Photograph courtesy of 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings Vintage Base Ball Team
Back in Civil War era Cincinnati, a new athletic pursuit called town ball quickly eclipsed the public’s interest in cricket. Rebranded as base ball (two words) the game would grab national news headlines when the Red Stockings became the sport’s first all-professional team in 1869. Their local rivals, the Buckeye Baseball Club, couldn’t keep up and folded the following year.
Fast forward a century later, and baseball has endured steroids, cheating scandals, and $700 million contracts to stand as a major U.S. sport, truly “the national pastime.” And yet up in Sharon Woods Park a group of gentlemen gather every summer to block out thoughts of Bryce Harper and Shohei Ohtani and recreate those innocent early days.
The Cincinnati Vintage Base Ball Club has been staging games at the Heritage Village Museum grounds since 2000. The Red Stockings, dressed in their traditional knickers with bright crimson socks, were first to start playing. The Buckeyes, in their long-sleeve shirts and dark slacks, followed a year later. Besides battling each other, the teams schedule games against like-minded vintage teams from across Ohio and Indiana and as far away as Tennessee. The season’s final home games are September 22 in a doubleheader against the Clodbusters from Dayton.
Brian Essen, president of the Cincinnati Vintage Base Ball Club, says the players aren’t exactly a threat to the current Reds roster. “We have guys ranging in age from 15 to 72, and some are freakish athletes and others have no business being on a diamond but just love playing the game,” he says. “Vintage base ball isn’t about trophies or titles or glory, but about competently demonstrating the game as it was played back in the 1860s and having lots of fun with fellow vintage ballists on the field.”
The early game is recognizable to modern fans, says Essen: nine innings, nine players, four bases 90 feet apart, three outs, and so on. The biggest difference is that vintage players don’t wear gloves in the field. The ball is slightly softer than today’s, and only one is used for an entire game. Pitchers toss underhand, he says, “generally for the purpose of giving the batter something to hit rather than striking him out. That’s what we understand they did in early base ball.”
Wearing the old uniform and shouting “Huzzah!” when great plays are made, Essen says he occasionally feels like he’s escaped from the modern world. “Especially when we’d play nine with a small-town team on some field in the middle of nowhere Ohio,” he says, “and get invited back afterward to a little church on the side of a country road for a home-cooked meal.”
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