Connie Esh and John Butwell, Murfreesboro Post
Think way back in history, back when the song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” became a big popular hit.
But that’s too recent – 1908. There were already professional baseball players by then. They wore gloves. There were balls and strikes. They played the World Series.
Forget the song. Think way, way, way, way back – back to the time of the Civil War.
Back to the days of “base ball,” when there wasn’t even a single word for the game.
And the “ballists,” or players, didn’t wear gloves, and there were no balls and strikes. The “striker,” or batter, requested a particular pitch that he could easily hit. And the pitcher -throwing underhanded – cordially obliged.
‘Hurling the onion’
Make that the “hurler” threw the “onion” toward the “striker at the dish” (home plate), who then tried to knock it out of the park. But if a fielder caught it – barehanded, of course – on the fly or after only one bounce, the “striker” was out.
Scratch that, too. There were no ballparks – no fences to knock the “onion” over. “Ballists” played in open fields, wherever they could find them.
The past two weekends in Smyrna, that open field was behind the historic Sam Davis Home, since vintage “base ball” is being brought back to life all across Tennessee as historically minded amateur athletes revive it with authenticity in mind.
“Arbiter” or umpire Jeff “Skeeter” Wells makes a dramatic production of introducing the “striker at the dish” (batter at the plate) Trapper Haskins, a Franklin Farrier and president of the Tennessee Association of Vintage Base Ball – which Wells and Haskins both helped found. JOHN BUTWELL/The Post
Playing by 1864 rules, the Stewart’s Creek Scouts defeated the Knoxville Holstons, 12-7. Then the stovepipe-hatted “arbiter” (umpire) Gordon M. Sisk III gave the game ball to the Scouts, but only after both teams raised their caps and gave each other a rousing “Huzzah!” – because it’s only partly about winning.
More ‘matches’ Sunday
After the Scouts-Holstons “match,” as base ball games were called back then, the Franklin Farriers battled the Oak Hill Travellers, and there was yet another doubleheader the following Sunday at the Sam Davis Home – which is the Scouts’ home field. The Phoenix of East Nashville took on the Chattanooga Lightfoot at noon, followed by the Scouts playing the Nashville Maroons.
Admission was free – paid baseball hadn’t been invented yet in Civil War times, either.
In fact, while vintage base ball shares a lot of features with the modern game, there some significant attitude differences. Most likely, for instance, you wouldn’t see players giving the “arbiter” a friendly slap on the shoulder on their way to the plate at a Yankees game.
“The sportsmanship – there’s not a lot of arguing about the calls,” says Ken Mayes, co-captain of the Holstons, whose base ball nickname is Molasses. “We go out there and shake each other’s hands. Whenever the other team makes a good play, we say, ‘Well-played’ or ‘Good catch.’ I love that playing for the fun of playing.”
“It’s a gentleman’s game,” agrees Farrier Trapper Haskins, president of the Tennessee Association of Vintage Base Ball. “We want to win the game,
The Stewart’s Creek Scouts even have their own musicians playing authentic jigs, reels and other tunes from the 18th and 19th centuries at local vintage base ball games. Fiddler and guitarist Kim and Paul Caudell explain that Scout Jeff “Skeeter” Wells recruited the couple, who frequently perform at historic sites in the state, and “we know Skeeter from Fort Loudon.”
we’re competitive, but we’re celebrating old-time base ball.”
Looks like modern baseball – sort of
Of course, it still looks like baseball, except for the frequently striped bats and the Civil War-era uniforms – including long pants instead of knee britches like modern players wear. The dugouts are tents. There is no pitcher’s mound, just a “point” designated for the “hurler.” But there are four bases like today, except even home plate is called “home base.”
“It’s 90 feet between the bases, there are nine men on the field,” Haskins describes. “The field measures the same as today.”
Like today’s baseballs, the vintage base ball or “onion” is no softball. It’s a slightly larger, handmade version of a hardball, wrapped not in two pieces of cowhide but only a single piece known as a “lemon peel.” Then it’s stitched together to cover the “onion” and looks pretty much like a modern ball – which players field without gloves or mitts.
“There are somewhere between 35 or 40 rules, but it never mentions gloves – they weren’t invented for another 20 years,” explains Haskins.
‘Hands toughen up’
“It takes a little getting used to, but your hands toughen up after a while,” says Traveller Brigid Day, one of the four women “ballists” in the vintage base ball league.
Ready for the second game of a doubleheader, Oak Hill Traveller Brigid “Ginger” Day, a Brentwood librarian, says playing without gloves “takes a little getting used to, but your hands toughen up after a while.”
“Everybody sprains a finger, usually, once during a season,” admits Day, a Brentwood librarian whose base ball nickname is Ginger. But she still says about the game: “It’s awesome. It’s fantastic.”
Catching the ball can be a challenge, agrees Kenneth Roberts, a Murfreesboro computer technician who plays for the Franklin Farriers under the nickname Buttermilk.
“It stings the first couple of times, but you get used to it,” Buttermilk says. But he adds, “The ball softens as the game goes on. The rules and customs of the 1860s say we play with the same ball the whole game. If the ball’s hit into the woods, a bunch of us go look for it until we find it.”
And if it goes into water, like many state parks and historic sites have, that just softens the ball some more, Buttermilk notes.
‘One-bounce rule helps’
“The rules help us a little bit, because we can get an out on the first bounce,” Molasses comments. “It slows the ball down to where you can catch it easily, or more easily, I should say. Of course, if you catch it on the bounce, the runners can still advance, just like it’s a hit.”
Stewart’s Creek Scout Warren Tormey, an MTSU English professor, even gets his nickname, Brass Hands, from being able to handle fielding without gloves – although he laments missing a few catches in the “match” against the Holstons.
“I had a few go through the wickets, right through the five holes,” the ace infielder admits, shrugging, “That’s going to happen.”
Brass Hands has played high school baseball, community softball, and MTSU club ball – but these days he likes vintage base ball better, partly because there aren’t any night games to keep him up late.
“I like that it’s low-impact – it’s not as strenuous as real baseball,” explains Brass Hands, 51. On the other hand, “the pace goes faster – it’s a simpler version of the game,” he adds. “A lot of rules move the game along, and make it easier on ‘old’ men. It’s just a lot more fun to play.”
Buttermilk and ‘Skim Milk’
Buttermilk agrees with that, too. The Franklin Farrier from Murfreesboro notes that, vintage or not, “it’s baseball” – and he loves the game, having played it in Little League, high school and a little in college.
“I’m 37 years old,” he points out. “You can’t play Little League anymore, but you get out with a bunch of people who love history and love the game and get to play at a competitive level without having to be in the greatest shape ever.”
The burly, red-bearded Buttermilk seemingly typifies the merger of history and modernity that vintage base ball represents – he plays the Civil War-era game, but on weekdays he repairs computers for Hewlett-Packard.
Buttermilk recently moved to the ‘Boro from Smyrna, where he lived behind Nissan, but he plays for Franklin, he says, because “one of the Farriers moved about this time last year, so I joined with about four games left in the regular season.”
Participation in the vintage game is a family sport for Buttermilk, too, because his son Bishop Roberts, 3, is the Farriers mascot, complete with a preschool-sized uniform. His nickname? Skim Milk.
Keeping it authentic
“We all have nicknames,” Molasses points out. “There’s some discussion over whether or not it’s authentic, but it seems ballplayers have always had nicknames. We do it because it seems to add to the spirit of the game.”
Authenticity is a key component of base ball, of course. After ringing the bell that hangs from the backstop after crossing “home base” to score a run for the Travellers, Curly (child neurologist Robert Carson) guzzles some water from a Mason jar and pantingly explains, “What kind of plastic bottle or aluminum can was around? I don’t think there was a lot of Gatorade in the ’60s – the 1860s.”
The “ballists” have the advantage of a lot of expertise in staying authentic, comments Molasses, deputy director of the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge. “Our team has a lot of history-connected people,” he says.
For instance, “Butter Bean, there, works at the Museum of East Tennessee History,” Molasses lists. “Doc – that’s the guy on first – teaches history at Tennessee Tech and the University of Tennessee. Sour Mash … we’ve got a couple other guys who’ve just been involved in reenacting, mostly Civil War battles.”
‘Our games are real’
But there’s one key difference from those “battles” in which the historic victors are predestined to “win” the reenactment, Molasses notes: “We’re reenacting the time period, but we’re not reenacting the ballgame. We’re actually playing the ballgame.”
“The Bunyan” – Craig Aradine of the Stewart’s Creek Scouts – is a lumberjacky-looking fellow who meets all the requirements for appearing authentic, with his suspenders and long silver beard. Naturally he’s a part-time photographer’s Santa in the proper season, and he does greenway maintenance for the City of Murfreesboro Parks and Recreation Department.
“I do quite a lot of work at Cannonsburgh, too – I help re-do buildings,” the Bunyan describes. But “I got recruited for this for my whiskers, not my ball playing,” the Scout says he suspects.
Even the team names aim for authenticity, says one of the three-year-old league’s founders, Scouts ballist and sometime-arbiter Jeff “Skeeter” Davis, director of interpretation for Tennessee State Parks in Nashville.
Response on social media
“When I moved back to Tennessee, there wasn’t anything like that in the South,” Trapper says. “We put a call out on social media, started playing in parks, and we had an overwhelming response. Our goal was to double it – wouldn’t it be great to go from two to four teams? And we went from two to eight teams our second year.”
“This is my second year,” Ginger says. “Our team was part of the expansion.” And that’s one way vintage base ball has been modified to fit modern times: its teams are coed.
“Women did play,” Ginger notes. But they had separate leagues and were called “bloomers.”
Vintage base ball is so fun, the Bunyan believes, partly because of the historic circumstance in which it was played – the Civil War.
“I like the authenticity of it. It’s what it really was,” the Bunyan points out. “We’re out here to have fun. Everybody likes to win, but we all cheer each other – nobody argues. When you think back, they were fighting the Civil War, and when they played, they wanted to have fun instead of fighting.”
Writer Connie Esh can be reached at [email protected].