Baseball....

[civilwartalk]

I was reading a message board on another site when a thought occurred to me. The game of baseball was somewhat popular during the Civil War wasn't it? Are there any documented games that were played between different units during the war? If anyone has any insight into this I'd love to hear about it.

[unionblue]

Mike, I know there was a baseball game played between the Union guards and Rebel prisoners on Johnston's Island in Ohio during the war. It was on a VCR tape entitled 'Rebel Fire & Yankee Ice' or something like that. I'll check at home and see if I can get some more facts for you.

Unionblue

[hoosier]

I seem to recall that the opening segment of Ken Burns' documentary on baseball (which aired several years after his documentary on the Civil War) made some mention of baseball being played during the Civil War. I think they even played the "Ashokan Farewell" theme music while they talked about it.

I taped that series when it first aired, but I find that the tape has deteriorated so that I can no longer play it.

As far as I can recall, though, it did not mention the scores of any specific games during the Civil War.

[tulip]

On page 170 of The Life of Billy Yank Bell Wiley states:

Football was occasionally mentioned in letters and diaries, but baseball or "bass ball" as one Yank put it, appears to have been the most popular of all competitive sports. Baseball as played by Yanks differed considerably from that of today. A Vermont soldier gave this description: "The baseball was soft, and a great bounder. To put a base runner out, he had to be hit by the ball, thrown by the pitcher." Another impressive difference was the score. A game between the Eighth and the 114th Vermont Regiments near Franklin, Louisiana, in February 1864 was won by the former 21 to 9. The first team of the Ninth New York Regiment beat the Fifty-first New Yorkers 31-34 at Yorktown, VA in 1863. But a few days later the second nine of the two units played, with the Ninth Regiment triumphing by the fantastic score of 58-19! Soldier baseball must have been vigorous. One Yank noted after a contest in Tennessee, "We get lamed badly."

Baseball actually began as a game for gentlemen but quickly spread its wings to include men from all classes. The war with its high concentration of young and vigorous men was the perfect breeding ground for popularizing baseball on both sides of the lines. It also acted as an equalizer and bonding tool between officers and enlisted since they generally played as a unit on the same team.

While many of the more affluent volunteers brought their equipment to camp with them, all were perfectly willing to improvise by using rag balls with a walnut core or lumps of cork, fence poles, sticks, anything they could find. A lack of equipment never stopped a baseball game whether planned in advance or spontaneous.

The soldiers adapted the civilian game to meet camp conditions and fused various localized versions by adopting New York rules. On July 21, 1861 in the "President's backyard," the Washington Nationals a civilian team was defeated by the 71st NY regiment with a score of 41-13. After returning to the capitol in 1862 the 71st, their best athletes decimated at Bull Run, lost in a rematch 28-13.

The most watched game during the era was played on Christmas Day 1862 at Hilton Head SC between the Duryea Zuaves and selected elements of the 47th New York. Over 40,000 men watched the game. The score did not survive the war although the 47th is rumored to have been declared the winner. A.G. Mills who later became the first president of the National League claimed that he played in the game.

Bell Wiley in his book The Life of Johnny Reb provides a description on pg 158 of baseball in the Southern army, where it was just as popular an outlet as in the North.

When leisure and weather permitted, soldiers turned out in large numbers for baseball. Captain James Hall of the 24th Alabama Regiment observed that his men, while Joe Johnston was waiting at Dalton to see what Sherman was going to do, played baseball "just like school boys." The same could have been said of almost any other regiment of the Confederacy. The exercise might be of two-base townball. The bat might be a board, a section of some farmer's fence rail, or a slightly trimmed walnut, but enthusiasm would be so great as to make the camp reverberate with the cheers and taunts of participants, if not of spectators. And the game might become so rough as to necessitate precautionary steps. "Frank Ezell was ruled out," wrote a Texas Ranger in his diary, because, "he could throw harder and straighter than any man in the company. He came very near knocking the stuffing out of three or four of the boys, and the boys swore they would not play with him."

Unfortunately, sometime the war interfered and the game was called on account of raining bullets. George Putnam, a union soldier recorded in a letter: Suddenly there was a scattering of fire, which three outfielders caught the brunt; the centerfield was hit and was captured, left and right field managed to get back to our lines. The attack...was repelled without serious difficulty, but we had lost not only our centerfield, but...the only baseball in Alexandria, Texas.

Sources: Bell I Wiley; History of Baseball, pgs 380-382.

[tamaroa]

Thomas Dyja wrote a great book if you all haven't read it yet called "Play for a Kingdom" It is fiction based on some faint rumor that during the overland campaign there was a series of baseball games between a rebel regiment and a yankee regiment. It is a must if you like the Civil War and/or baseball. I read it and could not put it down. It shows the same men playing base ball one minute and going for each other's throat the next.

Good read.

Bill

[jasonc]

wryd sister is that Civil War Times different than Civil War Times illustrated? I thought they were in fact the same but was told yesterday i was wrong.

[civilwartalk]

Sorry, I would have posted earlier, but I had to wait until I scored trivia...

BTW: Good info everyone, I've done a little research myself, and it seems a book called The Long Roll by Charles F. Johnson tells story of the Civil War from his common soldier experiences as a member of the 9th NY Volunteers. Among other info about the book, I found a reference that mentions that "Johnson gives accounts of baseball games played with other units and crows over his team's prowess...."

I guess I'll have to find a copy of the book and report back to you with scores, and anything else that seems neat to know.....