Opening Day

Baseball's back, soon teams from MLB to tee ball leagues all across the fruited plain will resume play. The dreary harshness of winter slowly recedes as the color and hope of spring rushes in. 

On this day, the fans of any club can squint and see a pennant winner. Now, only a favored few will win, but that doesn't matter this day, that's in the future. The hope is in the here and now.

This hope is marinated in the history of 150 summers, of clubs and players who built the foundation of the game we love today. While we don't know how the journey of the season will evolve, we do know from our past that drama, pathos, humor, joy, defeat, and triumph await us.

There are myriad possibilities for the fan, the truths of the season, whether they're happy or sad, aren't facing us yet. Anything is possible.

This is Opening Day, it is hope, it is what we who love the game need. It's the child-like love that draws us to the game and gives us that sense of magic. The realities and cynicism of the season aren't here yet. So let us all enjoy this day.

We get one a year, don't waste it!

Striking the Gong

Hello, my name is Jerry Sudduth and welcome to my blog, The Faded Chalklines. The goal of my blog is to introduce the 21st Century to baseball (or base ball in the parlance of the era) as played in from its beginings to the "Live Ball" era starting in 1920.

From book reviews, era newspaper articles, discussions of vintage base ball (i.e., baseball's version of Civil War reenacting) I hope to bring to life an era that's long past, and whose memories faded away like the chalk that denoted the baselines of those long past contests.

While my blog is firmly rooted in the past, do not think this is a blog that denigrates the present. Far from it, I see a lot of historic baseball groups on Facebook and elsewhere overindulge in nostalgia to the point where anything that occurred after an arbitrary time is automatically discarded as less than what came before. I disagree with these tenets and I also think the study of history isn't glorifying the past at the expense of the present, but how the past shaped the present.

There is a veritable treasure trove of information available on baseball's history, I hope to sift through that and present it to you here on this blog. I hope what you read here whets your appetite to want to discover more, whether it's through books, archival materials, or checking out a vintage base ball game.

In the early years of the game, some clubs used a gong or a bell to denote the beginning of the match. This entry is that gong, the batter's making his way to the plate, and the pitcher's waiting. Welcome, my friends, to The Faded Chalklines.