Ever Heard Of Indoor Baseball?

Ever Heard Of Indoor Baseball?

1905 Game of Indoor Baseball in a Gymnasium Somewhere in Chicago

Most sports fans have probably never heard of indoor baseball. It was said to have developed around 1887-1888 and quickly became all the rage in northern U.S. cities that had cold winters where the athletic-minded had little to do.

Indoor baseball was especially popular in Chicago and soon many local high schools and colleges formed teams. There were also independent leagues as well most usually sponsored by a company or factory as an after-hours or Saturday social event for their male employees.

Remember, this was in an era before the invention of basketball which did not appear until 1891. Volleyball came next in 1895. The rules of modern-day bowling were codified in the same year but bowling alleys in their non-automated form did not catch on immediately either. Realistically, the only other playable sports inside were primarily fencing, archery and gymnastics.

Gymnasiums as we now know them were crude in those days. Most indoor baseball was played in gathering halls that normally housed church, fraternal or union activities.

The basic rules of indoor baseball were sketchy at first though they loosely resembled those of the outdoor game. The equipment consisted of a soft 17-inch ball and wooden stickball bat with a dimensional width of only 1 ¾”. There were no gloves. Bases were 27 feet apart instead of 90. At times the outfield could be reduced from three players to one player. As one might imagine the indoor “field” had very little consistency from one location to the next so additional individual rules and allowances were commonplace though the venue supposedly had to be at least 50 feet in size.

As the years progressed an indoor baseball national association was established and a number of annual guides were published by Spalding Sporting Goods which further helped formalize play.

Eventual Major League baseball players, She Donahue, Tim Jordan and Al Baschang played indoor baseball. Baschang who was the most noteworthy of these players was on the Queens City Indoor League for a short while before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers and Detroit Tigers.

By 1910 indoor baseball fell into disfavor with the rise in basketball as the more popular alternative activity. However, it is said that indoor baseball actually was the model for the game of softball which of course exists to this day.

There was little mention of indoor baseball after 1920 but it had one last hurrah (almost). In 1939, the National Professional Indoor Baseball League was formed with retired baseball great Tris Speaker appointed as its President-Commissioner. Other former baseball players such as Gabby Street, Bill Wambsganss, Bubbles Hargrave and Harry Davis became managers.

Rules were similar to the outdoor game though basepaths were only 60 feet. The ball was different as well, as it had a larger 12 inch circumference.

The league had teams in the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis. An actual 102 game schedule was drawn-up for the months of November to March (or realistically the off-season of Major League Baseball) with a World Series culmination of sorts at the end.

Unfortunately, fan attendance was dismal. The league only lasted a few days past one month with the Chicago team never actually playing one game!