By Mike Morsch, Packet Media Group
Nicknames have always been a part of baseball. Joe Dimaggio was called “The Yankee Clipper,” Ted Williams was known as “The Splendid Splinter” and Willie Mays was “The Say Hey Kid.”
Those Hall of Fame players earned those nicknames through a variety of ways, normally by their performances, but sometimes through physical shortcomings, speech patterns, ethnicity, geography or any number of other ways.
Just ask Ken Mandel. He earned his nickname on the base paths.
Mr. Mandel is a member of the Flemington Neshanock Base Ball Club, a local group of vintage diamondmen who get together on weekends and holidays and play by 19th Century rules, more specifically how baseball was played in 1864, without ballgloves.
Everybody on the Neshanock club has a nickname, according to the team’s manager, Brad “Brooklyn” Shaw, who hails — go figure — from Brooklyn, N.Y.So when Mr. Mandel, a writer who has covered the Philadelphia Phillies and Trenton Thunder, joined the club, he wanted to be called “Scoops.” Initially, that was OK with Mr. Shaw and the rest of the players.
“Did everybody have a nickname in 1864? No, it was something you earned,” said Mr. Shaw. “But everybody on this team has a nickname because it’s fun.”
Once Mr. Mandel started playing regularly for Neshanock, though, his teammates noticed a unique and consistent quality in his baserunning that suggested the nickname “Scoops” wasn’t going to stick.
“He had a penchant for sort of stumbling when he was running the bases, especially from first to second. He would actually stumble for whatever reason. I think it was just him getting used to running in the old-time baggy pants,” said Mr. Shaw.
So he’s now called Ken “Tumbles” Mandel. That’s how it goes sometimes with baseball nicknames, kind of in the spirit of “Old Aches and Pains” Luke Appling, Lou “Old Shufflefoot” Boudreau and “The Fordham Flash” Frankie Frisch.Those who’d like to get an up-close look at how baseball was played back in the day — and root for guys with nicknames like “Irish,” “Midnight,” “Gaslight” and “Thumbs” — can do so at the Historical Society of Princeton’s annual vintage baseball event at noon on Saturday, June 27, at the Princeton High School junior varsity baseball field next to 25 Valley Road in Princeton. Admission is free.
The Flemington Neshanock will take on the Bog Iron Boys in a competitive game of bare-handed baseball, wearing period uniforms and using the rules from 1864.
It will be a rematch between the two teams this season. Neshanock thumped the Bog Iron Boys the first time, 20-4.
The event will also include a short lesson on the history of the game and a recitation of “Casey at the Bat,” a baseball poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. After the game, spectators will have a chance to take batting practice using the replica equipment.
The Flemington Neshanock is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that informs the general public about the roots of he National Pastime.
And it has quite a long history. According to the group’s website, the original Flemington Neshanock were first established in July 1866 and were made up of prominent townspeople. The president of the ball club was George F. Crater, owner of Crater’s Hotel, which was located on the spot that is now the Union Hotel. Other notable members of the team included E. Vosseller (vice president and shortstop), R.S. Kuhn (captain) and E. Page Southwick (secretary and catcher).
Apparently, though, Neshanock wasn’t a very good team. It often lost to its chief rival, the Lambertville Logan, by the lopsided scores of 77-25 and 71-47. No records can be found for the team after August 1867.
Today’s Neshanock team was re-established in 2001 by Mr. Shaw. And this time around, the team is more competitive.
“It’s a pure form of the game. It’s people who are looking for something different. And it beats playing softball,” said Mr. Shaw. “This way you get a chance to not only go out and play baseball, because they are competitive games, but you’re also doing some living history. Besides, where can you dress up in an old-time uniform and play in an event every single week and have people watching you and cheering for you?”
Neshanock plays between 40 and 50 games a summer and has a roster of 16 players, ranging in age from 16 to 68.
“The attraction is that we’re able to play ball every week, we dress in strange uniforms and play strange rules. It’s playing quirky baseball. You can play in adult baseball leagues and softball leagues and its basically the same thing all the time. This is a little different,” said Mr. Shaw, who added that one of the quirkiest rules from 1864 is that a fielder can catch a ball on one bounce and have it still be recorded as an out.
“Also there are plenty of guys on my team who are history buffs. It’s great to mix history in with baseball, especially when you’re playing competitively,” he said.
Although the uniforms have a vintage look, Mr. Shaw did have to make one exception when it came to authenticity. Players in 1864 wore wool uniforms, but that didn’t seem practical to Mr. Shaw in today’s world.
“I decided to go with heavy cotton, and the reason is that I’ve heard of too many instances where people are actually allergic to wool. We’re playing in the middle of the summer. Playing in wool in the middle of the summer is bad enough, and heavy cotton doesn’t give you much relief either,” said Mr. Shaw. “You can imagine anybody that would be allergic to wool would almost have to wear longjohns underneath so the wool wouldn’t touch their body. Just think about that in the middle of the summer.”
In addition to managing the team and making the schedule, Mr. Shaw is also the one who handles the recitation of “Casey at the Bat.” And he’s a veteran at it. Mr. Shaw learned the poem more than a dozen years ago. During a 19th century game between the Hartford Senators and the Pittsfield Phillies that was being telecast by ESPN Classic about 10 years ago, he was asked to recite “Casey at the Bat” during the seventh-inning stretch.
“There I was, standing at home plate, with between 5,000 and 6,000 people in the stands, and I was on national television. That was pretty cool,” said Mr. Shaw.
As for nicknames, they aren’t just limited to the players on today’s vintage baseball teams. As stated on the Neshanock website, even the “equally splendiferous” umpire, dressed in a suit and top hat, has a nickname that fits the job description — Sam “It’s Ain’t Nothin’ ’Til I Say” Bernstein.
“We have a good time,” said Mr. Shaw.
For more information on the event, call the historical society at (609) 921-6748, ext. 102, or email eve@princetonhistory.org.
