Baseball feels like it’s been around forever, but did you know that’s not the case? We’ve only been playing baseball for about 175 years! Before that, we used our sticks to crack the skulls of animals and man alike in a claw-scraping, 100-percent hustle that we called life in the early industrial era.
We have Wilfred Base and his younger brother Franklin Base to thank for creating the game. Their father, Big Frank, a barrel-chested, southern man of ill repute, ran a traveling carnival. The boys saw the carnival as their empire (or “umpire” as they pronounced it) and believed that they were in control of everyone on those grounds and could do as they pleased.
Like most things at carnivals, baseball started as a grift. Wilfred’s role was to get the marks, er, customers over to his booth where he’d ask them to hold up their wallets so that he could guess how much money was in it. If he got it right, the mark had to pay Wilfred a nickel; and if he was wrong, the mark got either a box of peanuts, a bag of popcorn or something called a “Crackerjack,” which was basically old peanuts and popcorn with a little melted sugar on top to hide their crustiness.
Once the rubes dangled their wallets, purses or sacks of money in the air, Little Frankie would come along with his stick and whack the money out of their hands and into those of another accomplice and fellow carnie, Rutherford Outfield. After the hit, Little Frankie would take off running, and Outfield would deposit the money at one of three bases for him to pick up on his way to home base, where they kept the stash that day.
When a mark got out of control, a fourth man, Gilbert Catcher, would pretend to be carnival security and catch everyone. He’d return Little Frankie and Outfield to the booth and explain to the mark that the money had been lost, but that the culprits would be turned over to the sheriff for punishment. Once the mark left, Catcher would let them go. At the end of each day, the four of them would split the money with Big Frank.
Having nearly all they could need, the boys liked to spend their share on a new dessert that was sweeping the nation at the time, the “Homerun Pie.” Their insatiable lust for these pies got them into more than a jam or two over the years, but eventually they determined that as long as the pulled their scam less than 10 times at each stop (or as the boys would said, “9 innings and then an outing!”), they would be OK.
Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for us, the Base boys got greedy while on a stretch in Cooperstown, New York in 1839. The gettins were just too good and they got greedy when they tried to wring a tenth wallet out of young man named Abner Doubleday. A keen observer and fellow grifter, Doubleday had been on to the Base boys’ scam since day one. He’d seen them in action and figured out who all the players were and where the money went and he wanted in.
On that fateful day, Abner was ready to show the boys that he knew what was going on. He planned to play a mark only to catch them in the act and show them that he was a skilled trickster as well. What Abner and the Base boys didn’t count on was that the police were also watching the whole event.
The cops waited for the shit to go down, but something different happened this time; Abner didn’t lose his wallet. He pulled it back at the last second and pulled the boys to the side. This appeared strange to them so they arrested everyone, as cops are wont to do. While awaiting trial in the tiny jailhouse, the parties agreed that it would be best if they stuck together and made the whole thing appear to be a misunderstanding.
The Base Brothers, Big Frank, Rutherford Outfield and Gilbert Catcher all testified that it was all another carnival act. The whole point was to make the audience think they were seeing something exciting like a robbery, even though they weren’t. Abner backed them up and further laid the groundwork for what eventually became known as baseball when he testified that Wilfred made the pitch and Little Frankie batted, while Outfield caught the wallets and threw them to one of three bases for Little Frankie to pick up on his way through. Little Frankie would give the money to Gilbert who would give it back to the customer.
They called it Baseball and the judge bought the whole damn thing and so have you for 175 years!
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