This day in baseball: Baseball on ice

ice

On February 4, 1861, a baseball game was played in ice skates on a frozen Litchfield Pond in South Brooklyn.  As a large crowd looked on, the champion team Atlantics defeated the Charter Oak Club, 36-27.  Each team was permitted to have ten players, with the extra player in the role of backup catcher.  The following day, the Brooklyn Eagle reported: “It will be readily understood that the game when played upon ice with skates is altogether a different sort of affair from that which the Clubs are familiar with.  The most scientific player upon the play ground finds himself out of his reckoning when he has got the runaway skates to depend on, and the best skater is the best player.”

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Morris, Peter.  A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball: the Game on the Field.  Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.