Think you know baseball? Sure, you’re familiar with how the game is played today, with its pitch clock, 400-foot home runs, and the designated hitter—but what about its roots? Now, fans of America’s pastime can see how the game was played in its early days when the Brooklyn Atlantics and New York Mutuals vintage baseball teams face each other in Brightwaters on Saturday, June 20.
The game is the highlight of the Bay Shore-Brightwaters Public Library’s second annual Baseball Day. Last year’s event drew about 200 fans, according to event organizer Gabrielle Manthos-Gomez. The game will be played in the field across from the library, which was the site of the Brightwaters Casino.
“It’s a fun way to make history more tangible for a wide audience,” said Manthos-Gomez, who is the library’s adult reference librarian and archivist, and also the historian for the Village of Brightwaters.
The two Long Island-based teams that will play this year—the Atlantics play their home games at the Smithtown Historical Society’s Atlantic Park, and the Mutuals play theirs at Old Bethpage Village Restoration—will compete using rules from 1864. The game was different back then. The baseballs were larger, the bats longer, and pitchers threw underhanded from 45 feet from home plate, rather than the 60 feet, six inches in today’s game. “Baseballists,” as the players were known then, also played without a piece of equipment today’s fans take for granted.
“The first thing fans comment on is the fact that we don’t wear gloves,” New York Mutuals first baseman and founder and president Tom “Big Bat” Fesolowich said.
“There’s an art to catching a ball barehanded,” said Frank “Shakespeare” Van Zant, one of the captains of the Atlantics, as well as pitcher and third-baseman. “You have to have incredibly soft hands to catch a vintage baseball.”
The team is named after a team that played in Brooklyn in the 1800s and won a world championship in 1864. A retired educator who ran a program for at-risk students in Rockville Centre, Van Zant is also a poet. He’s the poetry editor of Sport Literate magazine and the author of two books of poetry, including a book of poems about baseball, called The Lives of the Two-Headed Baseball Siren. So, it’s not surprising that Van Zant, 64, and a former college pitcher, waxes poetic when he talks about the joys of playing vintage baseball. Van Zant describes the Atlantic League’s games (they play between 50 and 60 games a year) as “a living museum” that gives fans an authentic look at “what baseball looked and sounded like in the 1800s.”
Fesolowich, a retired New York City school teacher, said vintage baseball combines his love of baseball with his love of history. His team, the Mutuals, takes its name from a team founded in 1857 that played until 1876, winning four world championships.
Both Fesolowich and Van Zant said one of the things they like most about playing vintage baseball is the camaraderie among the players. The sport is attracting new players, and it shows as the Atlantics recently added six to their roster.
“I love the game of baseball, but there’s a fellowship that exists in vintage baseball that doesn’t necessarily exist in other forms of the game,” Van Zant said. “It’s not just an old man’s game. Most of the players on the team are in their 20s to 40s.”
IF YOU GO
What: Bay Shore-Brightwaters Public Library’s second annual Baseball Day, organized by the library, the Village of Brightwaters, and the Brightwaters Historical Society.
When: Saturday, June 20, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: At the field across from the library, located at 1 South Country Road, Brightwaters.
Why go: Watch a vintage baseball game between the Brooklyn Atlantics and the New York Mutuals. Enjoy music from the Harbormen Chorus barbershop quartet. The library will hand out baseball cards of players from the Atlantics and the Mutuals.
Admission: Free, but bring a lawn chair.
To learn more about baseball history on Long Island, read this FIN archives classic: The Cuban Giants: The Nation’s First Professional Black Baseball Team, Which Played in Babylon Village.
