1890's Baseball

Baseball as America's pastime has such a rich history. Here's an excerpt from The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, from the chapter describing how the game was played in the 1890's:

[John] McGraw recalled a game in which "the other team had a runner on first who started to steal second, but ... spiked our first basemon on the foot. Our man retaliated by trying to trip him.

He got away, but at second Heinie Reitz tried to block him off while Hughie...covered the bag to take the throw and tag him. The runner evaded Reitz and jumped feet first at Jennings to drive him away from the bag. Jennings dodged the flying spikes and threw himself bodily at the runner, knocking him flat.

In the meantime the batter hit our catcher over the hands with his bat so he couldn't throw, and our catcher trod on the umpire's feet with his spikes and shoved his big mitt in his face so he couldn't see the play."

How can you not love this game? :)

...

Cards beat the Evil Empire last night, 4.3. Woo!

A couple of my favorite managers:

(Joe, you'll always be a Cardinal in my book.)