Oddball Heroes Quietly Saving America One 19th-Century Game At A Time

In a small Delaware town, men are playing baseball like it’s 1849

HOBOKEN, UNITED STATES: Members of the Ohio Valley Muffins line up on 19 June in Hoboken, New Jersey, to commemorate 150 years of baseball by reenacting the first game which was played on June 19, 1849 in Hoboken. The Muffins, from Columbus, Ohio, wear replica uniforms of the era and play exhibition games using the New York Rules of Base Ball, written in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright. Richard Schuricht (R), in top hat, plays the part of umpire. STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images)

In a quiet pocket of America, a small group of men preserves the history and legacy of one of our great sports and cultural pastimes: baseball.

Lewes, Delaware, is a sleepy town located on the Delaware Bay just north of the popular beach destination Rehoboth Beach. Over 3,000 people call it home. But it is also home to a baseball league of men in their 20s to 70s who play the game according to 19th-century rules.

It’s not the game we have all come to love. It’s more like stick ball, the way the game was originally played before it grew in popularity in the 20th century and developed modern rules. Fielders don’t use gloves, for example. Pitchers throw underhand. Batters are “strikers” and strictly use wooden bats. Foul balls are not strikes. Umpires do not even call balls or strikes unless a batter is not swinging at a hittable pitch.

“It’s definitely baseball. It moves faster. It’s just a bat and ball. You just get out there and play,” Mike DiPaolo, president of the Lewes Base Ball Club, told a local outlet. DiPaolo’s team played games against the Rising Sun Base Ball Club and the Elkton Eclipse Base Ball Club in August.

“I want to say it’s pure, but that sounds corny. It looks so deceptively simple,” he said.

Not only do they play by 19th-century rules, but they also dress like 19th-century players. The uniforms are baggy, with pants held up with leather belts. The caps have short, stubby brims. They all look a bit dorky, but it’s a charming dorkiness. It fills you with nostalgia.

These players are not just eccentric hobbyists. They are having fun, of course, but they are doing something incredibly important. Like historians, they are preserving the legacy of baseball, its rich history in the Maryland and Delaware region, and a bygone era when nearly every town had a baseball club and competed against each other.

The world today feels endlessly churning. The internet, social media, AI videos, entertainment, online sports gambling, prediction markets — all of these things make it seem as if we live in Year Zero. The eternal present. We are so bombarded with information, so glued to our screens at virtually all hours of the day, that we rarely take time even to acknowledge the past, let alone study it deeply. We don’t just forget the history we learned in school; we forget that there even is history.