This past weekend, the Neshanock headed south for a two-day visit to Maryland.  Our objectives were to play competitive baseball and help the Elkton Eclipse celebrate their 500th game.  In the end, we went 1 for 2 which is putting as positive spin as possible on some very negative results on the scoreboard.  First up, on Saturday were two games with the Rising Sun Club.  Flemington went first to the striker's line, tallied twice and held the home team to a single run in their half of the inning.  The Neshanock added another in the top of the second, but that was the hi ..read more

After opening the season in less than ideal weather, there was some understandable concern about the outlook for yesterday's match in Morristown.  The Neshanock were scheduled to play long-time in-state rival, the Hoboken Nine at Fosterfields Living History Farm.  Fortunately, the rain stopped early in the morning and by the time I was approaching Morristown, the sun was starting to break through the clouds, a promising sign if there ever was one.  Such proved to be the case as the sunny and relatively warm conditions brought out a good and attentive crowd who seemed to enjoy ba ..read more

Like many old Brooklyn Dodger fans, I was saddened to learn of the death of Carl Erskine at the age of 97.  Erskine was an important part of the Dodgers' pitching staff in the early 1950s, but by the time I became a fan in 1956, he was past his prime as a player.  In fact, I don't remember him ever pitching in a game I watched on television or listened to on the radio.  Fortunately for me, however, I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview him for "Ebbets Field: Essays and Memories of Brooklyn's Historic Ballpark," a book Paul Zinn and I edited. I had written a le ..read more

Earlier this year, when the Neshanock's schedule was being finalized, Russ McIver, Captain of the Monmouth Furnace Club, asked if Flemington would like to open the season at Allaire State Park on April 6.  Any hesitation on our part had nothing to do with the opponent or the venue.  The Monmouth Furnace Club strives for historical accuracy and always plays the game in a gentlemanly fashion.  And Allaire is not just a good baseball venue, but also a very nice state park.  The concern was early April New Jersey weather which has canceled more games than I care to remember. Ho ..read more

While the World Series is the high point of every baseball season, not even a seventh and deciding contest is the most anticipated game of the year.  That honor belongs to Opening Day – a time of hope for all teams and their fans, no matter how woeful the past or bleak the future.  But the celebration of the new season is usually more important than what happens in the game itself.  It is, after all, just the first of 162 contests and the result typically has little, if any, impact on the season's outcome.  In addition, the players are far from midseason form which, especia ..read more

While the Deadball Era doesn’t lack controversial topics, one issue is beyond debate – major league baseball was the country's most popular sport.  But as we have seen in the last few posts, it was also a sport many people only experienced indirectly.  As a result, the primary way many fans followed their favorite team was through the local newspapers.  Fortunately, big cities didn’t lack daily newspapers and New York City was particularly rich in that regard.  In Manhattan alone, there were plenty of options with at least twelve daily newspapers following the Giants and Ya ..read more

Although gone forever, early twentieth-century baseball fans are with us still, preserved in black and white photos dating back over a hundred years - a cloud of witnesses to the Deadball Era (1901-1919). As captured in these images, they were mostly white, male and neatly dressed – seemingly ready to attend something more formal than a baseball game.  The photos, however, regardless of the quality, don’t tell us much about what it was like to attend a game so many years ago.  Fortunately, however, the Chicago Daily News reporters who put together the “My Biggest Baseball Day” series ..read more

Last fall, the Paterson Museum posted some digitized black and white baseball photos on their Facebook page, accompanied by a request for help with identification.  Identifying old baseball images can be a needle in the haystack type process, but this time, fortuitously, it was relatively simple.  Although it took more than one step, the key clue was the baseball socks worn by an unidentified New York City major league team.   A visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame’s always helpful "Dressed to the Nines" online exhibit revealed that only one New York team wore such socks ..read more

The last of my pandemic writing projects to be published is a "biography" of Ebbets Field which was the leadoff essay in the Society for American Baseball Research's (SABR) book Ebbets Field: Great Historic and Memorable Games From Brooklyn's Lost Ballpark.  It was a privilege and a pleasure to work on this project - by far the biggest challenge was to tell the story in 7000 words.  The essay itself is available at the SABR website ..read more

Tomorrow, legend has it, a groundhog will determine the arrival of spring or at least the timing of more temperate weather. There are, however, less mythic harbingers of spring including signs the new baseball season is drawing near.  Best known are probably the dates later in February, when pitchers and catchers report for spring training.  Further down on the scale, but no less important to those involved, is the publishing of vintage baseball schedules for the upcoming season.  While it wasn't intentional, the Flemington Neshanock are getting a jump on both the groundhogs and ..read more