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Muffins vs. Cannons

Posted on 24th July 2011

On Friday July 22nd, I played an 1860’s base ball game against the Capital Cannons, a team composed of the Ohio Senate and House. The game was played partly for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and there are some photos of the event at The Columbus Dispatch. I am not in any of those photos, however, I was in a news clip broadcasted on our local NBC news channel. In that video, you can see me rounding 3rd base at the 1:13 mark of the video. The game was also broadcasted live on ohiochannel.org, and we expect them to re-broadcast it on there as well as WOSU-TV in Columbus. When I know of the re-broadcast, I will post it here and on Twitter.

The Ohio Village Muffins is a volunteer based group of people dedicated to preserving the game of base ball as it was played around the Civil War period. Using a set of rules set by the New York Knickerbockers in the 1840’s, the differences in the rules compared to how the game is played today can be quite interesting. The first notable difference is that of how the ball is caught. You will not see any player utilizing a glove to aid in the catch. Instead, you will see him catch the ball bare handed. This leads to the next difference. The ball can be caught off the 1st bound to cause the striker, or batter in today’s terms, to be called dead. There are hands down, which are outs in today’s terms. The striker is not out on strikes and there are not any walks to 1st. The striker can be called dead at the plate if the umpire feels he is not swinging at good pitches, or if a foul tip is caught directly.

I have been a member of the Muffins for around a year. I joined last year when my future brother in law, Mike, had played a game for the Muffins against the Mansfield Independents. The setting of this game was just as perfect. The field was setup in front of the Ohio Reformatory, the set of the popular movie, The Shawshank Redemption.

There are many games left to play in the season, and I encourage attending the games when played in the Ohio Village, which is at the Ohio Historical Society. You can find the schedule here.

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