Baseball circa 1864

Vintage baseball leagues have been gaining in popularity.  From a recent story in the NYT:

Men in uniform are not traditionally jeered at for being “unmanly.” 

And it may be the rare man in uniform who endures that taunt by sundry strangers week after week, yet continues to suit up enthusiastically. Even so, Frank Stingone and Chris Lutkin, co-managers of the Hoboken Nine Vintage Base Ball Club, have managed to find quite a few such men. 

On a recent sunny Saturday, a roster of roughly 20 of them, outfitted in striped caps, knickers and red button-down shirts emblazoned with a large white “H,” for “Hoboken,” took the field alongside Mr. Stingone and Mr. Lutkin at the Stevens Institute of Technology there. By the middle of the first inning, several of the men, ages 20-something to 60-something, had prompted the heckling cry of “Unmanly!” from the crowd of around 30 spectators and their opposing team, the Flemington Neshanock. Their offense: catching, barehanded, a fly ball after it had bounced, rather than directly out of the air. 

The rules of baseball circa 1864, which govern many vintage games, dictate that players cannot use gloves, because they were not part of the equipment then. In addition, sunglasses, visors, digital watches and the carrying of cellphones are banned. Mr. Stingone, 41, of Hoboken, was once asked by a member of an opposing team whether it would be an infraction if he wore his dental retainer during play. (“I said fine, no problem. I try not to go crazy with it,” Mr. Stingone said.) 

The leather-bound balls the teams play with, batted into the sky by old-fashioned wooden bats and the often experienced modern players who wield them, “do sting the hands,” said Mr. Lutkin, 56, of Manhattan. “But there’s an element of camaraderie around the game played by the old rules” that makes up for the smarting, he said. “There’s a giant group of men and women across the U.S. doing this,” Mr. Lutkin said. He pitches, while Mr. Stingone plays where needed in the field. 

There is no overall governing body in vintage baseball, according to Bradley Shaw, the founder and president of the 12-year-old Flemington Neshanock. “There’s an encompassing organization called the Vintage Base Ball Association, but it’s basically for informational purposes — it sends out rules and lets you know how you can start a team if you’re interested.” But “they’re not telling anybody what to do,” Mr. Shaw said. 

The Hoboken Nine, formed in association with the Hoboken Historical Museum in 2010 to play a single annual re-enactment game in town each summer, joined a league only this year. It is now part of the Mid-Atlantic Vintage Base Ball League, which consists of about 20 teams from New York to Pennsylvania to Virginia, playing weekly throughout the region from April until November  ...

Here is a neat introduction at the VBBA's website.