Did you know that the first professional base ball game in America took place on June 1, 1869 when the Cincinnati Red Stockings took on the Mansfield Independents in Mansfield, Ohio.

Eventually the Mansfield team would be so good that when the first set of baseball cards were made in 1888 the set included a star third basemen from the Mansfield team.

When the civil war came to an end in 1865 at long last, after 4 years, all the boys came marching home again to their home towns to pick up their lives and get back to the things that really mattered - like baseball!

Back then every little town had a baseball team and the chief rivalries between villages were decided not on a battlefield but slugging it out on the ball diamond.

Baseball was a matter of tremendous loyalty and civic pride and a ballplayer would no more of considered playing for another town than they would burn the flag - it just wasn't done ..

 

Video produced by Timothy Mckee