Frozen Diamond Chaos: The Wild Ice Baseball Experiment of 1884

So it's January eighteen eighty four in Brooklyn, New York, and it's cold cold enough that people are able to ice skate outside, and one hundreds flock to this baseball field. It's not like any they've seen before because the field has been flooded and frozen, and it's not regular ice skating they see. Instead, they see players getting ready for a baseball as they are there to see one of the most unique moments in sports, the first organized ice baseball game that actually led to a change in baseball that is still used to this day. Join us as we dive into this uniquely strange moment in baseball history that had a major impact today on daily sports history. Welcome to Daily sports History. I'm your Ethan Reeves because the only thing I can do when ice skating is fall down. So how does an ice baseball game get put together in the eighteen hundreds, Well, really, it hadn't been around before, or is that go back even further that this was done in Canada for years. It just wasn't organized to the point that this game got organized, but it was still something that had been talked about and done, and owners in baseball at the time were really looking to expand the game make some money, especially in the offseason when you couldn't really make money in baseball. Baseball was played mainly between spring and fall, which was a long time. But winter it's hard to sit dormant and just wait for the season. So Henry Chadwick, a journalist, organized a game in Washington Park in Brooklyn. It was Team eighty four and he wanted to have an ice baseball team to keep the sport alive in winter, give entertainment to fans that they craved in the offseason, as this was the only sport you get to remember, no NFL basketball had not even been invented yet. Hockey was around, but wasn't as popular in the United States, and so baseball was the only sport and so he wanted to keep that action alive and it gave him something he could write about, which was common back then where newspapers were so popular and so big that they basically created events and moments to write stories about. So on January twelfth, he assembled to two teams, one led by Chicago White Sockings pitcher Larry Corcoran, who was a pretty good skater on his own right, and he put together a team of amateurs that could skate pretty good, and they would face off against another team of semi pro and mostly baseball players who they didn't care if they could skate good or not. They just wanted them to be able to play. So they advertised this in the newspaper and let fans know that they were going to have a frozen baseball game. So they chose Washington Park in Brooklyn because they had baseball fields and they normally had ice skating in the winter, so they knew how to do both. And what they did was they flooded the baseball field, basically making its own little rink in the form of a baseball field, because that would be the easiest way to do things. Now, there were some challenges in this. You had the mound. It sticks up, so the mound kind of stayed on its own. The bases you had to take them out and wait and put them on top of the ice after and they marked everything with a reddish line color instead of the normal white to be able to see it better. And they actually changed the ball to a reddish, more spongy like ball to be softer and easier to see. And they set up grandstands around this rink that they created so that fans could come. And so in doing this, they decided they weren't going to play an entire game because it was cold outside. This wasn't playing a ice game like the NHL in an arena where the arena is cooler but it's not cold. This was outside in the elements where it's cold, without any of our fancy jackets that we have today or fancy gear to keep us warm. It was in eighteen eighty four, remember that. So they only played five innings to keep it a game low, and they had ten players an extra player who would be like a short right fielder to help because you couldn't move as well on skates, especially quickly, which baseball is a fast twitch, quick game. You gotta move all of a sudden, which is not something that's very easy to do on skates. And so they also underhand pitched the ball because this was more about hanging in the entertaining aspects of the game. You wanted to see the hits of the skating and all the chaos that ensued, and you didn't really want to see a pitching duel, and that would be hard as well because try throwing a ball very fast on skates. It doesn't work out. They didn't have any gloves, but that was common back then and the one major difference, and this is the crazy thing. This led to a role change in Major League baseball and that is still to this day. They decided that the runners could overrun all the bases first, second, third. They could overrun all of them or overskate all of them as long as they turned to the right, just like today, we overrun first base and turned to the right saying we're going to go back to first. We're not giving ourselves up to go to second. Does this sound familiar because up until this point, we didn't do this in baseball. You stopped on the base you're at. Now. We don't do it for all bases in baseball now, but we do it for first base. It is mainly because of this. Now they did this for necessity, because have you tried to stop on ice skates. It is one of the hardest things to do without tumbling and falling to immediate injury. But this has stuck around. They saw this made an excitement for the play, especially at first base, because you didn't have to slow down at first base and it created a bang bang play which we see today. It is part of the most exciting stuff in baseball, that bang bang infield play to see if the runner can really out that throw from third base, from short stuff from second base. It is a unique experience that in baseball that was changed because of this game. They saw this and they adapted it into baseball at the first base that is still there to this day. So what happened in this actual game that they played, we know a little bit. We don't know everything. There's no breakdown. Again, there was only five innings. But the amateurs are the skaters. The team that was full of skaters instead of actual baseball players came out and dominated. In the first inning, they scored twenty seven runs. Twenty seven. They wanted this to be a short game. Then the skaters were like, nope, it was an inning full of airs and hits. And the pros looked like a bunch of toddlers trying to learn to walk out there on ice, which honestly is about what I would be like to and it was a very hard thing to adapt to. But the skaters adapted easier because they could skate, and they did a lot better throughout the entire game. The game ended up being forty one to the Skaters to the baseball players twelve. Crazy, I know, it is a huge amount in just five innings, and really it seems like it would have been entertaining, and it was entertaining enough that they actually did a rematch, these same two teams, same location, just a few days later. Can you guess what happened the baseball players one? This time it was a much lower scoring game. The baseball players ended up with sixteen points to the Skaters eight. And again it was a big first inning where the baseball players scored twelve that really led to them having success. And this just shows you that having experienced doing this get you much better at the game. The baseball players, who were athletes, could adapt a little bit more, adapt to the playing style. They've done this before, and they did a lot better and they were able to beat the Skaters. Now, they only did these two games, and it wasn't something that was thought to be a huge moment in baseball. It didn't blow down the doors that this was a new sport, we had to have every winner. It was a fun little moment. It was a circus like atmosphere, but it was more goofy fun than actual baseball fund and at the time, goofy fun, like the Savannah Bananos we have today, wasn't as prevalent and fun because it was shortly after the Civil War and we hadn't even had World War One, and it was a very different time, and really we had such baseball purists that wanted it to be played a certain way, and even though it was fun and absurd, it was still too different today. But I would absolutely love to see this, and you can see it every now and then pop up. In twenty nineteen, at the University of Central Michigan, their baseball team took through the field and filmed a practice exhibition on the ice. It was just a fun stunt for the team and to bring notoriety to the school. But it's not something that's well organized like an actual league or anything, and maybe it should be. My question is do you want to see ice baseball? Because I kind of do. I want to thank you for listening to Today's Dating sports History. It means a lot to me that you took time to listen, and if you could take a little bit of time leave us a review or rating. Wherever you're listening, I would be really grateful and we will see you on the next one. The B