The Vintage Game An essay by "Scribe" Slover Somewhere in unrecorded history, one of your ancestors picked up a club and swatted a rock that had been hurled at him. Or maybe your ancient clansman was the one doing the chucking. Time will never tell us which. But history will suggest that someone has been, if not playing base ball at least practicing its skills since humans first stood erect in a crowd and made an exhortation. And maybe, just maybe, that exhortation was “Huzzah!” Fanciful flights of anthropological theory aside, we do know that base ball has been around longer than you or me or the members of the Greatest Generation. It is the best and oldest of the great American team sports, and those of us with red-white-and-blue blood believe it’s better than the competitions of Greece, Rome, Egypt and empires that rose and fell in their wake. History tells us common folk kicked around a Dane’s head in Arthurian England, so obviously the knights of the round table had no desire to play a gentlemanly game. Yes, soccer and other games do have a longer history. But these games do not have the vise-tight clamp on the American imagination, the epic emotional attachment on the American spirit or the wallet-clinching squeeze on the American economy that base ball has. You might have played base ball from the time you were old enough to toddle across the yard. You might have collected base ball cards from the time you were big enough to finagle a dime from Dad and reach up to the counter at the corner store. You might have listened to it on a crackling Philco on a hot summer night or a buffering internet audio player next to the air-conditioning vent. You might have watched it in black and white on a Muntz or in high definition on a plasma screen. Base ball has heroes and villains, agony and ecstasy. It puts you to sleep and keeps you awake. It draws you to the corner lot, the schoolyard, the city park, the modern stadium. It is the pop or the suds, the red-hot or the braut, the snow cone or the Cracker Jacks. So where did all this begin? Base ball, the American game, took root more than a century and a half ago in New York and New England, regions that still fancy themselves the beating heart of the game. Posh. Base ball’s beating heart is anywhere we gather with rod and orb, to play Wiffleball, stick ball, cork ball, soft ball, Indian ball or just take in the old ball game. For a history of the game of base ball (and why we refer to it as two words instead of the modern one), click this link for a lesson provided by the Vintage Base Ball Association on its website: http://vbba.org/whatisvbb.html In terms of St. Louis base ball, the Perfectos have strong reason to believe they play in the cradle of the game, perhaps on the very field where Jerry Fruin taught boys from the Lafayette Square neighborhood the game he brought to town, where Shepard Barclay became one of the city’s best early players and where the spirit of the vintage game is alive and well. The Perfectos were born and the vintage game was revived in the historic neighborhood in 2002. The team has grown in number, in talent, in scope, in faithful following. But it remains true to the spirit that saw Alexander Cartwright and his Knickerbocker swells codify its rules and foster its spread across the nation. The game was too good for exclusive Eastern gentlemen’s clubs, and it spread to be enjoyed from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific shore. It was played in Civil War camps and spread into the South. Wagon trains and settlers carried it into the West. It was pushed along by the great American desire to combine recreation and relaxation. You know the modern game, which has both beauty and grace – and a touch of ugliness that is the gross excess of professional sport. But do you know the vintage game? Have you spent a summer afternoon in the shade of an oak tree, on a blanket or straw bale, with a lemonade or a Griesedieck in hand and seen the game as it was meant to be played when it was meant to be a game? Read the explanation of the vintage game and its roots on the VBBA site. But to really know the vintage game, come to the field at the northwest corner of Lafayette Park on a summer Saturday. Come breathe the air and see the action and feel the exhilaration that only base ball can bring. And as you feel re-baptized in the American pastime, you might just stand erect in the crowd and make an exhortation. And maybe, just maybe, that exhortation will be “Huzzah!” |
The Vintage Game - By Ray "Scribe" Slover
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| St. Louis Perfectos Base Ball Club |