The Legend of the Moonlight Game
A brilliant full moon lit up the no-man’s-land on the warm evening of June 18th 1864. The war has gone from gallant adventure to wholesale slaughter and now men in both armies are just trying to survive until General Lee surrenders.
On this cloudless evening, private Enoch Howe of the 100th Pennsylvania Volunteers struggles to stay awake. He had little to worry about on sentry duty. It was unlikely that with this full moon the enemy would attack, night fighting was rare in the 19th Century. Besides, the Union had three batteries of artillery that covered the clearing before him. This night the moon shone like a lighthouse beacon, attacking tonight would be suicide.
“I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment,” private Howe thought, “It’s not really sleeping.”
He soon dreamt of hunting deer with his father. Once they had both fallen asleep against a tree. Enoch was awoken by trotting footsteps and opened his eyes to find himself staring into the face of an equally surprised whitetail deer. The noise had awoken his father too. But as soon as he cocked his rifle the deer took off and his shot went harmlessly into the brush.
The next thing private Howe hears is: “Wake up, yank. You’re up.”
Enoch opens his eyes to find a rebel officer, sword drawn. Behind him are a dozen armed soldiers.
“Up?”
“Yep”, we’ve been practicing and now we aim to settle this war with baseball.” The rebel winked to his men like he was sharing a joke, ”We’re challenging ya’ll to a moonlight game.”
“John Walker, 15th South Carolina,” announced the rebel as his saber sang back into it’s scabbard.
“Enoch Howe, 100th Pennsylvanian.”
“Pleased to meet you, Enoch Howe.”
As he removed his hat, Enoch saw gold braid on his collar, “You’re an officer?”
“Colonel, but not on the baseball diamond.” He gave Enoch another look and said, “Say, I’ve seen you coaching your players. Would you be opposed to giving me some tips on the way to the field?”
“Sure, like what?”
“Well,” Colonel Walker sized him up, “You’re not a large fellow, how do you hit the ball as far as you do?”
Enoch laughed, “The secret is to hit the ball with your hips, not your arms. If you can get your body behind the ball it goes much further.”
“Hit the ball with your hips?”
“Yes, hitting a baseball far takes all your muscles working in concert, like an orchestra playing Mozart. You can’t hit the ball very far with only the reed section.”
As was common in the evening, the Union’s regimental band struck up ‘Home! Sweet Home’. Enoch and the rebels stopped in their tracks to listen, charmed by the notes floating on the moonlight.
As the final stanza fades away, the soldiers unknowing whisper the last verse together, “There’s no place like home.”
On this night as most, the end of the Union’s song provoked the Confederate musicians into a battle of the bands. They countered with ‘The Battle hymn of the Republic’, to cheers from the Union trenches. Then the Union band reciprocated by playing ‘Dixie’ to more cheers.
“Ya ‘know,” Colonel Walker said as they continued their walk together, “Dixie is old Abe’s favorite song.
Enoch said, “Confidentially, I am fond of ‘The Bonnie Blue Flag’.”
Several of Walker’s men murmured agreement, Colonel Walker smiled,” Did you play baseball before the war?”
Enoch looked up at the full moon, “It seems like another lifetime.” He dropped his gaze to met Walker’s, “Before I volunteered, I played for the Eckford Baseball Club, and taught school.” he added matter-of-factly, “People would pay money to watch us play.”
“People would pay you to watch baseball?” asked one of the confederate privates.
“Nah. Not us, the man that owns the field. He’d charge us to play. Union Field, it’s called.”
As they stepped into a moonlit clearing Walker said, “Well this probably isn’t as good as Union Field. But we’ll let you play for free.”
As Enoch and his new Confederate friends came up to a group of Union soldiers, a private who played for a Boston team was going over the ground rules and lording over everyone in his Brahmin accent – leading to snickers from the crowd.
“Foul ball (fa-ba) are the trenches. The fortifications (fort-ah-fa-cah-shuns) over there (they-ah) between Fort Sedman and the eleventh battery on the other side is the outfield fence.” Pointing to a group of felled trees lining a trench he continued, “Anything that goes into the abatis is a home run. Pitching is underhand only because of darkness. We’ll play for nine innings. Colonel Walker, CSA is our host. Colonel?”
“Thank you. Please know that fraternization is punishable by time in the stockade and occasionally by firing squad. If either band plays ‘Home! Sweet Home’ it is a signal to skedaddle back to your own lines. If Grant or Lee make a surprise inspection, we could hardly expect them to approve.”
Walker grins and the soldiers in blue and grey laugh together. The soldiers pat each other on the back, shake hands, and conspire to trade tobacco for coffee later that evening. Several of the Southern players trade pouches of chewing tobacco for finely machined wooden bats from Kentucky.
Enoch yells out, “Play ball!”, a new custom that heralds the beginning of a game.
As the game progressed, each band would play either “Dixie” or “Battle Hymn of the Republic” when their team scored. After each team scored a dozen of so runs, the bands played other popular songs. The players heard: ‘Love Me Tender’, ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ and ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’. At around twenty runs, the musicians grew tired and stopped altogether. Games of the era often had 30 points or more, even with experienced ball players.
Enoch was a gifted teacher and spent a great deal of time coaching players on both sides. Each time Colonel Walker came to the plate, Enoch would yell, “Hit it with your hips.”
Walker would nod, spit on his hands, dig in, then swing right through the pitch – to the amusement of both teams who hooted and laughed. Using your entire body to hit the ball was much harder than it looked. On the next pitch he’d usually go back to his old method and use just his arms. So when Colonel Walker make contact, the ball would barely dribble out of the infield.
In the bottom of the ninth, and the Union team is up by one run. The Confederates have a man on second base, and Colonel Walker comes up to bat with two outs.
From second base Enoch yells, “Use your hips!” and he demonstrates a thrusting movement much to the delight of both teams.
Walker shakes his head and laughs along, “You sir, should have been a sailor.”
Colonel Walker lays into the first pitch with his usual, arms only swing. The ball makes a flat sound off the bat and bloops just foul. With that he knows that he cannot hit the home run needed to win unless he uses his hips.
“Move like an orchestra you say?”
“If you want the ball out of the infield!” Enoch said as he thrust his hips again.
On the next pitch, Walker uses his hips to swing through strike two – almost falling over. The Union team hoots with laughter, but the Confederates don’t this time -they need Walker to hit the ball deep to win.
On the next pitch, the runner on second takes off as the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, Walker digs in, throws his hips back, then just like the Atlanta Philharmonic, brings all his strength in concert from bat to the ball. The ball leaps off the bat with a CRRR_ACK and heads straight for the left field abatis of Fort Sedman.
At that the Union bench stands and cheer their battle cry ‘hurrah!’ as the entire Union team runs to left field for the ball like the undisciplined novices they are.
On hearing the crack of Walker’s bat and the Union’s cheer, the Confederates instinctively raise their rebel yell battle-cry.
The veterans who had been at the receiving end of the rebel yell during four years of bloody battle are startled as if struck by lightning. Even though these men had become brothers during the game, the rebel yell has the effect of a corkscrew twisting down their spine. For a moment, Enoch too forgot he was in a game and ran with a surge of adrenaline to the outfield.
Alarmed by the battle cries, Union Gun Battery #12 shoots a Coston Flare to determine where their lines are being attacked. In the flare’s flickering light they see a company of Union soldiers running to their lines being chased by a company of Confederate soldiers – so they open up with their cannons. Seeing the flare, both Union and Confederate bands rush to play the warning song, ‘Home! Sweet Home’, but as soon as Battery #12 fires, several other Union and Confederate batteries open-up on the baseball field. As shells rain in, they catch the baseball players in a crossfire. After a few minutes, the giant Union rail mortars add to the slaughter. Within a half hour the field is a liquefied soup of bone, flesh, and mud.
The next morning, a dozen soldiers from both sides miss roll-call. At this stage in the war, desertion is rampant, and so they list the baseball players as AWOL. The connection between the apparent attack and the missing soldiers is not made by either side. A Union burial party sent to the field the next day did not find any bodies to bury; just bits of cloth, leather and sticks of wood. Since the battleground’s trees had long since been cut for firewood, the burial party collected the splintered wood for their campfires.
Today, many Civil War battlefields of Virginia are buried under strip malls, office campuses and subdivisions. The field at Fort Sedman has miraculously survived and the players are still there as well. On warm moonlit nights, residents of nearby Early Court apartments often hear the strands of “Home! Sweet Home’ , between the crack of a bat and laugher.
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