Since the Club was reinvigorated in 2017, the M.A.C. has certainly lived up to it's alias, "Mountain Tourists" - a name it garnered from scribes back in the late 1890's when it was customary for the team to travel in Julius Fleischmann's luxurious Pullman rail car. Indeed, 2023 was a year with plenty of travel (using faster and more dull means of transport). Finishing with a record of 17 wins and 9 defeats, it was the most games played in a season by the M.A.C. since the original team folded in the mid-nineteen aughts. As we look back on a prolific year, we're reminded that it's all for the l ..read more

Through connections made in a town history group on social media, a legendary photograph of the Fleischmanns Mountain Athletic Club (M.A.C.) from the late 1890’s has returned home. In July 1963, the centennial edition of the Catskill Mountain News (CMN) ran a picture of the famous local baseball team claiming to be from 1895 and featuring Honus Wagner – regarded by many to be the greatest shortstop ever and a member of the first class inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. Even Harry M. Stevens, the famous concessionaire from Niles, Ohio credited with inventing the drinking straw, the ..read more

June 8, 2020 As I sit down to write this post, it only now occurs to me that last year, on this very day - rather serendipitous and coincidentally also Julius Fleischmann's birthday (June 8, 1871) - the Mountain Athletic Club reincarnate held an 1895 rules match with the Bovina Dairymen at the M.A.C. Grounds in Fleischmann Park to celebrate Founders' Day. The ball game was the backdrop for a 150th Anniversary party for the founding of the Gaff, Fleischmann & Company in Cincinnati in 1868 by Julius' father Charles. The tab was generously paid in full by the AB Mauri Corporation - present d ..read more

(This post was updated on August 5, 2020.) The Hon. Julius Fleischmann's "tally-ho" to meet the Governor at the Margaretville Fair, Wagner Cottage burns down and the M.A.C. host the semi-professional Brooklyn Field Club. For a budding baseball researcher, having old newspapers available for online scouring is just about the best thing you can get out of the internet. Doing a quick search at nyshistoricnewspapers.org, I found a treasure trove of items related to the Mountain Athletic Club from the pages of the Catskill Mountain News. The CMN survived for 118 years (1902 - 2020) as the preeminen ..read more

Born June 12, 1879 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Red Dooin played along side fellow Cincinnatians, Miller Huggins and George "Whitey" Rohe on the Mountain Athletic Club when Julius Fleischmann bought a local semi-pro team called Spinney's Specials and moved them to the Catskills in 1900. Despite a small build of 5'6" and weighing shy of 150-pounds, Dooin was scrappy, tough and durable. In a sixteen year career with Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and the New York Giants he appeared in 1,290 games. He held a Phillies franchise record for 1,124 games caught between 1902-1914 that stood for 91 yea ..read more

Yesterday, in Mountain Athletic Club history, Miller James Huggins - among the best second basemen of the dead-ball era and one of the smallest big leaguers of all time (5' 1" or 5'2" and 125 lbs) - was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1878. Hug had a solid thirteen year career with the Reds and St. Louis Cardinals, but is best remembered with plaques in Cooperstown (inducted to the Hall of Fame in 1964) and Yankee Stadium's Monument Park for his managerial career. Huggins led the Yankees' "murderer's row" teams of Ruth and Gehrig to three World Series titles in 1923, 1927, 1928. Huggins joined th ..read more

Yesterday, (April 9) in Mountain Athletic Club history, a crafty lefty named Guy Harris "Doc" White (shown top row with collar up, and "Mountain" emblazoned across the chest) was born in Washington D.C. in 1879. Just like his teammates Red Dooin and Miller Huggins on the "crack" Mountain Athletic Club of 1900, Doc would go on to become a star of dead-ball era baseball and among the finest pitchers in baseball during the first decade of the twentieth-century while pitching for the Chicago White Sox of the newly formed American League. Doc stayed close to home for college and joined the Georget ..read more

(This post is an update of an original blog that appeared on 2/8/20). James Wear "Bug" Holliday was born on February 8, 1867 in St. Louis, MO. Holliday was the first player to make his major league debut in a post season game when he appeared with the Chicago White Stocking in the 1885 World Series. Over a ten year career in the majors, he batted .312. In his rookie year of 1889, he led the National League in home runs with 19 and then led the league again with 13 round-trippers in 1892, both while a member of the Cincinnati Reds. In 1899, a year after Bug left pro ball, he played for the M.A ..read more

Recounting the M.A.C.'s most prolific season to date While its looking like March will roar into the Catskills like a lion this year, I, myself am looking ahead to the smell of green grass and sound of bat on ball. I've been meaning to write up this recap of the '22 campaign as it was our most prolific season to date. And that's saying a lot, because I thought we couldn't top '21! Hope you all enjoy a look back at some highlights from last season as we look forward to the next that starts at Doubleday Field in just about two months! APRIL When your only homerun in 2021 came from the bat of a ..read more

Re-creations of the early game are common in the Midwest. There are several dozen clubs throughout the rust belt playing almost exclusively by 1860's rules, or as we call it, "the underhand game." However, when Jim Willison, captain of the Oaks of Locust Corner - an 1860's vintage team from the Cincinnati area - announced that they would host a National Showcase of Vintage Base Ball in Batavia, Ohio (spitting distance from Cincinnati, where our founder Julius Flesichmann was Mayor and his father co-founded the Gaff & Fleichmann Co. in 1868), I believe we were the first club to sign up. Se ..read more