St. Louis corkball combines competition, camaraderie and family
by Susan Weich of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Some of the ballplayers who gathered on the grassy lot behind the metal products factory were barely past their teens; others were past their prime, but it didn't matter — they came to share in the competition and camaraderie.

The game is corkball, which locals say was invented here around 1900 by a group of brewery workerslooking for something to do on their break. A beer barrel stopper carved into a ball and a broken-off broom handle were the first equipment in a game that has all the allure of baseball without base running or the need for nine players.

The game became so popular that leagues sprouted up at taverns, where cages were erected, but eventually, most of the play moved to county parks. Only about five local clubs exist today.

The competition last Wednesday was at the oldest of these, Gateway Corkball Club at the corner of Walsh Street and Ulena Avenue in south St. Louis. The three fields share an outfield wall rivaling the one at Fenway Park. Hitting the ball over the 30-foot-high Blue Monster is a home run; hitting the wall a double.

On this muggy August night, dozens of dragonflies hovered over the fields, their up-and-down flight mimicking the movement of the knuckleballs crossing home plate.

Blaine DeCambaliza, 42, of south St. Louis, was waiting his turn at bat. He grew up in Minnesota, where a puck and a different kind of stick is the preferred sport, but after his first season of corkball, he's found a new passion.

"The first time I saw this place I couldn't believe more people didn't know about it," he said. "It's a Field of Dreams in the city."

In corkball, players try to hit a ball that's two inches in diameter with a bat that's only 1 1/2 inches wide. Pitchers throw a whole arsenal — including spitballs — at batters who get just one swinging strike if the catcher holds onto the ball. A foul ball is an out, and five balls are a walk.

Tony Minor, 30, of St. Louis, has six relatives playing in the club, so corkball is a way to stay connected to family and good competition.

"To play in a league that still keeps the stats is just kind of fun," he said. "It takes you back to those days when you were growing up, and it did matter if you had a good night or not."

Wayne Cupp, 75, is the oldest playing member of Gateway's club, and his batting average of .428, illustrates that even older players are no easy outs.

"I just look for a fastball," he said. "I refuse to swing at a curve unless I get a strike on me."

Marty Kirner, 48, of St. Louis, is a member of his club's "All-Century Team," and he spent much of the doubleheader trying to instruct and rally his teammates.

"Watch this pitcher's speed. If you don't square it up, you're going to foul it off," he said.

Like any other contest, the play can get pretty heated, but things rarely get out of hand at Gateway because no drinking is allowed on the field, and anyone who throws a punch at another member is shown the door. On this night, the chatter was all good-natured.

Players razzed Tim Goedeker about his batting slump and his bats, one named Mr. .888 (to reflect his batting average for part of a season) and the other Mr. OBP (to tout his on-base percentage).

"I guess we'll let Tim make all the outs this inning too," chirped Kirner.

Goedeker said when you're having a year like he is, you better be coming for more than just your batting average. Clearly many of the men were.

After the game, the men retreated to their clubhouse, a no-frills place where players could rehash the game over a bottle of beer. The walls are lined with stats dating back to the club's founding in 1929. They highlight Gateway legends like Tom Niemeyer, who threw seven no-hitters in a row.

Many of the members are second- or third-generation corkballers, who grew up watching their dads play and earned soda money by shagging foul balls.

Joe "Pepe" Greco, 41, of south St. Louis, has fond memories of Christmas parties at the clubhouse and picnics that featured barbecue, games and a swimming pool.

"That was almost better than a week-long vacation," he said.

At the end of every year, the club has an awards banquet that honors not only the top players, but those who made the goofiest plays, like Mike Goedeker, 47, of Sunset Hills, who got hit by a pitch to win a game against his cousin and his nephew.

"I got a booby prize for that because there was a big uproar," he said. "They gave me a plaque and poem that told the story of how it upset my cousin Bobby."

When players retire from corkball, they become social members and still come up to the clubhouse to play cards or watch sports on TV.

Gateway is hoping for a youth movement to beef up its membership, which now stands around 90, to keep the St. Louis classic going.

"There's just not much known about corkball anymore," said Mike Goedeker.

He said the Jefferson Barracks tournament a week or so ago, which used to have dozens of teams, was down to seven.

"It would be nice to get the game revitalized a little bit," Goedeker said.

ODD-BALL ST. LOUIS DISPLAYS "A LOVE FOR MUTANT BASEBALL"

PubDate: Sunday, 8/20/2000

Category: EVERYDAY MAGAZINE
By John M. McGuire of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Indian ball is just one of the peculiar games that have made St. Louis the center of the odd-ball universe. Or as Esquire magazine noted, "St. Louis has been giddily creative in constructing games around the concept of hitting a thrown object with a bat."

The best known and oldest is the hardball variation called corkball, a game so St. Louis that it gave the city a curious reputation during World War II when local corkballers played the game on the decks of aircraft carriers or on military parade grounds. Back then, homegrown corkball was played in "cages," most of them attached to the side of a tavern.

Other local variations are fuzz-ball, featuring a singed tennis ball that moves like a sphere possessed, and perhaps the oddest game of all, a batter-pitcher diversion called crowns or caps. In this game, usually played against the exterior wall of a saloon, the batter uses a broomstick and tries to hit a beer-bottle cap that is hurled with a vengeance, bobbing about like a crazed dragonfly.

These distinctly St. Louis games have one thing in common - kegs of beer, taverns and buckets of chili.

How did it all begin? The most precise story is that corkball was born at Mueller's, a boardinghouse and saloon at Grand Boulevard and Greer Avenue. The year was 1890, and the story is that some members of the St. Louis Browns — an American Association team that a few years later would be rechristened the Cardinals in the National League — were sitting on the porch at Mueller's polishing off a keg of brew. Chris Von der Ahe, a colorful saloonkeeper who called himself "Der Poss Bresident," owned the team, which featured a player who would go on to become a baseball legend. He was Charley Comiskey, founder of the Chicago White Sox.

Comiskey might have been there the night that one of the players decided he needed exercise. He took the bung out of the keg, carved it into the shape of a ball, while another Brownie found a broom handle for a bat. Five players, not so tipsy, set the ground rules: One would be a pitcher, the other a catcher, with the remaining three playing the outfield. Like Indian ball, there was no running.

Eventually, the game evolved into organized leagues and manufactured equipment. For a time, the corkballs — baseballs slightly larger than golf balls — and slender bats used in the game were made by Rawlings Sporting Goods. Rawlings, based in St. Louis, dropped the line years ago, and now Markwort Sporting Goods on Forest Park Boulevard carries on the tradition.

Leagues such as Sportsman's Corkball, South St. Louis and Santa Maria or Lemay Corkball became so identified with St. Louis that Bill Vaughn, the late Kansas City syndicated columnist, wrote: "St. Louis without corkball is San Francisco without cable cars, Baltimore without crabcakes or Boston without spaghetti," noting that Bostonians eat more spaghetti than beans.

Corkball's popularity has faded, but it's still played at Jefferson Barracks Park, and there are seven teams and some 42 players, according to Len Renfrow Jr., 34, of Oakville, a second-generation corkballer with the Sportsman's organization.

In June, corkball and St. Louis were featured in an Esquire article headlined "The Sport That Time Forgot." Writer Charles P. Pierce noted that "St. Louis has a love for mutant baseball that is richer and more diverse than even that of New York, which has produced stickball, which hardly anyone plays anymore."