Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 5, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the 1860s and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the fifth in a series. Volume I was Amelia Changes Her Tune. Volume II was Isaac and Wolf Paw Find Their Home. Volume III was Autumn Keeps Her Secret. Volume IV was Mr. Gamble Starts a School.
“Hey Jake, how ’bout some Rounders?”
Simon didn’t have to ask twice. Jacob was out of the tree and running to the house to ask his mother.
“Your school lessons done?”
“Yes’m.”
“Maggie taken care of?”
“Yes’m.”
“Your school clothes clean and folded for tomorrow?”
“Yes’m.”
“Did you practice pianoforte?”
“Yes’m.”
“Why didn’t’ I hear you?”
“I, uh, think you were outside talking with Mrs. Osbun.”
“Father, did you hear Jacob practice his piano,” Mama yelled to the next room.
“Sure did,” came the reply.
Good old Grandpappy. He probably couldn’t hear me if I did practice, but he does know how to help me get out the door. Grandpappy Zeiter was Autumn’s father, longtime proprietor of the Oakland Inn out north of town, until about four years ago when his health demanded that someone be around to help as needed.
Jacob has been named after Grandpappy and the two did look out for each other, Jacob by listening to Grandpappy’s stories and Grandpappy by pretending that Jacob had practiced the piano.
Grandpappy and Autumn had a similar cooperation. He didn’t grumble when she treated him more like a child than her father, and she didn’t treat him like a child any more than necessary.
Jacob stuck his head in the elder Jacob’s room before he headed out.
“Thanks Grandpappy,” Jacob said.
“Hit a rounder for me,” he replied.
Jacob nodded and dashed out the door.
The boys were playing a few lots west of his home. across from the Female Seminary, a fancy name for lady school, where girls of marrying age learned important things they should know before they either start working or get married.
Jacob noticed a steady stream of local young men walking, trotting or galloping up and down Third Street every evening. Usually on horses.
Rounders was a game that had been Jacob’s favorite from the moment he could run and he didn’t know that the game had really only become popular in his lifetime. It seemed to have started in the east, among laborers who entertained themselves with it after work.
Some railroad workers had brought it to Mansfield awhile before and now all the boys played it as often as chores, school and the weather would allow.
The game involved a ball of twine, tightly wound around a hard piece of rubber, then covered in a leather wrap that was tightly stitched shut. None of the boys had mothers that could make a good one, but a leather worker on East Diamond had taken a liking to making these base balls, as they were being called.
He would make them for the locals at a reasonable price, expecting, of course, that his customers would return any time they needed real leatherwork done, such as horse saddles and work gloves. The idea was that someone in the middle of the field would throw the ball at a round plate, past an opposing player who, holding a thick wooden stick would swing the “bat” at the ball and try to hit it.
If the “striker,” the one with the bat, missed too many times, another striker on his team would take his place. If he hit the ball, he would run toward a gunny sack (presumably, the flour had already been used so the sack was empty). He would try to step on it before someone out in the field could get it and throw it to the “base man.”
The runner was “out” if that happened and “safe” if it didn’t. If the ball was hit in the air and someone could catch it before it hit the ground twice, the striker also was “out.” The team with the bat did not get any points until someone could run around three gunny sacks and step on the one called “home,” where the striker had started.
When three batters had been “out,” the teams changed sides, no matter how many might still be standing on a gunny sack.
Each team got to get up to bat, back and forth, nine times for a regular game. Otherwise it was as many times as possible before the mothers starting calling for their boys to come home.
Jacob liked to play. He didn’t hit the ball far, but he knew how to hit it on the ground and in places where the opponents weren’t, which meant he got to stand on the gunny sacks a lot. Since making it all the way around was the goal (which is how the game first got to be called Rounders), teamwork was important and several players who could hit short hits like that made more points (some people were calling them “runs”) than one player who could hit the ball over everyone.
He also was good at catching the ball in the air or on one bounce and made many opponents mad when they thought they had hit it well but he ran to catch it — today especially. Honus Blymyer was the striker when he hit the ball high in the air and far over the middle base.
Jacob had already backed up a bit before the pitch, but turned around and ran with his back to the pitcher as soon as the ball was hit. He looked like he was being chased by a pack of wild dogs. It was almost as if Jacob knew where the ball was going to land before it was hit because just before the ball came down, Jacob turned around and caught it with both hands, not even letting it hit the ground first, which would have made it sting less on his hands.
It could have bounced past him or in another direction if he had done that, however, so it was worth the pain, in his mind. Honus was fit to be tied.
“That was a rounder if I ever saw one,” Honus yelled, standing with his arms stretched out on either side of him, halfway between the first and second “bases.”
“Not today,” Jacob yelled back, as he threw it in to a teammate and smiled, trying not to let on how much his hands stung from the catch. The catch was made all the sweeter the next time Jacob was “up.”
He hit it right to Honus, who was playing just to the left of the pitcher and back even with the second and third bags. The ball hit a rock and took a funny bounce and Honus, stepping to the right to field the ball, suddenly had to twist to his left to reach for it as the ball went merrily past him, and Honus fell down in a sitting position.
Because of the way the ball bounced and where the players had been playing, Jacob ran safely not only to the first bag, but also the second, something the players had started calling a “double.”
“You were lucky that time, Zimmerman,” Honus said as Jacob stood nearby.
“That’s the way the ball bounces,” Jacob replied. Hmm.
That’s a clever saying, he thought. I’ll have to remember that.
