Baseball on the Aquia Line

This is reputed to be the first known photo of a baseball game. The ball players are behind Company H of the 48th New York Regiment, who are posed stiffly for this 1863 formal portrait at Fort Pulaski, in Savannah, Ga.   BL-125-84 (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library) 

I've been trying to figure out a way to depict a baseball game on my layout.  Prior to the war, baseball was a common game in the United States, but not widely played. It was usually reserved for gentlemen clubs and had limited participation. That changed when the civil war broke out and baseball mania swept both the Union and Rebel armies. The baseball alamac has a great discussion of the history of baseball in the civil war at this link.   This quote from that site caught my interest.

According to George B. Kirsch’s 2003 book Baseball in Blue & Gray, John G.B. Adams of the 19th Massachusetts Regiment recounted that “base ball fever broke out” at a Falmouth encampment in early 1863 with both enlisted men and officers playing. The prize was “sixty dollars a side,” meaning the winning team paid the losers that sum. “It was a grand time, and all agreed it was nicer to play base than minie ball.” Adams reported that around the same time, several Union soldiers watched Confederate soldiers play baseball across the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg. Nicholas E. Young of the 27th New York Regiment, who later became a president of baseball’s National League, played the game at White Oak Church in Stafford County. Union soldier Mason Whiting Tyler wrote home that baseball was “all the rage now in the Army of the Potomac.”

George T. Stevens of the New York Volunteers said that in Falmouth, “there were many excellent players in the different regiments, and it was common for one regiment or brigade to challenge another regiment or brigade. These matches were followed by great crowds of soldiers with intense interest.”

I also find it fascinating that two New York Regiments played games against the Washington Nationals during the Civil War. This means the Washington Nationals can reasonably say they are the oldest club in baseball, at least in name.

I enlarged the baseball game section of the photo and attempted to measure the size of the diamond using the height of the third baseman as a ruler. He doesn't appear to be a very tall individual. It is about 10 lengths of the third baseman, or about 50-60 feet.  That's close to the same size as a current softball field. The official field according to the New York Rules of that day, which eventually became the standard baseball rules, called for a 90-feet diamond. Ninety feet in O scale is 22.5 inches. Fifty or sixty feet is a lot more manageable. But it is still too large for any flat area I have on my layout.

So I am thinking of showing just a portion od the diamond with the pitcher, batters catcher and some spectators. I will have to convert some figures to make the ball players.