeff, a 53-year-old pharmaceutical company manager, played master of ceremonies, with black top hat, tails, and a gold-tipped cane that belonged to his great-grandfather, an itinerant preacher.

“Kids are always asking me why I'm dressed as an undertaker,” he said, brushing dirt off his coat.

A longtime Civil War history buff, Jeff was looking for ways to immerse himself in his favorite period. But, he says, “I'm too much of a pacifist to run around with a gun, even a fake one. So vintage baseball seemed like a better fit.”

I joked that I'd recently come from 1866 and was happy to report that, postwar, the game was still very much in vogue.

“More in vogue is the truth, and more of a national game,” said Jeff. “In 1861, baseball was still mostly played in New England and New York. After the Civil War, soldiers took the game back to their hometowns with them and it spread like wildfire.”

On the eve of the War Between the States, baseball was often promoted in the press as useful preparation for battle, with its physical demands, sharpening of skills, and promotion of the values of teamwork and fraternity. A newspaper editorial that year remarked that “Baseball clubs . . . are now enlisted in a different sort of exercise, the rifle or gun taking the place of the bat, while the play ball gives place to the leaden messenger of death.”

Jeff introduced me to Brian “Cappy” Sheehy, a cheerful, barrel-chested 28-year-old high school history teacher and club captain. Brian started the club in 2002, naming it after a club that had played in his hometown back in 1859.

As the eighth inning was kicking off, he asked me if I wanted to play.

“I'm afraid I left my knickers at home,” I replied.

“Don't worry,” he assured me. “We'll take you as is.”

A vintage baseball game underway in Washington, D.C.

Taking to the field with my teammates, I felt like Kevin Costner in the closing scene of
Field of Dreams
(without the 1980s mullet). I assessed the familiar geometry of the diamond (falsely named since the 1830s: diamonds have two acute and two obtuse angles). I manned second base as the lead-off batter took the plate, wondering whether the second base force-out had been instituted yet (it hadn't). And whether batters were allowed to overrun first base yet (they weren't). The batter drove the first pitch well into center field, rounded first, and headed for second. The center fielder chased down the ball and fired it hard to me. As the ball burned a hole through my fingers and kept going I thought to myself how remarkably helpful a glove would have been at that very moment.

“Muffin!” yelled a player on the other team.

With little help from me, we eventually managed to retire the side. Soon it was my turn at bat. I selected a caveman club from the pile and headed to home plate, which was literally a heavy round iron plate stuck into the ground.

The catcher pointed to the outfield. “If you hit the goat, it's an automatic home run.” I looked and there was indeed a rather large white goat browsing in left field. I felt suddenly lucky, thinking of the curse of the angry goat brought on the Chicago Cubs in the 1945 World Series when the club's owner ejected a local tavern owner's goat from the ball park. Truth is, goat or no goat, a home run would have been a rare occurrence in 1861 owing to the combination of large unbounded fields and soft homemade balls. Baseball was still a “small ball” game. In the absence of gloves, it was best to attempt a line drive or a hard grounder, forcing one player to barehand the ball and throw it to another player who had to barehand it to make the out.

I let the first pitch pass, knowing there were no called balls or strikes to worry about. It bounced past the catcher and into Big Dave's mud pit.

“It's okay, he's sleeping,” called out a crank as the catcher bounded over the electric fence to pluck the ball from a pile of rotten vegetables.

The second pitch came right down the middle. I swung my club and tipped it back and foul—or so I thought.

“One hand!” called the umpire.

I opened my mouth to protest but checked myself.

I stomped back to the bench, wishing I had a helmet to throw. Brian explained that I was out because the catcher had caught the ball after it bounced once in fair territory. The notion of foul versus fair territory was a welcome contribution of the Knickerbockers to the game of baseball. Before the Knickerbockers imposed order on chaos, players would commonly reverse-hit the ball behind the catcher or chip it far wide of the baselines to give themselves extra time to reach first base. Nevertheless, the rules around “tipped” balls took time to evolve and, much to my chagrin, in 1861 a ball was called fair as long as it bounced once in fair territory.

Strange as the rule was, I could live with it. But rule 12 was another story. The fly ball rule I got. A ball caught on the fly is an out. It's the first rule any Little Leaguer learns and, as David Block points out, is probably the oldest rule in the game, forming the basis for stool-ball, trap-ball, and most other early bat-and-ball games. But being called out on a ball caught on the bounce?

“What kind of lame rule is that?” I muttered to myself.

In the 1860s, it turns out, there were plenty of other like-minded players muttering to themselves. The “bound rule,” as it was known, was a Knickerbocker innovation, and it quickly became the lightning rod in a struggle over what Goldstein calls the “two ethics of the game.”

Considering the great historic rivalries of baseball—Yankees versus Red Sox and Giants versus Dodgers to name just two of the longest lasting—and the passions they stir in players and fans alike, it's nearly impossible to conceive of a time when excessive competition was regarded as a problem for the sport. But for its first two decades, baseball was a game of gentlemen played not for money or even victory but for fun and fraternity. Sportswriters of the time were as likely to applaud how players cheered each other at the end of the game and left the field “arm and arm” as they were to provide a blow by blow of the game itself. Players who swore or otherwise got carried away in the heat of the competition were fined on the spot—anywhere from 10 to 50 cents—the money put to good use to pay for after-game festivities. And cranks were the worst offenders of all, as they are today. As one club's officers lamented, “What . . . can any club do? Can we restrain a burst of applause or indignation from an assemblage of more than 15,000 excited spectators, whose feelings are enlisted as the game proceeds, by the efforts of this or that player or players?”