History Buffs in Kansas Bring Back 'Town Ball'
Then, they divide randomly into halves. One team with an antique bat heads out for its first bout at bat.
“Huzzah, good strike,” screams Synthia Somerhalder, as striker Logan Nickels knocks a cotton-filled leather ball left and runs from broomstick to broomstick.
Two at-bats later, a ball skims the infield near another “stake-runner” who can’t avoid a flying “plug” from a nearby fielder, even with a “wild weasel” way off the stake-path. Just minutes after starting, the half-inning ends with only one out.
These games at the Lawrence Water Tower Park on Tuesday nights could easily seem a new, edgier version of baseball, but actually, they’re the opposite. The players come weekly with a bat and ball to play baseball’s predecessor, called town ball.
Somerhalder, a University of Kansas senior, helped form the group in the spring after her 19th-century history professor started a game in lieu of a lecture one day. At first, she said, she played with some classmates, but the idea spread quickly, now to dozens who attend weekly.
Jonathan Earle, the professor, became interested in town ball 10 years ago, when other history buffs invited him to a game. Since then, he has played the sport once a year with his students, but never quite with the strong reaction he received this spring.
“What changed this year is a bunch of students got totally into it, and they wanted to keep playing,” Earle said.
Town ball originated around 1800 as a community pastime and spread quickly.
But back then, the game wasn’t standardized, and the people who passed it on to new towns made mistakes. What resulted was something like today’s “telephone game” — forgotten, misunderstood and reinvented rules, and a sport with as many variations as towns that played it.
The particular version the Lawrence group plays is from 1858 Massachusetts. The version that more directly led to baseball came from New York and a group called the New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club, Earle said, and it endured only because someone thought to write down the rules.
Writing them out probably seemed senseless at the time, Earle said, like jotting down capture-the-flag or hide-and-go-seek rules. But when the Civil War broke out in 1860, soldiers needed a way to play with others from across the country.
“Instead of being with people you grew up with, all of a sudden you’re in the Union Army,” Earle said. “You’re with all these people from Michigan, Maine and Pennsylvania, and you have to agree on one set of rules.”
As a result, the rules in print became the national standard, and baseball was born.
“We could be going to Kauffman Stadium to watch town ball,” Earle said, laughing. “But it’s a pretty wacky game. I’m not sure anyone would pay to see it.”
In the grassy Lawrence park, the players on the “Me’s” fill the field in a formless formation to defend against the “Aidens’ ” first round of offense. Anyone can claim any empty space anytime, so the lack of set positions around the sun-streaked grass is quickly clear.
With the fielders scattering, their youngest opponent, who picked both team names for the night, stands by the stake path and waits for his mom, Sarah Bassett, to pull up a small plastic tee and bat. Then, with stern concentration, 2-year-old Aiden Bassett connects for the leadoff “strike” — a hit — which sends mother and son scurrying together, to laughs and cheers, the 30 feet to “first-stake.”
Accepting everyone, even toddlers, is a source of pride for the players. Town ball is the equalizer for everyone in the sporting world, they boast, so it naturally draws different generations, just as it did a century and a half ago.
“Women can play town ball as well as men,” Earle said. “There’s not a gender barrier. The guys in class who always make the outs tend to be the burly varsity baseball players that pop it up.”
In Lawrence, regulars vary from ages 2 to 50 and every level of athletic ability. But while the players don’t take athleticism, or winning, seriously, they do sportsmanship.
They emphasize “gentlemen” and “gentlewomen” conduct, which means they prohibit profanity and even face a fine of 25 cents — fitting for the town ball era — for slipping. In Aiden’s case, cheers come from both sides, and he can run freely from stake to stake with fielders making sure not to plug him.
The only verbal jabs that do come out are all tongue in cheek and historical.
“I just felt a breeze blow by,” someone teased once when a friend didn’t make contact.
Or, “Your crops didn’t come in this year,” Somerhalder jokes.
In reviving such an old sport, players admit they are sometimes guilty of adding minor modern touches of their own.
They have named teams after World Cup teams or Dennis Hopper movies. They have also drawn new players through social media sites like Facebook, unfathomable tools for the game’s founders.
But for the most part, the group strives to stay as authentic as possible, from dated nicknames to playing with replicas of a wooden bat and a brown leather ball. Afterward, they close each game with a speech from the winning team’s “mayor” as all others take a knee, another town ball tradition.
“Really, we haven’t invented any rules,” Mayor “Squeaks” Somerhalder says with a soft smile.
“Except being awesome,” teammate Sarah “Hammer Lord” Bassett says. Somerhalder’s smile widens in agreement.
“Except being awesome,” she says. “That’s rule No. 1.”
HOW TO PLAY
The rules of town ball, as of 1858 in Massachusetts and 2010 in Lawrence:
1. The only materials needed are four stakes, or broom sticks, along with one antique bat and one town ball ($29.99, www.cooperstownbat.com).
2. The pitcher stands in the middle of a giant square with 60-foot sides and a giant stake at each corner, and the batter hits from the exact middle of one side.
3. The batter swings until he makes contact, and any “strike,” or hit, counts as a fair ball, even if the person spins and hits the ball backward.
4. A “plug” is a thrown ball that hits a “stake-runner,” and it is the only way to get a runner out, except for a caught “strike” in the air (of course, without a glove).
5. The batter runs to the stake at his immediate right, 30 feet away, and from stake to stake around the square (runner scores after traversing all the way around without being “plugged”). He or she doesn’t need to stay on the base path: A “wild weasel” is a run far from the sticks in all sorts of directions to avoid a “plug.”
6. Once a player abandons a stake, he can’t go back and be safe, and no two players can stand at the same stake at once.
7. Teams play an indefinite number of innings until one team reaches a set score, such as 15 or 21. Each team gets only one out every inning.
8. No positions exist, so the players in the field stand wherever they want, and the number of players on each team is limitless. The more the merrier.