Printable Version

Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Thursday, July 10, 2003

1800s-style base ball comes to La Crosse

By RILEY WORTH of the Tribune staff

Imagine this: Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez standing on the mound asking New York Yankees batter Derek Jeter where he'd prefer the next pitch to be located.

Yeah, right. That's about as likely as former Major League Baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti rising from the dead and retracting the league's lifetime ban imposed on Pete Rose. The only requests Martinez is taking from the Yankees - or any opposing batter, for that matter - is for a little "chin music."

Pitchers like Martinez and the Yankees' Roger Clemens are two of the many living examples that the game of baseball is no longer a gentlemen's game.

You mean it ever was?

Yes, believe it or not, baseball was a gentlemen's game way back when ... if when was during the 1800s. Now, local residents have a chance to jump into the proverbial time machine and jettison back to 1853. That was the year of the first recorded baseball game played in La Crosse. To celebrate that "first recording," a Vintage Old Time Base Ball game will be held this weekend on Coate Field on the UW-La Crosse campus. And, yes, the game was originally called base ball, two words.

Cost: two bits. That's a 25-cent donation for two games, one at 12:30 p.m. and another at 3 p.m. The Rochester (Minn.) Roosters, an old-time base ball team, will take on the newly formed La Crosse Loose and Careless Club. The inaugural Loose and Careless Club will consist of community business leaders, UW-La Crosse employees including Chancellor Doug Hastad, Oktoberfest Grenadiers and Festmasters, a La Crosse Historical Society representative, La Crosse Tribune columnist Matt James and La Crosse Loggers owner Dan Kapanke.

They all will be dressed in baseball apparel of the period and be expected to act like complete gentlemen. Anyone caught using foul language will be subject to a fine by the umpires.

Fans attending Saturday's games will see more than grown men in funny attire. They will see grown men in funny attire hurling, striking at and catching a ball made of a cork center, wound in wool, with a dark brown, four-seam, hand-stitched loose leather cover. No guarantees it will be completely round, which may result in some funny bounces. And the ball's bounce was more important back then because strikers were out if fielders caught the ball in the air, or after the first bounce.

UW-L Rec Sports assistant director Nathan Barnhart came up with the idea. Last August he'd seen the Roosters play an exhibition fund-raiser at a small-town festival and really enjoyed the idea.

"I thought it would be a neat mix of history and sports," Barnhart said.

Also in the mix will be historical trivia questions between innings and a chance for the kids to try out the old equipment in between games.

So here's your first trivia question: During 19th century baseball, what was a baseball team called? Batters? Catchers? The answers, respectively, are Club Nine, strikers and, seriously, catchers were called "the behind," at least until 1858 when "catcher" was introduced.

The Roosters' play, and hence that of Saturday's doubleheader with the Loose and Careless Club, will be governed by the National Association of Base Ball Players of March 1860 rules.

And those Vintage Base Ball Rules state the behind may stand no more than 45 feet behind the home plate bag.

There'll be no errors Saturday. In the 1800s they were "muffs." Members of the La Crosse Loose and Careless Club have been meeting for practices a couple times a week for more than a half-dozen practices. That's partly because getting the city's "movers and shakers" together to act like kids again is tough, Barnhart said. But that's not all.

Kevin Knerzer, who serves as the La Crosse Historical Society's bookkeeper and is a big fan of vintage base ball, has been at the majority of the practices for a couple reasons. He has no idea how this thing is going to catch on, whether there will be 10 people who show up to watch or 1,000. He's not taking any chances of embarrassing himself. But it's not his skills he's worried about. He's already garnered a reputation among Loose and Careless Club teammates as the person who can hit the soft-cover ball with the most power. No, he's worried about the rules, even if he has researched them extensively.

"Even if you know the rules, it's certainly not instinct," Knerzer said.

Barnhart hopes it becomes a lot more than instinct. He's hoping for a tradition, for it to catch on and Vintage Base Ball teams and leagues to form. This year's team of high-profile residents is a one-time thing to get this off the ground, to make this game a yearly thing and bring the idea into the consciousness of baseball fans around the Coulee Region.

In this summer of area baseball highlights - the arrival of the Loggers and the No. 1-ranked La Crosse American Legion Post 52 team's 23-5 record (as of Tuesday) - the Vintage Old Time doubleheader is the latest phenomena. Barnhart is excited to see it move beyond the "neat idea" stage. Now he's looking for staying power. That's why the game has been timed to correspond with such tourist attractions as the La Crosse Queen's docking in town.

It's been 150 years since a note was made of "guys at the foot of Main Street playing baseball" and La Crosse was still a logging and fur-trading village of 740 residents. The time machine stops on Saturday at Coate Field, where a bunch of adults get out and act like boys dressed as gentlemen.

Riley Worth can be reached at (608) 782-9710, ext. 315, or at worth.rile@students.uwlax.edu.