I’m going to give local baseball history research another go after a few years hiatus. I had been working on local history stories for a time at southcoasthistory.wordpress.com but that got pushed aside as more important life events presented themselves as they do.

I had let the url scvbb.org go and then had second thoughts about it. It was too late to renew it as someone took it apparently to sell it. Since this is just a hobby I figured I could wait it out. Who else would want scvbb.org? Chances are, nobody. Out of curiosity the other day I checked and found it available.

I have a closet full of research I’ve been hanging on to, considering now and then to get rid of it to make room in a constantly shrinking house. I could never bring myself to do it.

So, I thought I would dig out some articles from the closet to see what I could find.

I came across an article from the New Bedford Republican Standard on July 15, 1869. I found a report of a game between the Acushnet Base Ball Club and the Metacomet Base Ball Club, both of New Bedford. They played the game on the ball grounds of the Wamsutta Base Ball Club with the Metacomet club beating Acushent 21-18.

The box score looks familiar to a modern club at first. There is the last name of each team member in the order they hit followed by the position they played. However, instead of AB, R, H, RBI… etc, we see O and R; Outs and Runs. Pretty typical box score of the time.

Box score Acushent vs. Metacomet. Republican Standard, July 15, 1869

Bowman, the first baseman of the Acushnet club had a bad day. He made seven outs and didn’t score any runs. On the Metacomet club, Caswell the first baseman and Edgerton the shortstop scored four runs each and only made two outs apiece. Just below the line score fly catches are recorded with Edgerton leading both teams with four.

If you think today’s games are long, this game was played in 3 hours, 20 minutes. By comparison, the recent game between the Red Sox and Blue Jays on June 13, 2015 was played in 3 hours and 26 minutes. To be fair, the Acushent and Metacomet teams didn’t wear gloves.

The Metacomet club was a tough club to beat in 1869 as the Republican Standard notes that they had played nine match games at that point, winning all the games. On July 5th, they had beaten the Shamrock club of Fall River scoring 30 runs.

The game against Acushnet seemed to be another win in the books for Metacomet, but on July 22 the Republican Standard reported that the Acushnet club “denies the truth of the report of the game…” The Acushnet club claimed that the “9th innings” was not completed due to darkness. The game was a draw at 18 runs each.

Unfortunately, there was no follow up to this charge published and regular win loss records or standings were not published either. The two clubs were mentioned playing each other again on July 21, with that game resulting in a tie with 19 runs for each club. If they couldn’t be beat at least they could be tied.

On September 6, the two clubs met again and this time it was a close game with Metacomet beating Acushnet 25 to 24. The Republican Standard reported that with the win, the Metacomet Base Ball Club “is entitled to the championship of the junior clubs of they city”.