I just noticed that there’s a MapQuest pin for the Don Young Corkball Fields at Jefferson Barracks Park. Here’s the link: https://www.mapquest.com/us/missouri/don-young-corkball-fields-jefferson-barracks-park-438973410
Now I just need to figure out how to get the Tower Grove Park corkball fields on there, as well as getting them all added to Google Maps. Anyone have any tips? TIA!
EDIT: I figured it out. Here’s the location on Google Maps:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/HnV51hEeZZ1v73aU7
Posted over on the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame website.
Cork ball’s history is almost as old as professional baseball in St. Louis itself! Apparently it was first played at Mueller’s, a boardinghouse and saloon on the corner of Grand and Greer on the city’s north side where the team’s owner, Chris Von der Ahe, was the saloon-keeper. The story goes that sometime in 1890, one of the Browns’ players pulled the bung out of a keg of beer, carved it into a ball, and began pitching it to a teammate using a broomstick as a bat. Three others played behind him and another served as catcher.
It didn’t take long (perhaps a few busted windows, pint glasses and mirrors) before the game was relegated to cages, which were erected in just about every part of town. Leagues were organized and manufactured “corkball” equipment became commercially available thanks to several local sporting-goods manufacturers, including Rawlings, Wilson, Worth, Leacock, Sisler Hummel, Murson, Proline, Anchor and Markwort.
R.H. Grady is credited as being the first to develop a horsehide-covered, stitched ball, which dates to 1920. Area big league players who played the game as kids Yogi Berra, Joe Garagiola, and Pete Reiser.
Despite its longevity and almost cult-like following in St. Louis, corkball hasn’t spread much across the country. There’s a club in Chicago, and other locations in Illinois. In Jacksonville, Fla., Butch Trucks and Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band are known to have played the game as kids.
During World War II, Howard Rackley introduced the game to his fellow servicemen on the deck of the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill, which did a lot to disseminate the game to other parts of the country. But lacking the history and cultural connections, it has struggled to survive. There are four major clubs in St. Louis – Sportsman’s Corkball Club (established 1957); South St. Louis Corkball Club (est’d. 1936); Lemay (est’d. in 1947), and Gateway (est’d. 1929). Today, corkball is played on open fields with a pitcher, catcher and fielders. These clubs get together at the end of the year and compete in a one-day tournament.
We invite anyone interested to check out our clubs!
Below is an article that was posted November 25, 2016, on the Missouri Historical Society website by Sharon Smith, Curator of Civic and Personal Identity.
This post has been adapted from the 2006 MHM Press title Hidden Assets: Connecting the Past to the Future of St. Louis.
How did corkball get its start? One legend suggests the sport originated in an East St. Louis tavern in the early 1900s when a man began tossing cork-lined bottle caps to another man who whacked at them with a broomstick. Another legend says it began in a Carondelet brewery where workers would pass their lunch breaks carving balls out of cork bungs that plugged holes in beer barrels.
Regardless of how it was born, corkball is great for small groups because the teams aren’t very big. A team usually consists of a pitcher, catcher, outfielder, and possibly a second catcher. The rules of corkball are modified from those of its parent game, baseball. For example, in corkball the pitcher is only 55 feet from the batter (that’s 5½ half feet closer than in baseball), and the game is fast pitch, thrown overhand. A batter is out if he swings and misses the ball and the catcher holds onto it, if he gets two called strikes and the catcher holds onto the ball, if he hits a foul tip that’s caught by the catcher, or if he hits a fly ball that is caught by the pitcher or outfielder. Also, the batter can’t bunt. When the batter gets a hit, there’s a “base runner,” but unlike in baseball the base runner exists only on paper. Every hit is a single, unless otherwise designated by the local field rules, and four hits count as a run. Each subsequent hit counts as another run. A home-run marker is established, and anything hit past the marker is a home run, counting every “runner” on base as well. A game is made up of five innings, and each inning ends after three outs.
The equipment for corkball is a bit different from that of baseball. The ball is much smaller but looks very much like a baseball, down to the sewn leather cover. As for bats, two kinds exist. The regulation bats are made by Spalding or Louisville Slugger and resemble their baseball counterparts, except that the diameter is much smaller. Homemade corkball bats are actually broomsticks, as they were in the original game.
By 1930 corkball had its first organized leagues, and by 1940 it was being played in special corkball cages. Many of these cages were located near taverns, which sponsored league teams. The taverns would even pay the initial fees for installing corkball cages, which back in 1950 varied from $500 to $800. At that time there were 22 enclosed corkball cages in St. Louis. Although corkball cages aren’t seen very often today, corkball is still played around the city in wide-open spaces, such as in the Jefferson Barracks corkball fields and the Tower Grove corkball fields.
The South St. Louis Corkball Club is holding its 34th annual Don Young Corkball Tournament this Saturday, August 4, at the Don Young Corkball Fields located in Jefferson Barracks Park in South St. Louis County, MO. This tournament represents the “World Series of Corkball’ for the St. Louis and surrounding areas. This is real corkball, not fuzzball or wiffle ball, so don’t be confused. This is a double-elimination tournament, meaning teams must lose two games before they are eliminated. The tournament usually starts around 9:00 a.m. and ends in the evening around 6:00 p.m. The big four corkball clubs will be present (South St. Louis Corkball Club, Lemay Corkball Club, Sportsman’s Corkball Club and Gateway Corkball Club) along with other teams. Food, soda and beer will be available. Come on out and enjoy seeing something really unique to the St. Louis area, and bring the kids! For more information, please contact Tournament Chairman Bob Young at:
Phone: 636-677-7534
E-mail: corkballman@att.net
Some guys in University City, Missouri, have been playing what they call “corkball” for quite some time… problem is, it’s not actually corkball. The game they play is really fuzzball (since they use tennis balls, not corkballs), but, for whatever reason, they don’t call it that. Now, there’s nothing wrong with playing fuzzball… hell, it’s a fun game! But if you’re gonna play fuzzball, call it fuzzball. If you’re gonna call your game “corkball,” then you should be using corkballs and helping to support a great local business, the last of its kind to make corkballs, Markwort Sporting Goods.
*Sigh*
ANYWAY, these guys have an annual tournament in U. City coming up later this month (August 18-19) and they invite anyone out there interested in playing corkball fuzzball to form a team and enter the tournament. Details are included in the flyer below and the rules will be posted after that.
Check this out! Brazilian TV show Cinquenta Por Um (50 by 1)—in a series of episodes where they visit cities that have hosted the Olympic games—introduces its audience to several interesting things unique to St. Louis (the Olympics were held here in 1904), including corkball! You can watch the episode at the link below (the corkball segment is right after the part about brain sandwiches at Schottzie’s Bar):
Too bad I don’t know Portuguese!
Below is an article I wrote over the winter of 2012 about corkball that was supposed to be included in a new baseball journal put out by the St. Louis Baseball Historical Society. The journal’s future is now in doubt due to conflicts between the publisher and the ad agency responsible for publishing it, so I’ve decided to go ahead and publish it here. Enjoy!
St. Louis’ love for the sport of baseball cannot be denied. By all accounts, it has been played in some form or another in our city for more than 150 years, which is precisely why the St. Louis Baseball Historical Society was founded. Baseball’s roots run very deep here, and those roots have at times sprouted to reveal different forms of the game that may not be as popular or well known as the mother game.
One of these off-shoots of baseball is the game of corkball (or “cork ball” as it was originally written). Corkball is defined as a fast-pitch bat-and-ball (or “safe haven”) game. Bat-and-ball games are basically a much more primitive and simpler form of baseball that probably goes back centuries, or perhaps even thousands of years, as it essentially just involves hitting something small and round with a stick. It can be argued that people—children, mostly—have been hitting things with sticks for fun for millennia. But, as we know, this practice didn’t really get recognized as a sport and become organized as such until the middle portion of the 19th century. But when it finally did become organized, it didn’t take long for it to catch on like wildfire. Nor did it take long for variations of the game to appear in distant parts of the country. Stickball, for example, became very popular on the streets of New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere in the Northeastern U.S. Here in St. Louis, several games that are in some ways related to baseball began to emerge. Softball, obviously, has been played here in beer leagues for decades after first getting its start in Chicago in the 1880s. And, more recently, the former kids’ game of kickball—which got its start in Cincinnati—has gotten pretty huge (the “stick” in that game being one’s leg, naturally).
When I was growing up here in St. Louis, my father (who grew up in the ’20s and ’30s in Maplewood and North St. Louis) would tell me stories of playing “Indian ball” as a kid when he and his friends didn’t have enough players to field a full nine per side. They’d just play ball without the base running, using “ghost runners” instead of the real thing. He also described corkball and “bottle caps” to me (the latter being a variation of corkball where you simply replace the ball with a cap from a bottle), and I managed to amass a rather large collection of bottle caps for playing that—along with corkball and/or Indian ball—at family reunions back in the ’70s. I was unaware, however, of any actual “corkball clubs” in St. Louis until I started doing some investigative research into the game via the Internet about ten years ago. That’s when my eyes were opened to the game’s rich history in St. Louis, having found that the first of these clubs, Gateway, originated all the way back in 1929. I was floored!
Digging deeper still, I learned that the game’s history is almost as old as professional baseball in St. Louis itself! Apparently, it was first played at Mueller’s, a boarding house and saloon located at the corner of Grand & Greer on the city’s north side where the team’s owner, Chris Von der Ahe, was the saloonkeeper. The story goes that sometime in 1890, one of the Browns’ players pulled the bung out of a keg of beer, carved it into the shape of a ball, and began pitching it to a teammate using a broomstick as a bat, while three other players played behind him and another served as catcher. It probably didn’t take long (perhaps a few busted windows, pint glasses, and mirrors) before the game was relegated to cages that were erected adjacent to these establishments, of which there were many and in just about every part of town. As the years went by, players started organizing leagues, and, with that, actual manufactured “cork ball” equipment became commercially available thanks to a number of enterprising local sporting-goods manufacturers. No one is sure exactly how many companies produced “official cork balls,” as they all seemed to have been stamped, but we know some of these names include Rawlings, Wilson, Worth, Leacock, Sisler Hummel, Murson, Proline, Anchor, and, more recently, Markwort. R.H. Grady Company is credited as being the first to develop a horsehide-covered, stitched ball, which dates to 1920. And a few Major League ballplayers from the area are known to have played the game as kids, including Yogi Berra, Joe Garagiola, and Pete Reiser.
Despite its longevity and almost cult-like following in St. Louis, however, corkball hasn’t had much success spreading to other parts of the country. Oh, it’s happened, sure. There’s a club in Chicago, and I’ve also heard of outcroppings of games being played in several locations in Illinois, as well as Denver, Texas, California and in various spots in the South, including Jacksonville, Florida, where Butch Trucks and Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band are known to have played the game as kids. During World War II, Howard Rackley introduced the game to his fellow servicemen on the deck of the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill, which did a lot to disseminate the game to other parts of the country, as many of those guys brought the game home to their hometowns after the war. But lacking the history and cultural connections in those towns, it has struggled to survive, much less blossom and grow.
I quickly became intrigued by the game and its inherent connections in St. Louis and decided I wanted to do a couple of things. First, I wanted to play it! It had been over 30 years since I’d held a corkball in my hand—much less attempted to hit one with a stick—but I always considered myself a fairly decent ballplayer, so utilizing some social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, I pulled together some friends to start playing some recreational games at the abandoned corkball fields located along Arsenal in Tower Grove Park. Secondly, I thought it would be a good idea to try and pull all of the information that I had found out about the sport together under one virtual roof and create a website, and thusly, this Corkball site was born. The site serves as a blog where I can share information about the sport, as well as provides plenty of information on its history, rules, where to purchase equipment, and even includes a discussion forum.
For me, recruiting enough people interested in playing the game recreationally week in and week out proved pretty challenging. While a lot of people may have heard of it—or are curious about it—it’s been quite a struggle to find a good core of players who are committed to keeping it active throughout the course of the spring and summer. Most of the players I was able to recruit were already participating in similar area sports, such as softball and fuzzball. Corkball’s appeal for softball players is that it equates to less wear and tear on one’s aging legs, and for fuzzball guys, who are used to swinging at the larger tennis balls, it means a bit more of a challenge. But it feels good to actually put the corkball fields at Tower Grove Park to use in their intended purpose. These fields used to be home to the Sportsman’s Corkball Club before they hightailed it to Jefferson Barracks Park in 2000, which they’ve shared with the South St. Louis Corkball Club ever since. The other two established St. Louis clubs are Lemay (established in 1947), which plays its games at the Santa Maria Knights of Columbus on Mt. Olive Road in South St. Louis County, and Gateway, which has its own clubhouse and fields on Walsh St. in the city’s Dutchtown neighborhood.
For those of you who may not be familiar with the corkball scene in St. Louis, there’s a culture surrounding the game that can be a bit hard to crack. While the established, older, and more competitive clubs often have open enrollment tryouts, it really helps if you know (or are related to) someone there first. But I believe it’s because of that close-knit culture and its (for lack of a better word) “cliquishness” that these clubs are seeing a dwindling interest in the sport, which equates to less participation. The guys who have been playing it the longest are getting older, and it’s not as easy to transfer the love of the game on to their children and their friends as it was in generations past when our youth had fewer distractions. Baseball, in general, has been experiencing similar issues.
When speaking with “Corkballman” Bob Young on the phone recently, I was able to get a little bit more history of corkball, especially in South St. Louis. Bob is the grandson of Don Young, who was known as “Mr. Corkball” for more than four decades and whose name adorns the tucked-away corkball playing fields at Jefferson Barracks Park. Don’s father, Bill, co-founded the Grupp (which later changed its name to South St. Louis) Corkball League in 1936. The Don Young Corkball Fields at JB Park are the nicest you’ll find anywhere, and they’re shared by both Sportsman’s and the South St. Louis Corkball Club, with the latter beginning play there in 1965. The cages of yesteryear, though, are all long gone. One of the last remaining corkball cages that I’m aware of was removed by owner James Russell from BJ’s Bar in Florissant after almost 30 years of use in 1985 and sold to the Ferguson Church of the Nazarene for $125.
I caught a tone of concern in Bob’s voice when I asked him about the future of the game. He told me that, at its inception back in the 1970s, their annual August tournament at Jefferson Barracks Park would include as many as 30 different teams. In recent years, they’ve been lucky to recruit teams from each of the “big four” St. Louis clubs. Corkball is need of a shot in the arm, a big boost that could help attract a new generation of young players forming their own teams and leagues and reverse the trend. Bob did remind me, though, that every Sunday afternoon throughout the spring and summer, they have pick-up games of corkball at Jefferson Barracks Park, and he stresses that ANYONE is welcome to come play, which is probably the easiest way for those curious about the sport to get involved.
There are quite a few culturally significant things that make St. Louis a pretty unique city. Everyone knows about Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, St. Louis-style pizza and barbecue, toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, and, to a lesser extent, brain sandwiches, but as unique to St. Louis as the game of corkball is, it’s largely unknown here these days, and that’s a bit sad. Especially when you consider how popular the game obviously used to be. But, that being said, it’s still got a much larger level of participation here than in any other city in the country, and for that, we should be thankful.
JBK
Inner City Street Baseball Rules were Rough and Tumble and Provided Lessons Which were not Classroom...
The following was posted on BaseballFarming.com…
Street Baseball was a brand of playing baseball in the streets of the hood which took no prisoners. The skills of playing were tempered with raw toughness and bravado not found on most or many of the other more structured and friendly baseball playing fields.
Some of baseballs Hall Of Fame greats earned their spurs, in a manner of speaking, in the streets. Yogi Berra knew the street as a ball playing mecca.
His first hard disappointment came when by fate of baseball playground rules made him “wait his turn” while his buddy from the streets of St Louis Joe Garagiola was picked from the streets of St. Louis and signed with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Yogi by fate (or if you will in the rules of life) was destined to be one of the most loved of the Bronx bombers of our fabled and leading world champion teams the fabulous seeming perennial winning New York Yankees.
My capability to speak from on site experience is limited. The stories and movies depicting play on the streets of New York and San Fransisco provides adequately the portrayal of this play.
In the deep south our street baseball rules were more subdued and with less traffic to contend. There was toughness associated with a street playing style of, “take no quarter”, you were expected to be tough.
In most games of street baseball rules the game was often modified and a version of Corkball took on a life of its own.
Street baseball rules was so prevalent on the streets of New York one of the all time greats Willie “Say Hey” Mays was often caught joining the youngsters there. Willie Mays our Baseball Hall Of Fame great player playing with the then New York Giants.
The Giants and Willie moved on west and settled in San Francisco the city by the Bay and the place where Tony Bennett “Left His Heart” high on a hill.
Corkball was popular in the streets and replaced street baseball in the urban living places other limited space areas, where windows were an ever present deterrent from using a baseball. Cork use was simply what it was.
Did I get a surprise when I recently received an email about Corkball via my Baseballfarming website. Corkball has been alive and well through the years in some parts of the country and folks you too now have a chance to join the Corkball playing action.
The cork was nothing standard when the game was played here in the South. Whatever size cork that anyone had is what we used.
Buster I did not during my corkball playing time at the boys dormitory at Alabama Polytechnic Institute (API) realize it had life and was an organized play with a standard official Corkball and Bat with St Louis being the center of attention and the Corkball hotbed capitol of the Country.
Just chalk it up as this lad growing up without a lot of travel and experience of the world around me. All that is not of importance the only thing we knew back then was that we played our game and St.Louis apparently played their game.
Boys who lived in families that enjoyed fishing normally had access to many corks and of sundry sizes. Many times we had use of a round red and white colored cork. These round corks were prizes for the most common cylinder shaped corks, small on one end and larger on the other end, were real doozies to hit.
For the corkball bat, eureka, it was usually moms broken broom handle. Many a mom never knew how her good broom lost a handle.
She would see the games in progress but being the good mom she was, she never complained about her broken broom handle. She knew. We simply thought we were sneaky slick. The most cork ball that I personally ever played was inside the inner courtyard of what was once Auburn’s Magnolia Hall. Magnolia Hall was the main boys dormitory during the 50’s on the Loveliest Village On The Plains, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama.
Bill Sparks, Ronnie Syphers, Ross Wommack and Rip Riggins, were corkball playing whammer jammers. Now the folks at Midfield High School probably never knew their coach was the corkball hitting champion of Magnolia Hall.
The only person that I knew who could hit better than Bill Sparks was Ross Wommack (he was a hitter too).
The only time I remember observing a successful cross handed hitter was in cork ball. His name has completely slipped my mind. It has been several years.
My Dad also would bat cross handed. The corkball hitter would make me think of how Dad would hold the bat. Dad told me he used the cross hand to hold the bat because when he was young and helped Grandad clearing land to cultivate, he swung an axe that way.
My Dad was not a ball player so he did not cotton to street baseball, however he truly enjoyed the games of baseball and football, but his lot of being a country farmers son he had precious little time for ball playing.
He did raise up six boys and two girls. The girls played some but all of us boys were given the time to enjoy playing ball.
He started a family just as the depression was upon our land. His time was taken with making a living for us youngsters to enjoy baseball and other sports which he had missed.
Being from the country and rural America my dad never had the exposure of playing baseball by street baseball rules.
Baseball players from all walks of life learned to love the game and how to play from all the playing diamonds or from any corner even in the streets by Street Baseball Rules. Street Baseball was baseball playing by the baseball playground rules.
Free time, Let’s go play a game!
These photos are from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch site, photographed by J.B. Forbes sometime last summer. Some of these are really nice photos and I wanted to make sure thy were linked from here. Click the link below and then “View Slideshow”:
http://stltoday.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=1059801&Category…
Caption reads:
Corkball is a St. Louis tradition that dates back to about 1900. The original balls were carved from cork stoppers used in beer barrels. The bat was a broken-off broom handle. The game has evolved a little. The ball looks like a baseball and the bat is now a bat, but both are significantly smaller.
The South St. Louis Corkball Club is holding its 33rd annual Don Young Corkball Tournament this Saturday, August 6, at the Don Young Corkball Fields located in Jefferson Barracks Park in South St. Louis County, MO. This tournament represents the “World Series of Corkball’ for the St. Louis and surrounding areas. This is real corkball. Not fuzzball or wiffle ball, so don’t be confused. This is a double elimination tournament meaning teams must lose two games before they are eliminated. The tournament usually starts around 10:00 a.m. and ends in the evening around 6:00 p.m. The big four corkball clubs will be present (South St. Louis Corkball Club, Lemay Corkball Club, Sportsman’s Corkball Club and Gateway Corkball Club) along with other teams. Food, soda and beer will be available. Come on out and enjoy seeing something really unique to the St. Louis area, and bring the kids! For more information, please contact Tournament Chairman Bob Young at:
Phone: 636-677-7534
E-mail: corkballman@att.net
Cork & Fuzz 