From Florissant to Chicago - A Pickup Game. - The Corkball Network
I moved to Chicago in 2000 after college at MIZZOU and Webster U. Went to St. Thomas Aquinas-Mercy High. Growing up in Florissant there was a corkball cage on the Knights of Columbus grounds near the Old St. Ferdinand Church, and another cage over at BJ's Pizza in the parking lot. They're both gone now. But I can remember as a little kid, night games and the hiss of the pitch and crash against the back of the fence in those claustrophobic ball fields. The game was half Baseball, half Thunder Dome. Suddenly it just went away. The cages were torn down or turned into storage. Vintage Baseball's, St. Louis Unions, play some games up near Old St. Ferdinand now.
At home, there was always a corkball someplace layin around. A dark weathered golfball sized baseball. I can remember my two brothers or any number of cousins were using a Souvenier Bat from Busch Stadium in some kind of ball game. Corkball, bottle caps, rocks. It didn't matter. While in Boy Scouts we'd find a branch and toss rocks from the river bed down at Beaumont or S-F. We all Caddied out at Westwood Country Club. There was a window sill we'd play a kind of pitching game that used baseball rules. But most of the time we played regular old baseball when we could. My brother Zach and I were catchers so we had the equipment. And we played in some kind of CYC up untill I left for College and Zach joined the Navy. When we didn't have enough people, we'd play what we called at that time, "Indian-Ball" or Fast-Pitch at Family Picnics.
At times, as if seasonal, the neighborhood was all about backyard wiffle ball. Our yard had a big school field behind it and my brother Marc crafted out a wiffle ball ball field by mowing base paths in the grass, and precisely marking the boundaries of play. Over the power line is a home run but still in play when over the fence. Even had a large wooden sign with the name of his home-made Elysian Fields, "Kick-A-Stick Park." There'd be some kind of baseball related game each week. The games would just morph from week to week as if we'd either forget a little something or invent a little more to it.
Some of our neighbors that lived across the field, who were of an older crowd than us Schneider brothers and friends, could be seen playing a sort of combination of Fuzzball and HotBox. Might have been cricket for all I know. It would not be the same Fuzzball that the brothers and our crew would later play at at Koch Park. We cornered our ball field against some trees in between condos and the racketball courts, while meanwhile surrounded by open baseball diamonds where we had played just 4 years earlier. Our games still had to have a little base running. You had to run to first. There was no second or third. That was handled by ghost runners. But I guess we still wanted to put some pressure on the fielder to make a play at first. We were after all, Cardinal Fans, and everyone wanted to be Ozzie Smith. But ya can't be Ozzie Smith if ya ain't got no first base to make a play at. Besides those games, most of us were in some sorta CYC league up into College. My old man was a baseball coach and is a Councilman up there in Florissant. One day they got the Koch Park Field Number One turned over to Baseball after years of being just a softball field. It was big deal for that little municipality on account it had the best lighting of all the Parks and had a prominent location. Nothing against softball, it's just they wanted thier best field to be for baseball in the summer. (It's a soccer field in the fall.)
CHICAGO - After I arrived in Chicago I worked a job in Rothsburry Michigan on a Vacation Horse Ranch for a summer. They were playing regular softball games, but it didn't take long before we were playing corkball rules. It wasn't till the next year that I was introduced to 16 inch Softball - Chicago's ancient baseball cousin born in legend by a boxing glove being playfully batted around by the Football Teams of Yale and Harvard who were passing time during the days leading up to a football match in the late 1800's. It supposedly didn't take long before someone stitched out a ball and people were forming leagues. The ball is huge and not unlike the consistancy of a vintage baseball, for it does bounce, and does over time get soft. You play without gloves, unless you are a woman, then you may use a glove, and hence will most likely be playing first base to catch the hardy put-out attempts by infielders. There is no shortage of jammed fingers and sore palms. Ten players cover the field, and games are social and competetive.
Around 2003 2004 over the course of a handful of trips to St. Louis, I brought some corkballs and a bat up to Chicago. I was doing improv. Lot of Sports fans around the improv scene. The iO Theater is a only a line drive from Wrigley Field at Clark and Addison. The lights and concrete and ballpark sounds are all right there on night games. The alley is mostly used by improv teams to huddle up before a show, but sometimes someone would have a wiffle ball and bat. Or a wad of duck tape and a broken mop handle. Or maybe T.J. knew of some lights they forget to turn off on the ball fields down by North and Michigan, near Second City. And maybe he had a couple extra gloves and a baseball bat and a handful of new Rawlings and cab fare. So after whiskies and Old Styles there'd be a claustrophobic taxi cab ride at 1 am and another dustier one three hours later.
A few years ago Corkball started getting some more interest. Improv is a big community. The catcher position never caught on for some reason. We started using chairs or bags as a target for the strike zone. Pickup games would happen whenever with who ever was around. The early ballers were usually Dan Antonucci and Eric Rutherford. Dunbar and Kaminski. BJ and TJ. Beau, Bungeroth, Boehlor, Mr. Wild, BIlly P, were just a few around for regular baseball hit arounds that would sometimes see a Corkball game later in the day. I'm sure I'm forgettin a bunch of names... We'd move around a bit too. Seminary and School. Welles Park at Lincoln and Montrose. More often and more recently the game meets on the Softball Fields of Addison and Lakeshore near Waveland Golf Course. We'd set up a chair for a catcher. Out of bounds is outside the regular foul lines. A hit inside the dirt is a single. A hit outside the dirt and for like 50 feet or so more is a double. Past that another 50 or so is a triple (marked by 16 inch softballs or backpacks), and then if it's just like, gone, it's a home run. Regulars are usually a handful of local improvisers who aren't playing the Chicago 16" Softball. A game happens when the emails go out to see when people can meet up.
I spent the summer of 2005 in St. Louis working at Florissant Golf Course. Me and old friend, Matt McGaughey who lives in downtown St. Louis would play some two man corkball on weekends and sometimes after work. We mostly played right across the street from the City Museum. But we spent alot of afternoons on the Tower Grove fields. We also played once in a while at Lafayette Park, and we made it a point to play at Jefferson Barracks at least once.
A year later back in Chicago, some guys were playing a form of Fuzzball in a school yard where they'd move base runners along according to where the ball hit on a three story building. Over the roof home run sorta thing. (Does the Blue Monster Grounds have similar rules?) The new crew was usually headed up by Seth, Mark, and Barry. The Corkballs and the bats would come along just to have around.
In 2007 I had a job on the Norwegian Star and got a weekly corkball game going in Skagway Alaska on Wednesdays. We'd either play at the ballfield on the other side of town or just in the hob nob patch of open field in front of the Ships surrounded by mountains and wandering tourists. Sometimes a ball would end up in in the stream and you'd have to run and snag it out of the current, which by late July was chuck full of Salmon. Sometimes one of the Tourists would come over, and after many a gesture of curiosity, decide to give a swing on a pitch. The people that mostly played worked on the ship and were from all over. Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia, South America, Canada. The Brits and the Middle Easterners were really good at tossin the ball like a Cricket Bowler (pitcher). You just had to get outah the way on those sometimes. Sometimes instead of a catcher we'd set up some kind of square made of cardboard or cloth and tape it to poles as a strike zone.
Last year I was on a different ship. This time Baseball, or anything like it, was just not happening except for Jim Morgan and Johny Miller on Baseball Tonight at 1 am Mondays. But back in Chicago a Mr. Tim Balz, who is as formidabale a batter as he is proficient an improviser, went looking for Corkball. He found it. He also found Markwort and soon had the gear and the game up and going again. I just saw the video they made on the Big Ten Netwok. (Nice Chair.) Last time I talked to Tim there was some interest again in catchers. Stumbling across the Corkball Network was refreshing to say the least. Kopper has done a big league job on behalf of St. Louis's little classic. I would be curious to meet other corkball players in the Chicago area. Some of our Chicago guys mentioned interest in coming to STL for "the tournament" in the fall. It sounds fun as all get out anyway. Right now we don't have a name. We don't have a roster or a consistent schedule. The games happen when they happen. We have a pick up game this coming Friday.
jtss
