The Cleveland Blues Base Ball Club

First Match: Saturday, May 14 vs Spring Creek and Akron Blackstockings

Vintage Base Ball Assocation

The mission and purpose of the Vintage Base Ball Association shall be to preserve, perpetuate, and promote the game of base ball as it was played during its formative years in the nineteenth century and other historic eras.

In order to achieve its goals and sustain the traditions and values which it seeks to honor and emulate, the Association and all of its members will conduct all matches, meetings, and other activities--both on and off the field--according to the highest standards of sportsmanship, gentlemanly behavior, courtesy, and respect for others which characterized the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, established, September 23, 1845.

Baseball History Museum

530 Euclid Ave.

Cleveland, Ohio

19c Base Ball

A comprehensive website dedicated to the game of Base Ball in the 19th century. The website goes through this colorful history in detail. It also has an entire library of vintage base ball photos, magazine ads, equipment pictures, etc. The site also sells some equipment, offers a forum and in general is one heck of a resource.

Baseball on the Western Reserve : The Early Game in Clevland and Northeast Ohio Year by Year and Town by Town 1865 - 1900

Cleveland and the surrounding area was home to one of the earliest and most active baseball scenes outside of the eastern seaboard. This extraordinarily detailed history combines author commentary with first-hand accounts to document baseball’s rapid development and popularization in the region during the decades following the Civil War. Ordered chronologically and then geographically by town, chapters follow the game’s rise from the earliest reports on ball in 1841, to the era of loosely organized, town-to-town rivalries and semipro clubs, and finally through the early era of the professional, and eventually major league, sport.

Much thanks to Jim Egan, author of Base Ball on the Western Reserve for all of his assistance in starting up our Club Nine!

Save the Cleveland Mounted Police

But Didn't We Have Fun?

But Didn't We Have Fun? will make you rethink baseball's origins. Weaving together long-forgotten documents, Peter Morris retrieves a lost era and a lost way of life. His story begins with a generation of mid-nineteenth-century Americans who moved from the countryside to the cities and brought a delightfully informal game with them. The members of groundbreaking clubs like the Knickerbockers of New York are rescued from the dusty pages of history books and emerge as real men. We share their exultant pride as baseball spreads and earns its status as the national pastime-and we also share their deep dismay as their game is transformed by professionalism and other growing pains.