In Timbertown Park on a warm Sunday in May, the clock magically turns back to 1860. Squirrel Bait, the umpire, tosses a bat to Honest John, captain of the Chelsea Monitors, playing their first home game of the season after a loss at Port Huron.

The players’ bulky uniforms, fashioned after old photos, are sweaty on this hot spring day. Cloth belts are tied to one side, pirate style. Both swashbuckling and somewhat clownish, the outfits are part of the showmanship integral to vintage baseball. Chelsea’s long-sleeved white shirts have a nice small gold C over the breast pocket. Caps are ringed with horizontal stripes in team colors. Hats of the Northville Eclipse, the visiting team, are puffier–they look more like court jesters.

Chelsea’s “Hojo” and Crusher, the Eclipse captain, take turns wrapping hands around the shaft of the bat until Crusher’s fits just below the knob. Under the game’s quaint throwback rules, the Eclipse has won the right to decide when they’ll bat; Crusher chooses to go last.

In the bottom of the first inning, Natalie “Chip” Polakowski, batting second, singles over the shortstop. Chip, one of two women playing for the Eclipse, is a former travel league softball star. “I’ve played ball all my life,” she says, and it shows in her menacing stance. She joined the team partly to bond with her dad, a teammate, and also because “it’s fun but a bit competitive.”

Said by the participants to be baseball as originally meant to be played, before professionals ruined it (or elevated it, depending on your point of view), vintage games attract those who love its rudimentary milieu and sportsmanlike spirit, embodied in pre-game speeches, post-game handshakes, and shouted appreciations for fine plays. In an especially quaint touch, the players themselves decide who’s safe or out while the umpire merely presides. Adding to the authenticity, some of the long wooden bats have been hand-turned by the players.

The Monitors, now entering their seventh season, include a lot of middle-aged men, the sort who might otherwise be Civil War reenactors; a few younger hipsters, the type who might be in a band that plays old-timey music; and the sort of players who thronged the diamonds a few decades ago in the heyday of slow-pitch softball. The skill level has a rec softball range too–some players can hit the ball a ton, only a few can run the bases faster than a turtle, and the fielding runs the gamut from laudable to abominable.

Squirrel Bait’s authority is limited mostly to urging the “hurler” to throw hittable pitches, but he also serves as announcer of the game score between innings.

Both clubs use the “bound” rule for their home games: the batter’s out if the fielder catches a ball in the air or on its first bounce. Even so, the game can be rough on the team in the field. The vintage ball is slightly bigger than a modern hardball, and slightly softer, but still very tough–and fielders don’t have mitts. Catching it barehanded stings–or worse. An Eclipse player shows off his broken finger, a crooked badge from an earlier game, to the “cranks”–the few dozen fans sitting in lawn chairs along one side of the field.

On the unmanicured grass at Timbertown, balls take crazy bounces, often sending a fielder twisting and sprawling to the ground. Some catches are spectacular, others crazy and comical. The game is a lazy but spirited entertainment for a summer day.

Vintage baseball was brought to Michigan decades ago at Greenfield Village, and its slowly spreading popularity has picked up steam in recent years. Dexter has a team now too, the Union, in its third year of play.

Chelsea also has a women’s team, the Merries (short for Merrimacks), and several members are on hand to enthusiastically cheer on their brother squad. Half Pint aka Sara Wedell, an AADL librarian and former softball pitcher, explains she helped start the team, now in its second year, by pestering Honest John for a chance to play. She waxes rhapsodic about playing last summer at Navin Field, on the grounds of demolished Tiger Stadium, and explains that she uses vintage foul language, like “fiddlesticks,” when game situations call for swearing.

During the seventh inning, just as in a scene from a dime novel or a corny movie, a little kid approaches the Monitors on the sideline. He’s so shy his mom has to ask a player to autograph a bat for him. Quickstep obliges, and, lacking a quill and ink bottle, scrawls his name on the kid’s club with a Sharpie.

The Eclipse win, 9-6, and after a traditional round of “huzzahs,” everyone retires to the picnic area for the post-game dinner, courtesy of the home team. Squirrel is not on the menu.

Dexter’s Union team will host the Monitors at Gordon Hall Civil War Days June 14. Both clubs and others will play at the daylong Ironclad Vintage Base Ball Festival at Chelsea High School on July 18 (see Events). The day will feature at least thirteen different men’s and ladies’ vintage clubs from around Michigan and Ohio, as well as live music at lunchtime. For schedules, see Chelsea Monitors on Facebook or, for Dexter, unionbbc.com.