Vintage baseball hits home run

1860s version involves no gloves and a ball with hand-woven center

By Robb Murray

ST PETER — It’s two outs, top of the first, when a slugger from St. Peter sees that meat ball coming right over home plate and he swings with all his might and he connects.

Thwack!

The lined shot whistles down the third base line where a man from the St. Croix team, dressed like the guys in the baseball episode of “Little House on the Prairie,” reacts with cat-like quickness and snags the ball right out of the air.

As the St. Croix team members trot to their dugout, a voice from the St. Peter team says it all: “Uh-oh. We’re in trouble.”

Yep, they were in trouble. But not “real” trouble. Just the kind of trouble a team finds itself in while being outmatched in the gentlemanly game of vintage baseball.

St. Croix’s team came down for a game Sunday, the second straight year they’ve done so. For those who played it was a good day to enjoy the amazing weather and a version of the American pastime that’s a little different from the baseball we’re used to.

Vintage, 1860s-era baseball is played without gloves. When players catch a pop-fly — or a line drive, obviously — they do so with their bare hands. The ball is different, too. It’s softer and the core is hand-woven.

When a fielder catches a ball after one hop, that player is out. And as a runner bolts to first base on a grounder, he better stop and stand on that base if he makes it. There was no overrunning first base in the 1860s.

Pitching is underhand, and there are not called strikes, balls or walks. A batter, which is actually called a “striker” in this game, gets three cuts, and pitchers try to accommodate a batter’s pitch-location preference, a far cry from the modern game.

Politeness is everything. Calls of “Well done,” and “Well struck!” are heard often.

Rule quirks aside, the participants play because it’s fun and it gives them a chance to get outside and have a good time.

It also lets people get a taste of what baseball was like long ago.

“Being director of the (Nicollet County) Historical Society, I see how a lot of people feel that history isn’t relative to their lives,” St. Peter team captain Ben Leonard said.

St. Peter doesn’t have a vintage team right now, but Leonard thinks they’d be able to field one. Leonard actually plays occasionally on the St. Croix team he faced Sunday.

“It’d be fun to play the teams from around the area,” he said.

Mankato has a team, as do Gaylord and other towns in southern Minnesota.

St. Peter City Administrator Todd Prafke was one of the rag-tag bunch that made up the St. Peter team. Prafke, who played baseball at Kiester-Walters High School and later at Austin Junior College, said one word explains his interest: “Fun,” he said. “I thought it’d be a fun thing to do.”

Umpire Bob Tholkes, who came down from the Twin Cities for the game, said many people play the vintage version of the game because they’re intrigued by the different rules.

He said people love the one-hop rule, but it takes them forever to get used to the fact that players aren’t allowed to overrun first base.

Sunday’s game, and the teams’ initial meeting last year, certainly aren’t the first time old-school baseball has been played in St. Peter.

Leonard did some checking and found out that games were played in St. Peter in 1894 and 1908, each time to raise money for victims of major city fires.

During the 1894 game — in which future governor John A. Johnson was a participant — they raised money for victims of the Hinkley fire. And in 1908, it was for victims of the Cloquet fire.

And as for the outcome of Sunday’s game, the St. Croix team — as Tholkes announced in town crier-like fashion to the handful of onlookers — prevailed 14 aces to 6 aces.