Jul 7, 2025
A major league bat dwarfs what is believed to be a kitten-ball (indoor baseball) bat. The small “bat” is weighted on the head end with lead. It might also have been used as a “billy stick.” (Photo Provided)
INDOOR BASEBALL — League Has Been Organized at the Y.M.C.A. To Kick Off Its Schedule Next Week.
The indoor baseball league of the Y.M.C.A. has been organized and will start off its schedule next Friday evening, and on Wednesday evening of each third week. The teams all have a three-game series with each other.
Considerable interest is being taken in the league, and a close race is expected to ensue. The teams have been organized with R. Victor Garretson, Robert Virgin, B.M. Whaley, Clifford Tucker and A.B. White Jr., as the captains.
The teams are composed as follows:
* Garetson’s team — Butcher, Gass, Sayre, Cochran, McCoy, Hendershot, Martin and Roach.
* Virgin’s team — Ingersoll, Pearey, Borelli, Sheritt, Drake, Loper and Lyons.
* Tucker’s team — Relp, Hiehle, Rittenhouse, Wright, Minnick, Taylor, Price and Depue.
* Whaley’s team — J.C. McGrew, McCormick, Cravens, Tabb, Hoblitzell, Fuller, Harvey and Barnhart.
* White’s team — Hyre, Mallory, Shingleton, Jones, Enoch, Matheney, Stutler and Graham.
The teams are composed of the Young Men’s and Business Men’s classes. The volleyball leagues and basketball leagues have closed and indoor baseball will prove an interesting diversion and draw many classes together.
The Parkersburg Sentinel
March 10, 1916
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The Beginning of Softball.
Indoor baseball [also called kittenball] was invented by George Hancock in 1887 at the Farragut Boat Club on Chicago’s South Side. The basic equipment was a mushy soft 17-inch diameter ball, and a stick-like bat. No gloves were worn. Seven to nine players made up a team with only the pitcher and catcher having set areas assigned to them. The ball used was nearly twice the circumference and much softer than a baseball. Indoor baseball bats were significantly shorter and smaller in length and diameter and made only of the “wood possessing great strength.” A rubber tip was often placed on the handle to prevent losing one’s grip. Bases were half filled with sand or another heavy substance to stay in place due to not being attached to the floor and being a mere 27 feet between them (regulation baseball bases were 90 feet apart). Other dimensional changes included 22 feet between the pitcher’s mound and home plate, compared to 60 feet, six inches outdoors. In fact, the rules could accommodate a playing space as small as 40-by-50 feet. The game spread like wildfire across the Chicago area, and by the winter of 1891-92 there were more than a hundred teams organized in flourishing amateur leagues. Colleges and high schools, girls and boys, embraced the sport. Around 1907, players began taking the game outdoors, calling it “playground ball” and later “softball.” The indoor version went into steep decline in the 1910s, most assuredly because of the rapid growth of basketball, a game far better designed for indoor play. By the early 1920s, indoor baseball was a dead sport, but it left as its progeny the playground game of slow-pitch softball.
From the internet…
“kittenball.”
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Bob Enoch is president of the Wood County Historical and Preservation Society. If you have comments or questions about Look Back items, please contact him at: roberteenoch@gmail.com, or by mail at WCHPS, PO Box 565, Parkersburg, WV 26102.
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