The Monitor Base Ball Club of Chelsea traveled to Northville to play the Eclipse Base Ball Club.

A good beard is a good beard no matter what team you play for.

Would you like to be check out the fun of a vintage base ball match? The Monitors and the Merries — Chelsea’s women’s base ball team — will both be in action in Chelsea next Saturday, August 23! The Merries will be playing after the fair parade (approximately 2:30), and the Monitors match will follow. All are welcome!

The Monitor Base Ball Club of Chelsea played a home match against the Wahoos of Royal Oak.

As always, the match began with a bat toss to determine which team would bat first.

(That ball was fair just inside the third base line.)

The match was very close the whole way, but the Wahoos held the Monitors scoreless in the ninth to preserve an exciting 12-11 victory.

This is what a postgame huzzah looks like:

You may have noticed “Tallies for Charity” at the bottom of the scoreboard. The Monitors were collecting donations for Smile Train, an organization that provides cleft lip and palate surgeries to those in need around the world. After the huzzahs, the Wahoos surprised the Chelsea captain with a very generous donation.

It was a great moment.

In fact, the whole afternoon was a rousing success: a large crowd — the largest crowd yet! — showed up to cheer on the teams, the match was exciting, and a worthy cause benefited.

After the postgame photo, they gave kids a chance to hit the ball and run the bases.

Would you like to join the fun? More spectators are always welcome! The Monitors’ next home match is the afternoon of Saturday, August 23, after the fair parade. Come check it out! (The rest of the schedule is here.)

The Monitors and the Merries traveled to Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne to play matches against the Early Risers and the River Belles. (If you’re not familiar with the Fort Wayne that isn’t a city in Indiana, check out the history of the star-shaped fort on the Detroit River.) I’d been looking forward to these matches for weeks. Why? Because these matches were played not on the adjacent parade grounds, but inside the fort itself! Here’s a look at the field from behind home:

The building on the right is the original barracks. The hills lead up to the top of the walls — and provide an excellent viewing angle for spectators! — and the main gate is out of the frame to the right. At the far corner you can see the entrances to two tunnels; keep those in mind (both for later in this post and for another post to come). The quirks of the fort’s field presented a few extra challenges to the ballists, but when it comes to authentic venues for vintage base ball, Fort Wayne is about as good as it gets.

Also notable: this was the Merries’ first-ever full match! HUZZAH!

There was a good play at the plate:

That photo is one of a burst of seven, and the sequence was too much fun not to animate:

Remember the tunnels at the far corner? You can see one entrance in the background of this photo:

The match ended in the rain, but the Merries were all smiles.

Both the Merries and the River Belles have a player with the same nickname. Here are both Half Pints together.

Together, they’re a Pint!

After a brief warmup, the Monitors took the field against the Early Risers.

Here’s another photo with a tunnel entrance in the background:

Note the paved path on the right side of the photo. If a ball was hit hard and bounced on the path, it could bounce near or even into a tunnel. In fact, one hit did make it all the way to a tunnel. Like I said, extra challenges.

Spectators who preferred shade over the view from the walls chose to sit next to the barracks along the first base line.

When a you score a run, you ring the bell:

After the match, some of the kids ran the bases.

One little guy got a ride.

And then my dad posed with a bat, just for fun.

Before I left, I spent some time exploring and photographing the fort. Those photos will show up here soon.