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Managing Editor SPRINGFIELD The up-coming baseball game to be played at the Forest Park grandstand won't have any trash-talk or high-fiving. There will be no aluminum bats or batting helmets either and the rules will be a little different. The Aug. 19 contest between the Hartford Senators and the New Hampshire Granite will be played with rules, equipment and manners of the 1880s. There won't be a steroid in sight. The game is part of a relatively new movement in which baseball fans in their 20s and 30s are playing the game of their great-grandfathers. Greg Martin, the owner of Vintage Baseball Factory in Hartford, Conn., described the game coming to Springfield as a combination of living history, theater and unscripted sports competition. He also described it as "gentlemanly." Vintage baseball started in the mid-1990s, he said, with a dozen clubs in the Mid-West. There is now a national organization, the Vintage baseball Association, and the brand of the sport has grown to 225 teams in 32 states. Martin said there is no arguing in vintage baseball and no showboating for the crowd or against other players. Players shake each other hands and congratulate the opposing team on good hits. "It is as close as you can get to see the game as it was played 125 years ago," he added. With balls that are made the same way as they were in the 19th century and gloves that resemble something one would wear gardening rather than catching, Martin said that even routine plays such as a fly ball can be exciting. "It's not an automatic out like you see today," he explained. The century-plus rules also add different wrinkles to the game. Martin said that, for example: seven balls, instead of four, constitute a walk; foul balls are not strikes; if a batter is hit by a pitch, he does not go to first base and the pitch is counted as a ball; and a foul tip caught by the catcher is an out. Martin said that he invested in his business, which manufactures and markets vintage balls, uniforms and gloves, because he saw a growing opportunity. Locally the Westfield Wheelmen are a vintage team, and Martin believes there will be thousands of teams across the country playing by vintage rules. The game on Aug. 19 will be free of charge. Only the usual park fee for automobiles applies. For more information on vintage baseball, go to www.vbba.org. | ||||||
