Article on Gateway Corkball in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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.

Remembering ‘Strike Out’: When a building was part of the game

By Lee Bey | Aug. 16, 2010 | From WBEZ.org

I was passing through Oak Park yesterday when I saw the above box, meticulously drawn on the playground side of Mann School.

This is a box for Strike Out, a baseball-like game in which a pitcher hurtled a rubber baseball at a batter in front of the box, in an attempt to strike him out. When I was a city kid, growing up in the 1970s, these boxes were as ubiquitous as afro hair picks; chalked or spray-painted on the sides of schools, the backs of commercial buildings–almost any place that faced a large lot or playground. But in recent decades, I’ve rarely seen them. A couple of years ago I asked a young boy if kids still played Strike Out. He looked at me as if I were talking about a game of marbles or Hoop & Stick.

So seeing two on a single wall in one day caught me by surprise. I didn’t even have my camera with me. I had to make do with my cellphone cam.

In Strike Out, a pitch inside the box was a strike, but a hit was judged a single, double, triple or homer, depending on the distance the ball traveled after leaving the bat; there were no bases for the batter to run. If the ball was caught on the fly by the opposing team, it was an out. If the pitcher caught the ball on a single bounce, it was an out.

The building was an important  part of the game because you needed one with a flat brick, concrete or limestone surface with enough mass to absorb the energy of the fast pitch, yet return the rubber ball without enough velocity to reach the pitcher on a strike. And no glass near the box.  Strike Out was great way to play baseball without having 18 people. A team could be as few as one to four players.

“It’s sad how kids nowadays don’t play and learn how to hit and pitch like we did,” Kenny McGregor, one of my buddies from high school (we’re both Chicago Vocational, Class of 1983), replied when I messaged him yesterday about the box I saw. In addition to the rules, he remembered games in which the ball was hit hard enough to make its way into traffic, “sometimes hitting passing cars and buses” on Ashland. “I can recall a buddy named Pete who threw so hard the ball sizzled and as it came towards you, and it changed shape and [would] look like he threw an egg. One bat, two balls, one or two gloves, and we were playing all day until we destroyed the balls.”

Henry Murphy–also in his 40s just as Kenny and I–remembered playing Strike Out on the side of a Monarch Cleaners on east 87th Street back in the 1970s. He hasn’t seen a Strike Out box in years, either. “We’ve become a lawsuit-delicate society,” he says. “Want to [have your kids] play a game with a chance of being hit with a fast rubber ball? Get your lawyer on retainer.”

And–dare I say it?–drawing a Strike Out box defaces property, which is a bit of a demerit.

I was wearing a suit and had my baseball-loving daughters (two teens and a ‘tween) with me when I photographed the Strike Out box. Maybe I’ll double back one day with a rubber baseball to see if my 44-year-old arm has the stuff, still. Just gotta remember to bring the shoulder ointment.