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i played 1860s baseball (now with PICS)


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this is the facial hair style i chose:

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okay, as for the game... it was amazing. like i said, we played a doubleheader against the Ty Cobb team from Georgia. they've been playing for a few years as a team, and this was the first time the Shoeless Joes had ever assembled. we split the doubleheader 1 game apiece.

The Ty Cobb team:

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Our team, The Shoeless Joes:

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i was named offensive AND defensive player of the day. i played left field (where Joe Jackson played... i even played an inning with my shoes off and caught a fly ball that inning) and was 7 for 7 on defensive chances. i made a diving catch, had an outfield assist, and made the last out of the first game by catching a DEEP fly ball over my shoulder. at the time, there were two runners on base that would have both scored and given Ty Cobb the lead had i not made the catch.

me, running in after my shoeless inning:

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offensively i was 2-4 on the day with 2 RBI and 1 run scored. i drove in the first run of the first game and later on also drove in the game-winner.

at the plate:

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playing without a glove was much different just because i'm so used to fiddling with my glove in between pitches while i'm on defense, but it didn't hurt or anything because this is the ball we used:

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it's a little bit bigger and softer than a regular baseball. it also bounces higher.

left to right: Joe Jackson's great-great-great neice, Ty Cobb's granddaughter, and me:

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our team in the dugout:

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this kid came all the way from kentucky (with 2 other guys) to play. he hit a home run over the 320' fence in practice the night before, but only had one hit during the real games. there was a runner on second base with 2 outs, and he hit a line drive into the outfield, it hit the referee's chair and bounced back into the infield, and our runner was out at home. lame.

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one of the other kentucky boys:

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somebody from the Ty Cobb team:

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and somebody else from the Ty Cobb team:

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from somebody else's pictures online, me going opposite field:

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from somebody else's pictures online, one of our teammates. you can see the ball just above the tree-line on the right side:

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from somebody else's pictures online, the "referee" of the match. there was a chair set up in the outfield that he sat in during the game most of the time. but when he felt like it, he would get up and walk around the field. no shit. and the chair was in play. it was odd, but awesome.

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kurt: sorry i missed your post before. i went to go visit my parents who live in greenville, south carolina now. greenville is where shoeless joe grew up and got his start in baseball. if you look at the picture of me running in from left field, in the background is "Brandon Mill" which was a mill where joe started working when he was 6 years old. yes, 6 years old. it was a textile mill, and there were lots of them in that part of the country back then. each mill had their own men's baseball team, and all of the teams formed a league. by the time joe was 13 years old, he was good enough to play on the men's team for brandon's mill. the rest, as they say, is history.

since joe grew up and lived in the area, his home has been turned into a museum. it is right across the street from where the Greenville Drive (the minor league baseball team) plays their games. my parents and i went to a game and before it started we stopped in the museum for a few hours. we're originally from (and i still live in) chicago, so shoeless joe has a special place in our hearts. anyway, the lady who runs the museum asked me if i played baseball. i said yeah. she asked me if i wanted to play in this game. i said hell yeah. and the rest, as they say, is history!

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hey dudes, thanks for the nice replies. it really was a lot of fun.

and the stealing rule would have been in effect, but both teams decided before the game that there would be no stealing allowed. kind of lame, cause i LOVED stealing bases, but it would have completely changed the game in a bad way (pitchers would have been way too preoccupied with the runners instead of just pitching) so i'm glad.

the game next year is going to be in Royston, Georgia (the homeplace of the ty cobb museum), and i'm pretty sure i'll be going to play in that one, too. it was a great day.

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Did the Ty Cobb team sharpen their spikes and drop a bunch of N bombs?

haha, although it would have been fitting.... no.

we weren't allowed to wear spikes, only gym shoes. and the referee's main job basically was to make sure everybody acted "like gentlemen". both teams called their own outs, unless there was a dispute in which case the referee would get involved. there were no balls and strikes back then, so he didn't have to worry about that, either. (you could only strike out if you swung and missed 3 times. even foul balls didn't count toward that. so nobody struck out all day...)

if you did something 'ungentlemanly' you would be fined by the referee. fine-able offenses:

- sliding

- spitting

- swearing

- arguiung

- heckling

- trash talking

- running out of the basepaths (seriously)

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