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BASEBALL IN THE MIDWEST: A DIFFERENT SPORT
MANY WEST OF PENN. PLAYING BASEBALL, BUT IT LOOKS FOREIGN COMPARED TO NORTHEAST GAME

MIDWEST U.S.A. (Oct. 1, 1880) - Four and a half years ago, a dispatch from Chicago detailed the efforts of a local businessman and amateur baseball player named Albert Spalding, who opened the largest baseball-only shop in the United States on Madison Street in response to the rapidly increasing popularity of the sport.

At the time, there were numerous highly formal but amateur clubs spread amongst the largest cities in the region – Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, & St. Louis. There were also many informal clubs operating in growing cities across the region. The sport’s popularity has only grown since then, and in many cities & towns near or west of the Mississippi River there are friendly games between amateur nines to be played or spectated every weekend.

However, the version of baseball these men play would look absolutely bizarre to the seasoned veterans in the Northeast. Perhaps owing to the somewhat more rugged nature of life in the “Northwestern United States”, the name the region is still called by many, as the sport’s popularity rose the increasing number of people who took part put their own spin on the game, resulting in playing rules and field oddities that would make a player in the A.P.B.L. or N.B.B.O. wonder just what in tarnation they were looking at:

• PITCHERS DON’T PITCH. THEY “HURL” THE BALL: As clubs filled with amateurs gathered together on the weekends to play, those who had less training in the fine art of pitching would take the ball and make a mess of it, with the most frequent problem being that they couldn’t keep their arm straight. At some point one club official or player had a thought: “Why don’t we just let the Pitcher throw the ball and remove the guesswork in judging whether or not he made a legal straight-arm delivery?” It took off, and by the end of the 1870s Pitchers in the Midwest became “Hurlers” who threw the ball underarm and sidearm and overarm and with varying degrees of speed, but…

• “HURLERS” THROW THE BALL FROM 60+ FEET AWAY: When it was communally decided that the man who had the ball could throw it to the batter instead of lob it underhand, an immediate problem arose: the speed at which the ball flew to Home Plate quickly became overwhelming. Moving the Pitcher’s Area back from 45 to 50 feet wasn’t enough, so with further experimentation it was decided that an exact distance of 60 feet, 6 inches from “Hurler” to Home Plate would give the Batsman a fair amount of time to react to the ball before it flew past.

• A MOUND WHERE THE “HURLER” STANDS: After the Pitcher became the Hurler and began throwing the ball toward Home Plate from sixty and one-half feet away, one discovered through another process of experimentation that he could throw the ball harder if he was striding downward instead of on flat ground. His club built a raised mound of dirt to throw from, and after it proved to be an instant success these mounds became the norm across Midwestern baseball grounds. Originally varying in size & height, it was later agreed for the sake of consistency and fairness that a uniform mound height of fifteen inches would be used at the venues of all formal clubs.

• NO PITCHER’S AREA. ONLY A PIECE OF RUBBER: Instead of a box marked out in the middle of the Infield where the Pitcher could deliver from, in the Midwest there was a 24” x 6” strip of rubber at the apex of the mound from which the “Hurler” had to start his motion. It meant there was less variety in terms of where the action of a play started, but it was a fair tradeoff considering the much greater strategic variety that throwing the ball offered.

• FOUR BALLS TO A FREE BASE PUTS THE “HURLER” ON NOTICE: While there were numerous quirks to Midwestern baseball that gave advantages to the man previously known as the Pitcher, there was one change from the Northeastern game that evened the proverbial score. While delivering from 60+ feet away, the “Hurler” could only misfire four times before the Batsman was awarded a Base on Balls. This was done because many felt it was both dull and unfair that handfuls of wayward deliveries could be made while forcing the Batsman to wait for a good-looking ball to cross the plate. Some wanted to make it even, with three balls to a Base on Balls and three strikes to a Strikeout, but four was the amount settled on due to the distance from the delivery point to Home Plate.

• CATCHERS COULD USE LARGE MITTS: With “Hurlers” being able to throw the ball, the act of catching whatever was delivered to Home Plate became a much more dangerous adventure for the man behind it. Because of that, the Catcher was permitted to use a large mitt specifically designed for the job, typically stuffed with felt or cotton, so he didn’t end the season with five broken fingers on his catching hand.

• FIRST BASEMEN COULD USE MITTS TOO: The one man tasked with catching the ball more than any other player on the field except the Catcher was the First Baseman. A few years after the Catcher’s Mitt caught on in the Midwest, it was agreed that the man covering first base should be allowed to use a “catching glove”, making it easier to snag deliveries from his fellow Infielders. Some argued that giving First Basemen gloves cheapened outs and that drops are part of the game as they are in cricket, but safety won out.

• BASEBALL GROUNDS AREN’T JUST LARGE FIELDS: In the Northeast, the original baseball venues, like The Elysian Fields, were placed in open areas, with the seating for fans going from First Base around Home Plate and over to the Third Base side and fences arbitrarily built a hefty distance from Home Plate to keep prying eyes from watching games for free. In the Midwest, because the sport started to become popular later than in the Northeast, the venues were built wherever they could be fit: a residential neighborhood, an industrial area, a city center, etc. That meant fields were shorter, Ground Rules stranger, and, most importantly, there were more over-the-fence Home Runs to be had for any man who could hit the ball hard.

The above is a lot to take in. What it all meant was that the Midwesterners were playing something called baseball, but to a purist it was baseball in name only. Those from the Northeast who found themselves in places like Chicago for business or pleasure who watched games typically found “Midwestern Ball” uncouth, ungentlemanly, and too combative in nature. The locals saw it as pure snobbery, while the travelers felt there was no reason for the sport to have been altered so much.

In traditional baseball, the Pitcher was seen as a facilitator who started the action, with the Batsman deciding what pitch to attack. All parts of the field came into play. Baserunning and base stealing weren’t risky propositions. Run scoring was a given. It was taken for granted that there would be mistakes. Batsmen swung for contact, and Pitchers let fielders do the work.

The Midwestern Game didn’t work that way:

• BASEBALL AS A TACTICAL BATTLE: Every play began with the Hurler throwing the ball almost as hard as he could to a Batsman who, not infrequently, had to fend off tricky deliveries and might not see anything easy to hit all afternoon. Runners had to be choosy about when to pilfer a base because the ball made it to Home Plate much faster, and that meant the odds of successful steals were lower. In turn, that meant the Field Manager might be the one to decide when it’s time to attempt things like lay down a bunt, steal a base, or try to swing big for an Extra Base Hit.

• MISTAKES MUST BE MINIMIZED: Four balls to a Base on Balls meant the Hurler couldn’t mess around and lob balls to the plate that were out of the range of the Batsman – he had to put the ball over the plate. The Batsman might only get one good ball to swing at during his Plate Appearance, and that meant he had to make his swings count – no speculative shots. The C & 1B being able to wear mitts meant fewer errors were committed, and that put pressure on the other fielders, even if functionally bare-handed, to ensure they were doing everything they could to secure they ball. It all combined to place in the minds of players the idea that any mistake, whatever form it came in, was costly.

• THE HOME RUN AS A VALID PLAY: Smaller fields meant shorter fences, shorter fences meant more Home Runs, and more Home Runs meant that a Batsman just might decide to go for one on purpose. Such a strategy was almost non-existent in the Northeast aside from at a few stadiums that had fences that measured under 300 feet at the foul poles, but in the Midwest many fields were comparatively shorter everywhere, and that meant if a Batsman with sufficient ability came up with the bases full then he just might try for a Grand Slam.

• THE “ROTATION”: The underhand delivery meant teams in the Northeast only needed two regular Pitchers, and those two could deliver 250+ pitches in a game if needed. Throwing the ball put far more strain on the arms, elbows, & shoulders of the Hurlers in the Midwest, and that meant if an amateur side played on Friday-Sunday they’d give the ball to three different men, the same three in the same order each time they played a three-game series. This “Three Man Rotation” was common among the bigger clubs, and it also meant specialized Hurlers were a larger part of teams’ rosters.

Midwestern Ball even looked different…

• TWO SETS OF UNIFORMS: The larger amateur clubs would occasionally travel to other cities and states to play matches against clubs of similar stature. In those games, the visitors would eschew the shirts they normally wore, which were typically set in team colors, and instead wear a white top with the club’s city or name on it as a reminder of who they were representing.

• THE TEAMS HAD NICKNAMES: The larger clubs had enough people supporting them that either the members or the fans would refer to the team by a nickname, something not seen in the Northeast. There were clubs whose teams were referred to as the North Stars, the Lakers, the Oaks, the Riders, the Saints, the Lumberjacks, the Gales, and so on. For the support, those names made the games they attended, as well as the sport itself, feel more inclusive than referring to the clubs by their proper names, with the term “club”, to some people, signaling something meant to be secretive and difficult to get into.

When players from the Northeast watched Midwestern games during their travels, some were taken aback, some were amused, some were entertained, and some were fascinated by this new version of the sport they were seeing. One afternoon, when asked his opinions on Midwestern Ball upon the conclusion of taking in a game in Chicago after the end of an A.P.B.L. season, Jim Creighton was quoted as saying: “They play a game with which I am not familiar.”

Indeed, the version of baseball played in Chicago, St. Louis, and other notable cities a thousand miles or more away from where game had its origins hardly felt like baseball at all. Nonetheless, the people have quickly made it the main sporting pastime of the Midwest, and word on the street and in the clubs is that it should only be a year, two at the most, before the region has organized leagues to call their own. When that happens, it will be fascinating to see which version of the sport – the traditional game or Midwestern Ball – wins out.