1864 2005
Red-hot daisy cutter Hard line drive
Apple, pill Baseball
Whitewash Shutout
Ace, tally Run
Hands down Out
Hurler Pitcher
Striker Batter
"Way to show
some ginger" "Way to hustle"
Base ball Baseball
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The Society for Baseball Research says the first known reference to America's national pastime can be found in a 213-year-old document from Pittsfield, Mass.
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For more information
To learn more about Old Bethpage Village Restoration's Old Time Baseball League, check out www.oldbethpage.org/baseball_info.htm, or call (516) 572-8400. Players are needed.
Old Bethpage Restoration, a former farm, sits on 209 acres, and was acquired by Nassau County in 1963. It's a recreation of an early American village, and boasts 51 historical buildings.
Photo credit: Courtesy Al Belbol
Photo caption # 24527: Merrick resident Al Belbol, kneeling, second from left, and former North Bellmore resident Bill Bogatz, standing, fifth from left, played on the championship Mineola Washingtons vintage baseball team at Old Bethpage Village Restoration this past summer.
Photo credit: Scott Brinton/Herald
Photo caption # : In his other life, Belbol coaches youth soccer and baseball. Above, Belbol with his 11-year-old son, Anthony, on the Levy-Lakeside Elementary School field during a South Merrick Soccer Club practice.
Pt hed: Striker up! at Old Bethpage
Drophead: Merrick-Bellmore residents play in 1864 league at restoration village
By Scott Brinton
The year is 1864. On a field of green grass hemmed by an imperfect dirt diamond and a thin wire backstop, a baseball is hurled toward home plate. A plain wooden bat cracks. The ball flies like a cannon shot over the split-rail fence just past the outfield, landing in a patch of brambles.
The batter, known in 19th-century parlance as a striker, hustles around the bases. An outfielder blazes to retrieve the ball, searching in vain for it. Play grinds to a halt. A number of players join in his hunting expedition. Play cannot continue without the ball, as there is but one.
A ruddy barn and two-story clapboard house lie 300 feet or so beyond the fence line. Otherwise, only trees and bushes surround the playing field. The sun is shining brightly. A light breeze is blowing.
OK, the year isn't 1864 -- it's 2005. But it might as well be the 19th century. The place is Nassau County's Old Bethpage Village Restoration, where each weekend over the summer, baseball aficionados enjoy the game as it was played in its youth.
For baseball enthusiasts seeking to rekindle the old-time virtues of the game -- recognized long before multi-million-dollar major league contracts and steroid scandals -- vintage baseball is about as close to perfection as it gets.
The players are part athlete, part actor. To play vintage ball at Bethpage Village, participants must dress as folks did way back when -- in long-sleeved, heavy cotton uniforms that cause profuse perspiration -- play by old-time baseball rules and even speak in 19th-century vernacular. There are two leagues. One plays by 1864 rules, which differ vastly from those of the modern game. The other league follows 1887 rules, which more resemble baseball as we know it today.
There is an Old Bethpage village championship to be won. And this year, two Bellmore-Merrick natives played on the 1864 league's top team, the Mineola Washingtons, which was an actual squad in the New York metropolitan area a century and a half ago. They are Al Belbol of Merrick and Bill Bogatz, who was born and raised in North Bellmore, where his parents, Gerald and Sandra, still live.
All vintage players adopt nicknames. Belbol is known as Rocky. Bogatz goes by Bellmore Bill.
Folks come from throughout Nassau County to play in the league. A half dozen fans usually turn out to watch the games. At the annual Long Island County Fair, held at Old Bethpage in October, a hundred spectators might gather on the sidelines. "There could be no one watching, and we'd play the same," says Belbol. That is, with absolute heart.
Old Bethpage's two vintage leagues, started by John Morrison, began play inauspiciously two decades ago. They've since garnered national attention in The New York Times and Smithsonian magazine, as well as on several TV programs, such as "Late Night with Conan O'Brien."
Belbol, a lifelong Merrick resident who coaches youth soccer and baseball, says he fell in love with old-time baseball despite the pain it causes him -- yes, pain. Players don no mitts. So, when they catch hard line drives (known as "red-hot daisy cutters"), their hands sting -- big time. The ball is a tad softer than today's, but not a lot. "I have some bone bruises I haven't recovered from from April and May," Belbol says.
Bogatz, an economics teacher at Wantagh High School who now lives in Great Neck, says a colleague invited him to play vintage ball back in 1998, and immediately, he says, "I was smitten." Bogatz loves the 1864 game in large part because no matter what players' skill levels are, they can take part. The ball is pitched underhand, so most anyone can hit. And a ball caught off a bounce counts as an out, so most anyone can play the field.
Belbol says vintage baseball harks back to a time when the game was simply about good friends getting together to share an afternoon in the sun, hitting and throwing a ball around a grassy field. "It's just a matter of people coming out because they love baseball in its purest form," he says, a smile creasing his face.
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
