Touching the Origins of Baseball

Sfx: batting practice

The New Hampshire Granite's home field is here at the Pennichuck Middle School in Nashua.

As batters, or as they call themselves strikers, take batting practice, what jumps out are the uniforms.

The New Hampshire Granite...ballists...sport grey wool uniforms. Their socks are pulled up to their knees, and each wears a small cap that looks more like a beanie.

Granite co-captain Brian 'Hustle' Prusak says a lot of people are drawn to the uniforms.

But the former college player says he likes the game's rules.

VINTAGE 1
T.6
1:40 it's seven balls for a walk. Not four. If you hit a batter, it's not a free base, it's just a ball. So it doesn't happen, I've never seen it, but you could technically hit someone seven times before they get a base. You hope that doesn't happen, but it's a possibility.

Prusak says a dozen different rules make for a quicker, trickier more tactical game.

For some of these players, the vintage game is also a chance to escape from what they believe Major League Baseball has become: steroid scandals, mammoth contracts, $95 dollar tickets, the whole self-absorbed culture.

Former major leaguer and author of the baseball book 'Ball Four,' Jim Bouton.

Bouton
17:09 the players salute each other. There is no trash talking, and pointing and gesturing. And the players have a much more modest demeanor. They hit the ball, they put their head down. They run around the bases. They don't pirouette. They don't point at the sky. They are not kissing jewelry. They are not preening, they are not posing. They are not screaming at the umpire. No the opposite.

But what really separates vintage ball from it's modern cousin is not the customs, or the rules, it's the equipment, particularly the glove. The ball is just as hard but the glove is little more than a leather wrap.

Granite shortstop Jamie 'Wonder Boy' Lewis smiles wide when he says there is no such thing as a routine play in vintage base ball.

VINTAGE 1
T.14
3:23 everything has a possibility. It's not groundball to shortstop you are thrown out. It's groundball to shortstop and you better run it out, b/c you don't know what is going to happen. It's real. Everybody is trying. And everybody is skilled. But this is hard stuff. You are catching with a garden glove.

The glove, a so-called 1886 glove, has five fingers, and has an extra strip of leather for protection...but not enough to keep players from routinely breaking their fingers.

And it is the possibility of pain that makes this game quite different from its modern cousin.

New Hampshire Granite co-captain Michael 'Utah' O'Connor remembers being called on to fill-in for the team's starting catcher, Pete Duda.

Duda had broken one of his fingers the game before.

VINTAGE 1
T.6
2:16 I had warmed up with a pitcher, Sean Berry, who played in the New York Mets system. So for a guy who has never caught before, to catch a professional pitcher it was a little daunting at first.....

O'Connor says the first couple of pitches went ok.

Then the pitcher called for a fastball that sunk low.

... and it just hit of the end of my middle finger...and it fractured the finger...I knew it immediately. I knew it was bad.

VINTAGE 1
T.6
4:19 it was definitely swollen. The nail had been broken back. And there was blood and all those fine things oozing from the tip. So we just tried to keep it taped and in one piece as we could.

O'Connor says he looked to the bench, and saw only the already injured Duda.

So he re-entered the game.

Greg Martin believes stories like these keep people away from the sport.

Martin, a founder of the Hartford Senators and vintage base ball manufacturer wants to see the sport's popularity expand.

He says he will introduce a new glove next season that will be triple to quadruple the thickness of the 1886 model used by many ballists now. It is modeled after a typed used in the 1890's.

Greg Martin
43:25...taking the glove one step further...I think once players, touch it, hold it, put it on, catch a ball, they are going to say, 'ok, I like this. I'd like to start a team.'

On its face phasing in a safer piece of equipment sounds like a no-brainer.

Fewer broken fingers. Less medical expenses. More playing time. Everybody wins.

But baseball in the 1800's could change dramatically year to year.

So trying to introduce an '1890's glove' when many teams are playing 1886 base ball is seen by some as defeating the whole purpose.

New Hampshire Granite catcher and founder Pete Duda.

VINTAGE 3
T.3
6:23 this, to us, is the hardest game played. Overhand pitching, guys would put more on it. you have these little gloves....but the ball is still hard enough. These are the rules we choose to go with. we might try other rules...but this is what we want to play.

Duda's teammate Brian Prusak explains Duda is vigilant in his pursuit for historical accuracy.

VINTAGE 2
T.11
1:07 out of anyone who plays the game he will stick to every rule. He doesn't wear a chest protector. No shin guards, no cup. He uses that glove, where other teams, will use variations. The only thing he wears is that mask and the glove. That's all he does.

But Martin says most people just want to capture the spirit of early base ball – not every bit of pain that came with the real thing.

Besides, he says, the purists aren't telling the full story right now.

Greg Martin
44:56 it says here that 19th century base ball was a chaotic, violent sport. The participants were ruffians who played for their very lives by day, and wenched, gambled and drank themselves silly by night. The players were owned by despotic magnates, who treated them like slaves for the masses....if that is a true character of the definition of the ball player of the era, the way that vintage base ball is being played right now, is completely inaccurate...we should be out there brawling whenever there is a close play at the plate.

Jim Bouton, the former big league pitcher, describes vintage base ball as an attempt to capture an ideal.

A tricky thing to do, he says, because it's so subjective.

Bouton 2
6:56 ... What is the ideal? Well, the thing with ideals is they don't have dates. They don't have time and they don't have places. They exist in your imagination. What you think could have happened. What would I like to think about the past? What is my personal view of history that makes most sense to me.

Bouton says he's got a clear sense of where the game moves away from anything he considers 'vintage.'

Bouton 2
17:29 what's really vintage base ball and what's not vintage base ball, for me, is the line between when a player could and could not catch a ball with one hand, backhanded, in the webbing of his glove and fire across the field to get the runner out. And that happened with the evolution of baseball gloves somewhere in the 20's, 30's 40's. But it didn't happen anytime in the 1800's.

Granite catcher Pete Duda knows plenty of 'ballists' will opt to play 19th century era base ball, rather than the 1886 game he loves so much.

But, he shrugs, that won't be the end of his playing days.

VINTAGE 3
T.3
8:46 if guys want to keep evolving, then they are going to keep evolving, but we are going to keep finding guys who are interested in what we want to do. I am convinced of that....this is pure base ball. this is how base ball really started.

For NHPR News, I'm DG.