The sounds of base ball resonate across McDonald Farm in Sale Creek as the Lightfoot Club takes on the Mountain City Club under a cloudless sky.
There’s the crack of a bat slapping a ball over the left fielder’s head. The approving cheers of the crowd. The “YOWCH!” as the third baseman stops a line drive with his bare hands.
Wait. What?
Third basemen don’t catch line drives with their bare hands – at least if they can help it. Did the infielder use the wrong hand? Did he drop his glove? Or, worse, did he forget the rules of the game?
The answer to each question is “no” because the sore-handed fielder isn’t playing by the rules of baseball as people today know the game. Rather, he and everyone else on the field are athletes of the Tennessee Association of Vintage Base Ball (TAVBB) – and they’re playing ball like it’s 1864.
Yes, 1864, when “ballers” didn’t wear a glove. Hence, the occasional “YOWCH!” when a bare-handed fielder stops a line drive or a fast grounder. More often than not, however, a player will let the ground absorb the lion’s share of the ball’s energy and catch it on the first bounce – which in 1864 counted as an out. Or, rather, a dead hand.
“Yeah, there’s a lot to explain when introducing someone to vintage base ball,” says John Hickson of the Mountain City Club of Chattanooga, who goes by “Mayor” on the field. “We play by 1864 rules primarily because we play the bounce. When a batter hits the ball, if the fielder catches it after one bounce, the batter is out.”
Baseball did away with the bounce in the 1870s, paving the way for a slew of other changes in the decades that followed. But TAVBB flips back the calendar to a time well before America’s favorite pastime had been around long enough to become a pastime.
Evidence that TAVBB isn’t your grandfather’s baseball (it was likely your grandfather’s baseball “base ball”) is everywhere. For starters, the game looks different, starting with the uniforms.
Mookie Betts of the Dodgers might be setting the modern standard for how to look great on and off the diamond, but when it comes to replicating the look of vintage ball, the players of the Lightfoot and Mountain City clubs are the bee’s knees.
The Mayor, for example, is rounding the bases (or “sacks” in vintage base ball terminology) with a pea green shirt, brown pants and greener socks. He’s fastened the plackets of his shirt together with string instead of buttons and his pants yield to his socks at his knees. A vintage ball cap completes his no-frills ensemble.
Meanwhile, his opponents are donned in blue and red-ringed pillbox hats, blue-and-white checkered shirts and pants that match the sky above. Red neckties on each player give the Lightfoot Club’s uniforms a jaunty note, as though its infielders are scheduled to perform a barbershop quartet medley during the seventh inning stretch.
“We try to use the kinds of fabrics they used back then,” Hixson explains. “My shirt is made from a canvas material. It’s really hot in the summer, but we try to stick to clothes that have a vintage look.”
Spectators (or “cranks,” as they’re called in the world of vintage ball) who look closer might note differences in the gear as well. Instead of a small knob of wood at the bottom of the bats, for example, one might see a rounded end the size of a baseball.
Some vintage athletes bring their own period-authentic add-ons to the game. Heath “Hi” Ferris, 53, is all business as he leads the enrollment division at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee during the week, but he sheds his professional persona on the field, where he displays a short handlebar moustache that he grows specifically for ball season.
“My wife isn’t the biggest fan of the mustache, but she tolerates it during the season, which is nice,” he says.
A player named “Preach” – who, coincidentally, is an actual preacher – swings a personalized bat complete with his nickname and the iconic fish that symbolizes his Christian faith emblazoned on the business end.
The starkest difference between vintage and modern baseball, however, is the lack of umpires. Instead, historic games rely on the computational skills of an arbiter, who keeps score and counts dead hands but otherwise leaves the players to their own devices.
This works, says Tim “Meadow Muffin” Eversole of the Lightfoot Club, because vintage ball is a kinder, gentler sport.
“There’s no swearing, and there’s no arguing with the umpire,” Eversole says. “You have to conduct yourself like a gentleman.”
This conviviality extends to the game play. “Hurlers,” for example, don’t try to throw strikes, but rather strive to deliver hittable balls, and both teams will confer to decide the outcome of a play, such as whether or not a player is safe.
“We’re not trying to win at any cost,” Eversole continues. “We’re here to have fun.”
The only thing that smacks of modern smack talk is the playful jibe, “Wrong sider!” which announces the arrival of a left-handed batter at the plate. Other than that, players from both benches can be heard encouraging a rookie batter who’s having trouble connecting with the ball, for instance, or celebrating a good play with throaty shouts of “Hip hip huzzah!”
As the Lightfoot and Mountain City clubs face off at McDonald Farm, a chorus of huzzahs rises from the benches as a batter smacks a high-arcing hit past a distant line of fence posts. The fielder inspires a second round of exclamations as he dodges a post, improbably catches up to the ball after it’s sailed over his head and snatches it for an out as it bounces away from him.
When lifted out of the 19th century and placed on an empty field in 2025, the rules of 1864 base ball do more than offer a throwback to a simpler time, they also level the playing field, allowing players from ages 18 to 80 to compete together.
The result is a mix of humanity that’s as diverse as the foliage on the mountains that border Sale Creek. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, firefighters, pest exterminators and more have gathered together to do one thing – play ball.
TAVBB does make a few modern concessions in the name of safety. Players can apply tar to the handle of their bat to prevent it from flying out of their hands and hitting a spectator, for example, and participants may wear cleats, which 1864 ballers did not.
But other than, vintage ball looks, sounds and plays likes a different animal, even as it reveals that the heart of the sports fans know and love today was there from the beginning.
A brief history lesson
TAVBB formed as a 501(c)(3) in 2012 as historic base ball rose in popularity across the U.S. following the launch of the Vintage Base Ball Association in 1996. The Nashville Maroons and the Franklin Farriers were the first teams to take the field in the Volunteer State.
In 2014, TAVBB held a Father’s Day exhibition game at Engel Stadium in Chattanooga. Ferris was there, as was Hixson, and both say the event sparked local interest in the sport. Before long, the Scenic City was home to a pair of vintage base ball teams. The Chattanooga Grasshoppers made it a threesome earlier this year.
Hixson, who’s serving a two-year term as commissioner of the state organization, says each team is named after a squad that existed during the era of vintage ball.
“You can read in the newspapers (that were published in Chattanooga in 1867) that the Mountain City Club was practicing across the street from the Crutchfield House when it caught fire, and that its players ran over to save the patrons and their valuables.”
Despite TAVBB’s deep nods to history, it does not perform re-enactments of a bygone era; rather, the competition on the field is genuine.
“We’re living history,” Hixson clarifies. “When we start a game, we don’t know who’s going to win. The hits and runs will determine that.”
TAVBB currently consist of 11 teams that play a full season between April and September. At the end of each season, the organization hosts a tournament dubbed the Sulpher Dell Cup. Hixson says the prize is a “thrifted” trophy.
“It’s an old trophy from the seventies that somebody awarded for signing the most loans at a bank.”
Most local games take place at the Fort Oglethorpe Welcome Center, with two of the Chattanooga teams playing one other or one of the local teams taking on a squad from elsewhere in the state.
The public is welcome to attend matches at no cost.
“We encourage people to bring a chair and a snack,” Hixson says. “Anyone who loves baseball would love to watch our games because the heart of the sport is there. Everybody has three outs and we play nine innings, but more importantly, everyone has a good time.”
Even when they stop a line drive with their bare hands.
View local game times at tennesseevintagebaseball.com.