Credit: Emma Angevine.
A couple weeks ago, while Cindy and Brian were schmoozing with the foodies on Governors Island at the Vendy Awards, I went over to the Old Stone House in Park Slope to watch a baseball game. Excuse me, a Base Ball game. This wasn’t any ordinary game, but one played by rules laid down in 1864 – the Flemington Neshanock took on the New York Gothams in this barehanded (gloves had not been invented yet), underhanded (the pitcher had to release the ball below the waist), 54-handed (outs were called “hands,” and there are 54 in a 9-inning game) battle of old-timey hardball.
I showed up at this double-header expecting just to watch a few innings, sample some of the 19th-century ballpark snacks (prepared by Sarah Lohman, historical gastronomist and author of the food blog Four Pounds Flour), and head back to the cool comfort of my apartment to watch football all afternoon. Instead, I found myself sweating through 18 innings in a coarse cotton uniform, batting eighth and patrolling right field and second base for Flemington.
I showed up at this double-header expecting just to watch a few innings, sample some of the 19th-century ballpark snacks (prepared by Sarah Lohman, historical gastronomist and author of the food blog Four Pounds Flour), and head back to the cool comfort of my apartment to watch football all afternoon. Instead, I found myself sweating through 18 innings in a coarse cotton uniform, batting eighth and patrolling right field and second base for Flemington.
The New York Gothams.
I was just standing near the Flemington dugout, waiting for the game to get underway, when their captain approached me and asked if I wanted to play, since they were short a player. I tentatively said, “Sure,” thinking I would look rather out of place on the field in my jeans and tee-shirt amongst men in knickers and floppy caps. But he had a spare uniform on hand, so I donned the kit and took my place in right field. As they filled out the lineup card, someone asked me for my nickname – my teammates had names like “Hammer,” “Thumbs,” and “Gaslight.” I wasn’t swift enough to come up with my own, so I was the pedestrian “Andrew” amidst the otherwise colorful batting order. I would later earn the moniker "Muffin," a pejorative for unskilled players in 1864.
Now, if you are like me, everything you know about 1864 rules baseball you learned from a skit Conan O’Brien did on Late Night, when he visited Old Bethpage, Long Island to lampoon the historical reenactors. I was expecting men with facial hair modeled from daguerreotypes and Abraham Lincoln-related jeers. Instead, I got a real baseball game played by slightly different rules in slightly uncomfortable uniforms. These players travel around the east coast to play teams from New England to the Carolinas on the weekends, and they all do it for the love of baseball. As one Neshanock player put it, if the choice is between playing vintage baseball and beer league softball, this is much more fun.
Now, if you are like me, everything you know about 1864 rules baseball you learned from a skit Conan O’Brien did on Late Night, when he visited Old Bethpage, Long Island to lampoon the historical reenactors. I was expecting men with facial hair modeled from daguerreotypes and Abraham Lincoln-related jeers. Instead, I got a real baseball game played by slightly different rules in slightly uncomfortable uniforms. These players travel around the east coast to play teams from New England to the Carolinas on the weekends, and they all do it for the love of baseball. As one Neshanock player put it, if the choice is between playing vintage baseball and beer league softball, this is much more fun.
Brad “Brooklyn” Shaw founded the Flemington Neshanock (pronounced nu-SHAN-uk) Base Ball Club in 2001 after reading about other throwback clubs in Smithsonian Magazine. “I read the article and found out there were actual clubs recreating 19th Century Base Ball. I love baseball and love history – it was kismet,” he said. The Neshanock are actually the second incarnation of the team, which was originally founded in the small borough in central New Jersey in the summer of 1866. But they only played for two seasons; their modern imitators have been paying them homage for 10 summers now. Other teams are scattered throughout the region, and our opponents, the Gothams, also founded about 10 years ago, are the sole practitioners of vintage baseball in the city where the game was more or less invented.
"Brooklyn" sat out the first game and instead worked the crowd, handing out flyers, explaining the rules, and talking to the handful of reporters and bloggers who had come to cover the game. As founder and team captain, he is the club’s spokesman – the other players let him handle the press and field questions on historical baseball arcana from inquiring spectators. He never hesitates to answer a question or accept an interview – he is a true believer in vintage baseball.
Meanwhile, we got down to playing. Anyone who has played baseball in a backyard, sandlot or alleyway knows that before the first pitch is thrown, you need to set the ground rules. Where is the home run marker? Where are balls unplayable? And unlike at a major league ballpark, where smacking the ball as far as you can is celebrated, hitting a ball so far that it’s gone for good incurs penalties in less formal games. Under 1864 rules, the ground rules are made even more complicated because balls caught on one bounce make an out, so rules about ricochets, deflections, and other obstacles in the field of play need to be settled as more balls are playable for outs. After much discussion, these are the ground rules we settled on for the oddly-shaped field at the Old Stone House.
"Brooklyn" sat out the first game and instead worked the crowd, handing out flyers, explaining the rules, and talking to the handful of reporters and bloggers who had come to cover the game. As founder and team captain, he is the club’s spokesman – the other players let him handle the press and field questions on historical baseball arcana from inquiring spectators. He never hesitates to answer a question or accept an interview – he is a true believer in vintage baseball.
Meanwhile, we got down to playing. Anyone who has played baseball in a backyard, sandlot or alleyway knows that before the first pitch is thrown, you need to set the ground rules. Where is the home run marker? Where are balls unplayable? And unlike at a major league ballpark, where smacking the ball as far as you can is celebrated, hitting a ball so far that it’s gone for good incurs penalties in less formal games. Under 1864 rules, the ground rules are made even more complicated because balls caught on one bounce make an out, so rules about ricochets, deflections, and other obstacles in the field of play need to be settled as more balls are playable for outs. After much discussion, these are the ground rules we settled on for the oddly-shaped field at the Old Stone House.
Click to view larger image.
After that was set, I got a crash course in the 1864 rules of baseball. The game is entirely recognizable to anyone familiar with the game, but certain important differences require some adjustments from the players. First of all, there are no gloves, though the ball is a little softer than a modern baseball, and catching the ball on on bounce for an out helps to reduce the sting in the fielders’ hands. Three strikes make an out (or "hand"), but three balls make a walk, and the strike zone extends from the tip of your cap to your ankles. Balls are called foul or fair based on where they hit the the ground first, not where they end up, meaning there is much more ground for fielders to cover.
These rules are just one set of many that were adopted throughout baseball’s history. Baseball was not invented in a moment of inspiration by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown in 1839, as the myth goes, but rather slowly evolved over the course of the 19th century from a variety of games with origins in the British Isles, like cricket, and more importantly, rounders. Many versions of the game were played throughout the country, but the rules laid down by the New York Knickerbockers in 1845 became commonplace, eclipsing earlier versions, like the Massachusetts rules, also known as Town Ball (similar to the way in which New England variants of another sport – bowling – were overshadowed by a game born in New York; see more about this story in a previous blog post). The 1860’s was perhaps baseball’s first golden age – before the age of professionals, soldiers passed their idle time playing the game in barracks, bivouacs and prison camps during the Civil War, spreading the game across the vast country. Vintage clubs today help preserve this evolutionary history, and many even play several versions of the game taken from different periods of history.
These rules are just one set of many that were adopted throughout baseball’s history. Baseball was not invented in a moment of inspiration by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown in 1839, as the myth goes, but rather slowly evolved over the course of the 19th century from a variety of games with origins in the British Isles, like cricket, and more importantly, rounders. Many versions of the game were played throughout the country, but the rules laid down by the New York Knickerbockers in 1845 became commonplace, eclipsing earlier versions, like the Massachusetts rules, also known as Town Ball (similar to the way in which New England variants of another sport – bowling – were overshadowed by a game born in New York; see more about this story in a previous blog post). The 1860’s was perhaps baseball’s first golden age – before the age of professionals, soldiers passed their idle time playing the game in barracks, bivouacs and prison camps during the Civil War, spreading the game across the vast country. Vintage clubs today help preserve this evolutionary history, and many even play several versions of the game taken from different periods of history.
Union prisoners in the Salisbury, North Carolina prison camp playing baseball. Credit: 19cbaseball.com. Click to view larger image.
When I took the field, with a vague idea of these new rules rattling in my head, the very first batter socked a ball clear over my head in right field and made it around the bases – an inside-the-park home run. Not an auspicious beginning to my vintage baseball career. When I came up to bat, I made a couple of embarrassing efforts that resulted in weak grounders and easy outs. Then, I finally ripped one over the shortstop into left field for a surefire hit. But I arrived at first base only to be called out. The left fielder for the Gothams had caught it on one bounce (hardly his only spectacular play of the day), so after much hemming and hawing, I went back to the dugout, still hitless. Unlike the 19th century, we can go to the video tape – someone captured that at bat and posted it on Youtube, though you can’t easily see the disputed play in the field.
In the video, you can hear the referee warning the “striker” and the pitcher before he begins calling balls and strikes. These rules are more akin to slow-pitch softball than modern big league baseball, in that they encourage making contact. The pitcher is warned if he does not throw a good pitch to hit, and the striker is warned if he lays off of hittable pitches. The message: runs and outs should be made by contact, not by drawing walks and trying to paint the corners of home plate (which is actually impossible, since home is a disc.)
Despite my poor play, we took the first game 15-11, and after a brief intermission for lunch – generously provided by the Old Stone House, a building that once acted as the Dodgers’ clubhouse before they moved across Prospect Park to Ebbets Field – we took the field again. By the second game, I felt more comfortable in the field and at the plate – my hands got used to the sting of catching, and I focused on driving balls low and hard along the turf to prevent anymore one-bounce outs.
But I could feel myself wilting in the early autumn heat. I’ve never worn a baseball uniform that was particularly comfortable, and it didn’t help that my jersey and pants were several sizes too big. The large, floppy cap that I wore kept neither the sun nor the sweat out of my eyes, and I enviously eyed the more modern-looking caps of the Gothams – but I could hardly complain about my borrowed uniform. Our uniforms were made by K & P Weaver, a manufacturer of vintage sports uniforms and equipment based in Orange, Connecticut (the bats come from Phoenix Bats in Ohio). On their website, they sell a “Replica 1881 Fingerless Glove,” which also would have been nice to have in the field. From our uniforms to the bats, balls, and bases, all the accoutrements were meant to resemble the 19th-century game, except our shoes. Replica period footwear is both prohibitively expensive and dangerously unsupportive, so players turn a blind eye to Nikes and Reeboks – if possible, they color their sneakers black with markers to try and maintain the illusion of the period. My red and yellow Adidas stood out a bit, but it was hard to suspend your disbelief when playing on a field of bright green astroturf.
For game 2, I had moved from right field to second base, and after a few gaffes in the field, the Gothams rushed out to a 10-1 lead. Improved fielding in the later innings, and dynamite pitching from Brooklyn – who snapped the ball over the plate with his wrist, while other pitchers mostly delivered soft lobs – helped to stop the bleeding. Tom “Thumbs” Hoepfner socked the only home run of the day, and we cut the lead to 13-6 entering the ninth. I managed a single, and quickly stole my way to third – the slow pitching motion made base stealing extremely easy in the 1864 game – before I was driven home. Another rally reduced the lead to two, but a two-out hit turned into a rundown between third and home, and we fell 13-11, splitting the series.
For game 2, I had moved from right field to second base, and after a few gaffes in the field, the Gothams rushed out to a 10-1 lead. Improved fielding in the later innings, and dynamite pitching from Brooklyn – who snapped the ball over the plate with his wrist, while other pitchers mostly delivered soft lobs – helped to stop the bleeding. Tom “Thumbs” Hoepfner socked the only home run of the day, and we cut the lead to 13-6 entering the ninth. I managed a single, and quickly stole my way to third – the slow pitching motion made base stealing extremely easy in the 1864 game – before I was driven home. Another rally reduced the lead to two, but a two-out hit turned into a rundown between third and home, and we fell 13-11, splitting the series.
The 2010 Neshanock. Kneeling left to right: Jon 'Hammer' Hepner, 'Jersey' Jim Nunn, Hank 'Hitman' Hart, Andrew 'Muffin' Gustafson. Standing: Mark 'Gaslight' Granieri, Bob 'Melky' Ritter, Tom 'Thumbs' Hoepfner, Brad 'Brooklyn' Shaw, Chris 'Lowball' Lowry, Dave 'Illinois' Harris. Click to view larger image.
This is an ancient version of the game, but it reflects how far baseball has come today. Base stealing was technically permitted under 1864 rules, but the first record of anyone stealing a base was in 1863, and no one really exploited it in the professional game until the end of the century (though, as Bill James points out in his Historical Baseball Abstract, stealing was more common in the amateur game of the 1860’s). Meanwhile in our game, we had the benefit of hindsight, as nearly every single was effectively a triple, and no one was caught stealing – my four stolen bases on the day are hardly a reflection of my speed. Similarly, traditionalists 150 years ago regarded new innovations like the curveball as “deceitful” and against the spirit of the game, yet our pitchers snapped the ball to try and make it dart and weave, or they lobbed high, Ephus-like pitches to confuse hitters. We played by 1864 rules, but with the benefit of history. The way we played highlighted some weakness of the older game (the invention of gloves was a vast improvement), but it showed that the fundamentals of baseball were basically the same more than a century ago.
At the end of the day, I was 3-for-7 with a walk, two runs, four stolen bases, and too many errors to count. Not a bad afternoon, but I'll have to improve my play if I want to shake the nickname "Muffin."
The Flemington Neshanock and New York Gothams play regularly on the weekends throughout the warmer months – visit their respective websites for schedules. For more on where to see vintage baseball, visit the Mid Atlantic Vintage Base Ball League or the Vintage Base Ball Association. Special thanks go out to Brad "Brooklyn" Shaw and all the Neshanock players for letting me play with them and teaching me the ropes – I hope to take the field with them again in the future. Thanks as well to the Gothams for the spirited competition, and to all the staff at the Old Stone House for putting together this great event (check their calendar for other upcoming events). Finally, thank you to Emma Angevine and Alex Narvaez for cheering me on and taking photos of the game.
For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson (andrewg@urbanoyster.com). All photos are by Andrew Gustafson unless otherwise noted.
At the end of the day, I was 3-for-7 with a walk, two runs, four stolen bases, and too many errors to count. Not a bad afternoon, but I'll have to improve my play if I want to shake the nickname "Muffin."
The Flemington Neshanock and New York Gothams play regularly on the weekends throughout the warmer months – visit their respective websites for schedules. For more on where to see vintage baseball, visit the Mid Atlantic Vintage Base Ball League or the Vintage Base Ball Association. Special thanks go out to Brad "Brooklyn" Shaw and all the Neshanock players for letting me play with them and teaching me the ropes – I hope to take the field with them again in the future. Thanks as well to the Gothams for the spirited competition, and to all the staff at the Old Stone House for putting together this great event (check their calendar for other upcoming events). Finally, thank you to Emma Angevine and Alex Narvaez for cheering me on and taking photos of the game.
For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson (andrewg@urbanoyster.com). All photos are by Andrew Gustafson unless otherwise noted.