ESPN classic..vintage baseball live.

Cafe Society
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7 PM EDT.

Baseball
Hartford Senators at Pittsfield Hillies
180 mins.

The Pittsfield Hillies host the Hartford Senators in a vintage game that sports 1886 rules, period uniforms and old-fashioned equipment. Pittsfield, Mass., claims to have the oldest known historical record of baseball in the U.S., a 1791 town bylaw restricting play of the game.

Gonna be interesting.

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If you’re interested, there’s a league of folks who play “base ball” the way it was originally played: the Vintage Base Ball Association.

Pretty cool stuff, thinks I.

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According to Leonard Koppett’s “The Thinking Man’s Guide To Baseball,” a game played by 1886 rules would mean:

  1. Seven balls for a walk (reduced from nine to eight in 1880, down to seven in 1882, down to six in 1884, back up to seven in 1886 – it would be five balls for a walk in 1887 and four in 1889).
  2. Batters can request a high or low pitch (abolished in 1887).
  3. No such thing as a called strike – a strike entails a swing and a miss (also abolished 1887).
  4. Batters are not awarded first base if they are hit by a pitch (rule introduced in 1888).