Awhile back, we wrote about the Alte Kockers (Yiddish for “old men”), a grizzled team of U. City alumni who’d been playing “Indian ball,” as it’s called, at Tilles Park on McKnight for six decades. It was a St. Louis invention, one of them claimed, a practical way to play even if you didn’t have enough players to field a team. There’s an Indian Ball championship up in Spanish Lake, too, and the American Indian Ball Association is run by a St. Louisan…
A few months ago, we received a note clarifying that Indian ball in fact originated in the 1700s. A linked article, published in American Anthropologist in 1890, noted: “The French, whose lighthearted gaiety and ready adaptability so endeared them to the hearts of [the Cherokee] were quick to take up the Indian ball game.”
Maybe they brought it to St. Louis?
The article went on to describe players whittling hickory sticks and twisting nets of bear sinew and…wait one minute. Nets? Apparently the game varied across North America, but the sticks always ended in a round racket-like paddle, a mesh cup, or a bowl woven from twisted squirrel skin. (The closest connection to a bat was a Cherokee legend about a wistful little rodent who wanted to play in midair with the eagles. They took pity and fashioned him a pair of leather wings.)
Rituals of this Indian ball, which evolved into lacrosse, were intense: no sex for a month, naked bodies scratched with bone splinters, slippery elm body rub, sometimes the donning of horsehair tails… Clearly, the Alte Knockers are slacking. And they definitely won’t want to play the Apalachee version, with 50 men to a side, all trying to kick a small buckskin ball between high goalposts (and ideally into an eagle’s nest atop a pole). Players could have their eyes gouged out or their ribs broken, and some died; buckets of water were poured to revive the survivors. It was played until 1684, when Franciscan missionaries decided that it was “instigated by the devil himself” and announced, “The Indians of Florida shall not play ball.”
That version sounds a bit like football (ceremonial dancing females, scrimmages, a dropkick), but our Indian ball is a light and simple baseball. And though you might believe that baseball was invented in Cooperstown, that’s a myth, too. Early versions were played in ancient Egypt, by the Mayans, in medieval France, in England in the 1000s…
So what the hell? St. Louis takes credit for iced tea, too, and that predated the World’s Fair by at least four decades. Maybe we should just rename our game—Louie ball?—and footnote all possible inspirations.
Rules of the Game
Team Size: 1-5 per team
Field Size: varies with available space and number of players
An out is made when:
- a ball is caught or touched by the pitcher
- fielder picks up a grounder before the ball stops
- a fly ball is caught
Points are scored when:
- a grounder is not fielded by fielder before it stops
- a ball is hit over outfielder’s head and comes to a stop
