On Time Travel, Of a Sort
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| Vintage Baseball |
Saturday, March 2, 2013
New York Baseball Club vs. The Knickerbockers [Hoboken Nine Intrasquad]Elysian Fields [Dobbelaar Baseball Field]
Birthplace of Baseball Classic
Hoboken, NJ
12:35ish
Outside the Game:
I've done a bit with baseball. As of this writing, I have watched and scored professional games in no less than five countries, and seen all the major league teams in four of them. I will likely add the entire major league of a sixth this year. To say I'm more than the average fan is a bit of an understatement.
Yet there is one thing I haven't done. With the exception of some random softball here and there, I haven't actually played baseball all that much since, I don't know, Babe Ruth League. And that is as much because of a lack of opportunity as the rapidly decaying condition of my soon-to-be elderly body. But still, there was one opportunity that I could not pass up.
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in "vintage baseball," which is baseball played by different historical rule sets. The most popular of these are the 1860 rules, which removes some of the more primitive and barbaric rules, such as "soaking" (it used to be perfectly legal to record an out by hitting a baserunner with the ball, or "soaking" him), yet preserving the young nucleus of the game. There are no mitts (unmanly), but you can catch the ball on one bounce and still record an out (though the runners can advance at will). All pitching is underhand. Batters and pitchers, respectively, get warnings before the first strike or ball. Quick pitching is legal. Routine catches and throws can be adventures without mitts. Pulling off a double play requires consummate skill and focus.
While the 1860 rules are easily the most popular in vintage baseball, there are teams that do other rulesets, such as 1910 (overhand pitching, proto-mitts, over-running bases, etc.). Last year, Hoboken, one of the mythic birthplaces of baseball, started a vintage team using the 1860 rules called the "Hoboken Nine." The club was, appropriately enough, sponsored by the Hoboken Historical Museum and a local bar. The nucleus of the team were some serious adult softball league players. They played an unorganized schedule in 2012, while this year they were formally entering the local Vintage Baseball league.
After I found out about the team last year, I had answered their call for players. Vintage ball is mostly played by guys in their thirties or pushing middle-age or more, so my particular condition would not rule me out. But by the time I replied, they were full up. They referred me to another vintage team the next city over, the Jersey City Skeeters, who played by the 1910 rules. I had been in contact with one of their organizers over the winter, and before their season officially started, they were looking for volunteers to help the Hoboken Nine fill out an intrasquad game they were playing in early March. This was to be the inaugural "Birthplace of Baseball Classic" that was to commemorate the first game of baseball under the New York rules between the New York Baseball Club and the Knickerbockers club. The actual game happened in May and at the Elysian Fields (now near the grounds of the Hoboken Historical Museum), but this was an acceptably close approximation.
Seeing as this was just an exhibition game (more of between-game entertainment for two college games that day), I was convinced that it was as good as any place to get started, so I and another Skeeters player would be completing that day's roster. As it was my first vintage game ever, the other Skeeters player would be bringing a uniform for me.
As added difficulty, that Saturday was also Fake St. Patrick's Day in Hoboken, now called "LepreCon." For non-locals, the "St. Patrick's Day" parade in Hoboken was traditionally held two weeks before the actual item in order to more easily have access to traditional musicians who were next to impossible to book for the week of actual St. Patrick's Day. The traditional drinking went along with the moved-up parade, and it was known to get a little boisterous. However, in the past five years, the event simply got out of hand, with bars moving their openings into the early morning, special buses and trains carting in out-of-towners looking for Mardi Gras North, and drunk crowds trashing the city while migrating from overcrowded house party to overcrowded house party. It got to the point where sane locals would leave town for the day to avoid the carnage, and return the next day to see what (usually extensive) property damage was done to their homes while the over-taxed police force kept running from emergency to emergency. Two years ago, the city finally hit their breaking point (after a particularly disastrous and lawless event), and they cancelled the weekend parade and moved it to mid-week. Despite the birth of the replacement "LepreCon" (organized by bars desperate for the cash idiot out-of-towners dumped into their coffers that day), the insanely huge crowds stayed away, and the weekend became safer and more manageable.
Which isn't to say it was gone completely. I walked the back roads at much as possible to get to the Steven's campus at the other end of town, avoiding most of the stupidity. I had never had cause to be on the Steven's grounds before, and this was perhaps the only place in Hoboken I hadn't been previously. I spent some time walking around the campus and finally visiting Castle Point before heading to Dobbelaar Baseball Field, which was to stand in for the Elysian Fields that day.
As mentioned, we were the between-game entertainment, so we only had a vague idea of when we would actually start. The first game between Eastern Connecticut State University and New Jersey City University was still going on when I arrived. I had given myself plenty of time, so I was one of the first there on this chilly day, more appropriate for football than baseball. I watched the game for a bit before someone showed up in a vintage uniform, whom I rightly discerned was also there for the game. We talked and waited as more and more people showed up for the game, including my contact and the head of the Hoboken 9 team, who was clearly doing some celebrating of his own on LepreCon.
We eventually moved in the clubhouse across the street and got suited up. Putting on the vintage uniform was more than a little weird, especially because we were dressing in a Steven's locker room where students were getting ready for practices. One has to wonder what they thought of us. There was a post-game spread of free hot dogs and Cracker Jack being set up for us before the game. Eventually, teams were split up, and I would be on the New York Baseball Club team. Batting orders and field placements were hashed out (for my first game, I was batting eighth and playing left field), and then we went out into the cold to warm up, for whatever sense that made.
The first collegiate game was still going on, so we took the time to get loose. It was about this time that it actually started snowing. It was also when I was severely regretting not having on a long-sleeved shirt. The Skeeters uniform turned out to be short-sleeved, and I was unable to wear my plaid flannel shirt underneath it, so I was going to have to tough it out in the cold.
Speaking of toughing it, have you ever tried to catch a ball bare-handed? Now, granted, the 1860 balls were leather around wrapped wool, so it is not the deadly solid projectile of today, but to get the feeling of what it is like to catch a ball bare-handed, find something made of leather and slap it hard into your hand over and over again. My hands remained battered and cracked for days afterward.
Eventually, the college game ended, and we scurried out to the dugouts. We started out by getting introduced. When you play vintage ball, you traditionally have to get a nickname, like "Shorty," or "Irish," or "Pops." I chose "Scotch," and I think everyone who knows me knows why. And then we eventually got onto the game proper.
After the game, we all scurried back to the clubhouse to regain circulation and wolf down the food waiting for us. I got changed back into civilian clothes and tracked down the other Skeeter to give him the uniform, thanked everyone for the opportunity, and then, with smarting hands, I went again back to my apartment via the backroads, to not leave it until the next day when all the amateur drunks went home.
The Stadium & Fans:
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| Dobbelaar Baseball Field |
Dobbelaar Baseball Field is part of the DeBaun Athletic Complex on the campus of Steven's Institute of Technology. It is a multi-sport field, and for baseball use, the left half of the larger field is blocked off with a removable fence that then becomes the visiting bullpen, while another removable fence in right blocks off the home bullpen. The infield itself gets a little lost in all the permanent lines for various sports that are etched into the artificial surface of the field. Two yard-shed-looking structures provide the dugouts for each team, and an even smaller shed holds the announcers and scorers booth, where two people were pathetically huddled in this cold and snowy afternoon to perform their duties for the college games.
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| Glamour and glory |
There are two non-traditional seating areas for fans. Across the street and up a small hill from the park were several rows of seats that actually offered a fine view of the field, while a larger section of stands was built into the clubhouse building on the left field side of the stadium, accessible by a stairwell next to the seats. Two scoreboards were located against the Hoboken skyline on the far side of the field. The one furthest to the right was used for the baseball game.
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| College match-up |
For the early-season college contest, there was a sparse crowd, clearly made of parents and friends of the players, or the players for the second game waiting for their turn. The most interested spectators for our game were the players themselves, watching in disbelief as people at least twice their age went out to play baseball in the snow without gloves.
A member of a central New Jersey vintage team was also up for the game in uniform. He didn't play, but instead acted as the interpreter for the crowd, explaining what was going on during the game and all the rules changes and the different social standards for the game (calling a catch on the bounce unmanly, or the absence of high-fives -- handshakes only, please).
At the Game with Oogie:
Covered in detail elsewhere, obviously.
The Game:
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| Olde timey |
This was an exhibition contest for which we only had about half an hour, but we got in a good three or four innings. Stripped of all of its trappings, baseball can be played at quite a clip. In the first inning in the snow and cold, neither squad did much. But in the second, my New York Club scored several times. The Knickerbocker Club got one or two across in the last inning, but we were clearly the victor.
As for myself, ignoring advice to choke up heavily on the vintage tree (sorry, "bat") I was swinging, I managed to strike out in my first at bat (even with the warning in lieu of a first strike), and I grounded out to short in my second at-bat by instinctively over-running first (which is not allowed). I had one put-out in the field (on a unmanly bounce), and one that got by my tumbling self because I forgot I lacked a mitt to make the catch I was attempting.
Ty Cobb I may not be, but considering it was literally the first time I was ever doing these things, and given it was in the snow wearing short sleeves, I have nowhere to go but up.
The Scorecard:
This is the first baseball game that I've seen where I didn't keep score in a long time. I actually felt it absence.
The Accommodations:
Non-Vintage, Drunk-Filled Hoboken
2013 Stand-Alone Event
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