Corkball: The Sport That Time Forgot

An intro from Wikipedia:

Corkball is a "mini-baseball" game featuring a 1.6-ounce (45 g) ball, which is stitched and resembles a baseball. The bat has a barrel that measures 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) in diameter. Originally played on the streets and alleys of St. Louis, Missouri as early as 1890, today the game has leagues formed around the country as a result of St. Louis servicemen introducing the game to their buddies during World War II and the Korean conflict. It has many of the features of baseball, yet can be played in a very small area because there is no base-running.

We used to play corkball on our not-very-busy neighborhood street when I was a kid in suburban St. Louis. The "no base-running" part can be a godsend in the often stifling summer heat there. Still, it's a fast-paced game:

Games are extremely competitive, with batters relying on keen eyesight and quick reflexes to hit a tiny ball thrown across home plate from 55 feet. Bats are 34 to 38 inches and only 1 1/2 inches wide. The corkballs are two inches in diameter and weigh 1.6 ounces.

Pitchers are allowed to throw spitballs, along with the traditional repertoire of fastballs, curveballs, changeups, knuckleballs and sliders. Hitting in corkball is no easy matter.

Hitters are allowed one swinging strike. Two called strikes constitute an out. Five called balls is a walk. Like baseball, there are three outs per inning. Unlike baseball, bases are not needed as there are no base runners. Positions of players along the bases is kept on paper.

It's like hitting a baseball the size of a golf ball with a broom stick. Anyway, it seems like St. Louis has quite the knack for inventing odd bat-and-ball games:

Indian ball is just one of the peculiar games that have made St. Louis the center of the odd-ball universe. Or as Esquire magazine noted, "St. Louis has been giddily creative in constructing games around the concept of hitting a thrown object with a bat."

The best known and oldest is the hardball variation called corkball, a game so St. Louis that it gave the city a curious reputation during World War II when local corkballers played the game on the decks of aircraft carriers or on military parade grounds. Back then, homegrown corkball was played in "cages, " most of them attached to the side of a tavern.

Other local variations are fuzz-ball, featuring a singed tennis ball that moves like a sphere possessed, and perhaps the oddest game of all, a batter-pitcher diversion called crowns or caps. In this game, usually played against the exterior wall of a saloon, the batter uses a broomstick and tries to hit a beer-bottle cap that is hurled with a vengeance, bobbing about like a crazed dragonfly.

These distinctly St. Louis games have one thing in common - kegs of beer, taverns and buckets of chili.

You can still buy corkball equipment today. From the aforementioned Esquire magazine article:

IN THE OLD DAYS, Herb Markwort used to be a hot tennis player in the parks on the city's south side. He couldn't afford to have his racket restrung, however, so he learned to do it himself. Gradually, word got around to the other players, and Herb began to make a living for himself stringing tennis rackets on his back porch. From this came the Markwort Sporting Goods Company, tucked into an old factory-warehouse district just off the interstate. Today, it is the country's--nay, the world's--leading supplier of corkball equipment.

"The cork from the barrels is what they started using in the taverns, and outside the taverns later on," explains Herb Markwort Jr., the founder's son. "Then they started putting tape around it to get it more spherical, and then some of the guys decided, Well, let's just start making little baseballs, then. So some of them were actually made in homes here in St. Louis." A man named Bill Pleitner is credited with making the first corkball with a proper cover on it, in 1936, and he kept on making them until he retired in 1995. Some leagues--most notably the South St. Louis League--refused to play with anything except a Pleitner ball.

For a while, the Rawlings Sporting Goods Company sold corkballs, most of which were made by hand in St. Louis. The Markwort company would buy its corkballs from Rawlings. In the 1960s, however, Rawlings moved out of the corkball market and the Markworts began having their own corkballs manufactured--first in Haiti and, later, in China. Today, the company markets corkballs and bats with an eye toward the nostalgic haze that surrounds everything remotely connected to baseball. Each corkball comes in a box with Smithsonian lettering that seems taken directly out of Chris Von der Ahe's saloon.

You can find the Markwort Sporting Goods Company on the web, but since they don't sell to the public you'll need to go here to buy yourself a corkball.

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Thanks for posting! If you (or anyone else reading this) would like to learn more about corkball, please visit PlayCorkball.com.

Cheers!