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Baseball is America's oldest pastime and this weekend you can see it played the way it was originally intended.
NBC's Jason Hawkins hit the field with the Coltsville Vintage Base Ball League.
We play civil war era baseball here.
At Colt Park in Hartford, these folks are having
a blast from the past.
It's not very competitive,
it's actually everybody having a good time
. The Coltsville Vintage Base Ball League
which plays games every weekend is doing it old-school
using rules from the eighteen hundreds. it's a little different from our modern game
We don't play with gloves - we don't play with any equipment
but a ball and a bat and our wits.
No gloves? Sounds painful!
It's a little softer but what's coming at you with no gloves -
I mean, it doesn't really matter.
Unlike today, the original game
of base ball wasn't about home runs
or strikeouts. The pitcher basically is laying the ball in there for you to hit.
The teams that win will win by defense.
But the most unusual rule of all? You don't have to catch the ball in
the air or on the fly -
You can catch it after one bounce.
Runners can advance on a bound catch but they can't on a fly catch.
Now that I've got that straight, batter up!
Ever sinced the Whale has left there's always been talk or wishful thinking
about a major league baseball team coming to Hartford.
Well, actually there was ... a hundred and fifty years ago.
1876 Major League Base Ball started
its premiere year
and uh...Hartford is one of the eight cities that had a team that year.
and our team was simply call The Hartfords.
Even Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig once played in our capital city
more than a century later
The Friends of Vintage Base Ball will continue to honor
the original Boys of Summer. We appreciate the older game - the Nineteenth Century game
because it was a gentleman's game
so in modern times having old-time values being played out is a good lesson
for everyone to learn
in Hartford
Jason Hawkins NBC Connecticut News
And the Colt Meadows Invitational starts tomorrow morning at ten you'll get to
see four vintage base ball games throughout the day.