Lieutenant Edward Pratt helped form the Fort Mackinac Base Ball Club in 1885. Even the officers caught the fever and took an increasing role in supporting the fort team. Over the next two decades base ball grew in popularity across the country and, with liberal amounts of free time and officers who encouraged physical fitness, Fort Mackinac soldiers enthusiastically joined in.īy the mid 1880s baseball was all the rage. The game first appeared on Mackinac Island in 1871 when soldiers from Captain Leslie Smith’s 1 st Regiment of Infantry, many of whom were Civil War veterans, received permission to play the game (“match”) in their spare time. Since then, the recreated Fort Mackinac Never Sweats have played an annual vintage base ball game designed to demonstrate and explain how the “national pastime” was played when soldiers still lived in the fort and base ball fans were known as “cranks.”įirst popular on the East Coast, base ball spread west during the Civil War as Union ball players (“ballists”) shared their favorite game with other soldiers. In 2003, as part of a state-wide “Summer of Sports” event, Mackinac State Historic Parks brought 19th-century style baseball (“base ball”) back to the old field. Since 1934, when Civilian Conservation Corps workers built the nearby scout barracks, boy and girl scout troops from across Michigan have played ball on the same field during the summer months. Local residents and summer workers played baseball at the “fort ball grounds” in the early 20 th century. Fort Mackinac soldiers established the first ball field on this site in the 1870s and continued to develop and improve the field until the fort closed in 1895. But the one constant on that field for nearly a century and a half has been baseball. It has been a drill field for soldiers, a playground for scouts, and a great place to canter a horse. The large, grassy field behind Fort Mackinac has served many purposes since the end of the Civil War. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray.
It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.
America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. The Fort Mackinac Never Sweats and Vintage Base Ball History of Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse.
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