Vintage baseball team, the Eagle Diamonds, sponsored by Old World Wisconsin.
Base ball teams in small villages in 1860's Wisconsin? Yes, indeed. Soldiers played base ball during their free time in camp during the Civil War; and when they came home, they continued to play, introducing it to their communities. At that time, the sport was spelled as two words, base ball. Players were called ballists.
The game supposedly started in Boston Massachusetts and spread to New York, where there was codification of the rules. Those rules were considerably different than those we know today. For instance some rules could be decided by the home team, such as those for stealing bases.
Team members did have uniforms. Those for the Eagle Diamonds in the picture above are reproductions of uniforms typical of the 1860's and 1870's. Local sawmills made the bats. The balls were leather and in the beginning, there were no baseball gloves. The game was played bare-handed.
Base ball games between local teams started in 1865 in towns like Baraboo and Beloit Wisconsin. One game in a town in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, had a score of 52 to 31. Quite a slugfest.
One bit of historical trivial: Enterprising publishers began issuing baseball trading cards with pictures of star athletes in the 1870s.
Sources:
Wisconsin Historical Society Internet Site
Notes from "Behind the Scenes Tour for Friends of Old World Wisconsin"
