By Scott Brinton
It was a recent 85-degree Sunday. I'm 39, and I hadn't hit a ball in a real game since I was a 12-year-old Little Leaguer. I worried that I'd strike out, but remarkably, I connected on the first pitch. And, oh, how that plain, wooden bat wobbled in my palms as it made contact. The vibration stung up and down my atrophied arms.
The ball sailed on a line drive to centerfield. I dashed to first, and as I neared it, my pants suddenly collapsed for all to see. I kid you not. I grabbed them as quickly as possible, but they had fallen nearly to my knees before I could retrieve them. None of the players or spectators minded. Good thing, because keeping my pants up for nine innings proved to be among the game's tougher challenges.
Al Belbol of Merrick, who has played for the Mineola Washingtons in the Old Bethpage Restoration's four-squad 1864 Base Ball League since 2003, recently invited me to join him for an afternoon of vintage escapism. Playing the game as farmers and rural townsfolk did a century before I was born was, in a word, a hoot.
My only trouble was that I had to wear an authentic-looking uniform to play at Old Bethpage. Regular squad members special-order their duds. As a first-time guest, I had to piece together a uniform from a costume box in the restoration's locker room. I squeezed my too-short, heavy-cotton shirt on, so my slight -- emphasis on slight -- middle-age paunch stuck out, and my pants were one or two sizes too big, so they kept slipping off. Besides that, all was right with the world on this perfect summer day.
Every player in the league gets a nickname. Belbol goes by "Rocky." Bill Bogatz, who grew up in North Bellmore and now lives in Great Neck, is "Bellmore Bill." Kevin Danielski of Queens, who always wears a red bandana around his neck when he plays, is known as "Outlaw." As a reporter, I instantly became "Scribe."
1864 baseball is a beautiful game. It is at once simple and highly complex. The ball is pitched underhand. Three strikes and you're out. But the umpire, known as the "arbiter" in 19th-century parlance, can offer warnings. So three strikes can turn into four or five if the ump likes you.
The game's objective is not to smack the most home runs, but rather to continually advance runners to home plate, which, once upon a time was literally a plate, as in ceramic dish. Pitches are slower than in the overhand game (which was born in 1887), so runners can get a jump on a steal, and stealing was all the rage in the Aug. 13 game I played in, as well as back in 1864.
Originally, I was slated to take right field. But the Washingtons' regular catcher, called the "behind," was having back pain, so as the rookie, or "muffin," I wound up behind the plate. Try as I might, I couldn't throw out a runner. And silly me, I tried to every time one leapt off first. So, with my right arm more accustomed to performing light duty on a computer keyboard than hurling a baseball 127 feet to second base again and again, I was sore the next day -- so sore that I couldn't fully extend my arm. But no matter. I got two batters out by catching ricocheting fouls off a bounce, and I was happy.
Yes, in 1864 baseball, a hit caught off a bounce is an out. A number of tall, muscular 20-somethings played the day I took a stab at the game, and they kept slapping the ball, or "pill," nearly to the split-rail home-run fence. Most times, fielders were able to grab the ball on the first bounce, but not always. Occasionally the ball took a wicked hop off a bump in the ground and the batter zipped around the bases, and even when the ball fell in a bramble patch, it remained in play.
The Washingtons, considered the best squad in the league, lost 17-3. The squad won the league championship last year, and several players, including Belbol, are or were league all-stars. On this Sunday, however, a handful of the Washingtons' key members were missing, and the Hempstead Eurekas, who we were up against, filled their roster with a number of ringers. So let's just say the odds were stacked against us. But, frankly, the score counted little. The experience was fun from start to finish. It was all about playing baseball with guys who love the game in its purest form. We joked and laughed, cheered on our teammates with quaint phrases like "well struck" -- for a nice hit -- and good-naturedly razzed the opposition with an occasional "Balderdash!" Afterward, the two teams sat at picnic tables outside the restoration, sipping sodas and talking -- what else? -- baseball.
The 39-year-old Belbol, who owns a contracting business, has loved the game since he was a kid. "To me, baseball is a very big part of my life," he says. "I'll pick up a baseball history book before a novel. I'll be playing baseball until they have to drag me off the field."
Belbol is so infatuated with the game that he traveled to Dyersville, Iowa, with his family to check out the baseball field featured in the Kevin Costner classic "Field of Dreams." Belbol has even got "Yankee Stadium Field of Dreams" tattooed on his left arm.
John Morrison Jr., the Town of Hempstead's assistant director of traffic control, founded the 1864 league in 1980, and these days he serves as the Washingtons' captain. The day I played, Morrison, who goes by "Blue Streak," returned home in the early morning from an upstate camping trip just to play. "This is my real love," he said.
Bogatz, an economics teacher at Wantagh High School, says 1864 rules allow just about anyone to take part in a game. Because the ball is pitched underhand, most can hit it. And because a ball caught off a bounce is an out, most can field it. "The rules allow a lot more people to come and enjoy the game," says Bogatz.
Midway through the game, I had a vision. Three Eurekas, impeccably attired in 19th-century garb, slowly strolled across the infield, from the sunlight into the shade. They were smiling and chatting, lost in conversation. A ruddy barn stood in the distance, just beyond the weathered home-run fence. The date -- Aug. 13, 1864 -- was scrawled on the chalk scoreboard. For an instant, I lost my sense of time. I was transported back to the mid-19th century, and I understood why Rocky and Bellmore Bill and Blue Streak love the league with such fervor. It returns them to a kinder, gentler era, when baseball was simply a game played on a scraggly field in the middle of nowhere.
To learn more about playing in the 1864 Base Ball League, call (516) 572-8401, or log on to www.oldbethpage.org. Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
