Robert D. Sampson

From 1992 until 2025, it was my good fortune to play "vintage base ball," a game played with the rules, equipment, and uniforms of the game's early days before and after the Civil War. The Rock Springs Ground Squirrels club was the first vintage group in Illinois and is still going strong, though now combined with the old Long Nine Club of Springfield as the "Long Squirrels."

This piece from last year is shared in hopes it will provide those unfamiliar with the game a bit of fun.

Ghost Teams at BeautifulTrobaughField

Buried in the rich carpet of green soil and the adjacent wild tangle of a restored prairie on and around BeautifulTrobaughField in the Rock Springs Conservation Area on the southwest edge of Decatur lie the vestiges of now-vanished vintage base ball clubs who once trod these grounds and whose laughter, perhaps on dark nights echoes along the tree lines.

Since 2000, when the first Stephen A. Douglas Cup Vintage Base Ball Festival was held here, countless clubs have come and gone, disappearing from the playing fields. For instance, the 2000 Cup (this corrects an error made last week in moving the founding event to 2001), taking the field were the then-famed Kent Base Ball Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and some nearby friends, the Mackville Mudcats of Atwood, Illinois.

The Kents put away their bats several years ago and an effort to revive the blue-clad club floundered. The Mudcats were a new club in 2000, a product of a visit by the Ground Squirrels to Atwood’s Apple Dumpling Festival a year or two previous. Led by Rick “Doughboy” Fiala, the club had a quick rise to strength but passed from the scene shortly after its founder took a job in Ohio.

All told, an old Ground Squirrel recalls several clubs who rose, flourished, and faded in the first few years of the 21st century. The list includes the Peoria Distillers (who only played one or two games per season in its short life), the Washington Eagles (who planted the seeds of the game in the St. Louis area), the Mascoutah Blues, the Jacksonville Orphans, the Aniston Conductors, and their fellow Little Egypt compatriots, the Murphysboro Clarkes. And from Albert Goodwill Spalding’s hometown, Rockford, rose the Midway Marauders

Add to the list the Crawford Conductors (also a southwestern club proclaiming railroad antecedents) and the Trenton Mains. All these and the others were fine clubs whose talents and sportsmanship were excellent and enviable. A collection of uniforms featuring reds, blues, greens, blacks, and other colors linger in visual memory though the shirts and caps lie hidden in a closet’s corner.

But the most remarkable, interesting, and most beloved team nine to scamper on BeautifulTrobaughField was the Sum Punkins Club, taking its name from a real team based in Mount Zion, Illinois in 1867. Little is known about the “real” Sum Punkins, whose name was a popular catch phrase during the immediate post-Civil War years denoting excellence, as in “those new shoes are sum punkins.”

In its early 21st century second life, the Sum Punkins was, in effect, the “muffin” squad of the Ground Squirrels, the adjective another slang term meaning bad players. While the Punkins might have been “bad” in skill sets, its members were outstanding in spirit and humor.

With the Ground Squirrels club’s roster well over 20 players in those days, the Punkins provided a way to get more players time on the field. One way was a few games in the Douglas Cup. Such games were strictly for fun, players going about their chores in a relaxed manner, a constant barrage of jokes breaking like artillery shells above the field, and an occasional rally used quickly erased by fielding miscues. Other teams looked forward to playing the Punkins not simply for the expected victory but more for the good time.

Here's a clip from a 2003 Douglas Cup account:

“"Shameless" Enriches Team Treasury

Even before the official opening ceremonies featuring the traditional first pitches by Jean and Jim Patrick, umpire "Honest" Harold Longbons was busily augmenting the Ground Squirrels club's treasury by assessing fines. The list of those fined and the reasons for the penalties would take two or three columns of newsprint to fully detail. However, Diana "Shameless" Morrow may have taken honors for "most fined" player. Tending second base for the Sum Pumpkins, she hugged a number of players while making putouts and, in one case, actually tackled some hapless and helpless soul on the base paths-all of which meant the "responsible male" ("Irish" Tom Morrow) spent considerable time reducing his reserves of 25-cent pieces.

Spectators were rewarded with not only lots of laughs from hijinks like those involving the aforementioned Shameless but several examples of outstanding defensive play. On more than one occasion a game came to a halt after a batter deposited one of the $40-apiece base balls in the tall prairie grass beyond the outfield. And scouts for the Perfectos and the Grinders proved particularly adept at dashing into the prairie grass and converting apparent four-baggers into long bound-outs.”

The reference to tackling “some hapless and helpless soul on the base paths,” is the tip of the iceberg. The aforementioned “soul” remembers the day and incident well. Having struck a ball into left field, he rounded first base and after considering the potential concluded that a throw to second base (where “Shameless” stood guard) would require at least two throws, increasing the chance of a fumble long the way. Heading for second base, the runner was brought to a halt by a perfect pair of relays from the outfielder to the shortstop to “Shameless” and determined a retrograde movement to first base was in order. But there was a look in the second base tender’s eye indicating she wanted an out and, By the Eternal, was going to get one.

Pursing the runner as he stumbled toward first, she soon overtook him after he fell, collapsing in laughter, and proceeded to pound, pummel is more descriptive, him with the ball in several places as if each tag was an individual out. Hence, the fine.

The story is still told from time to time when vintage base ball veterans gathered. One of many fables whose details increase over the years with little regard for accuracy.

Spectators will have a chance to see and make new memories on Saturday, September 27, when the Douglas Cup returns. This year’s participants are the Deep River Grinders of Hobart, Indiana; the Vermilion Voles of Danville; the Champaign Clippers, our friends from the east; and the host Long Squirrels Club of Springfield and Decatur.

The event will start at mid-morning and continue through to the mid-afternoon. A detailed schedule should be available soon.
Seating at BeautifulTrobaughField is limited so spectators should bring lawn chairs and/or blankets.

The Long Squirrels Vintage Base Ball Club is an educational program of the Macon County Conservation District.

with apologies for its length, a long trip down memory lane and a life turning point. This is 1972 in a small central Illinois town, set in a busy newspaper and featuring the ups and downs of reporting and life decisions.

Personal History: Journalism IV
Answering the early morning call to the newsroom, Ralph Closson grunted a few words into the phone, put the receiver back and looked my way. “Bob. Get over to the U.S. Grant Hotel dining room and ask for Fred Magle.”
It was only a short walk, less than two blocks Once there, I interviewed “Fred E. Magle,” who was carrying a bulky book of press clippings proving he held “the world’s record for dining out,” having applied his flatware to at least 35,000 meals in restaurants. “The only thing I don’t like is communism,” which most certainly was not on the Hotel Grant’s menu.
Mattoon was (and is) a small town when I prowled its streets for tidbits like Magle. Then, my hometown included some 19,000 residents, geographically split north-south by the New York Central Railroad tracks and east-west by those of the Illinois Central. The business district was concentrated along Broadway between 14th and 19th streets, with spillover to the south on both sides of Charleston Avenue, and a three or four-block stretch of Western Avenue just north of the New York Central tracks. The subway carrying Illinois Central trains through town—which was crossed by the New York Central just behind the IC depot—burrowed through once level ground just west of the Journal-Gazette on Charleston. Downtown, as it was known, knew few empty storefronts and apart from two small parking lots, enjoyed two solid rows of buildings from Broadway’s 14th to 19th streets and the 1900 to 2100 blocks of Western.
It was, as noted, a small town, where a local reporter could pretty much perform her or his daily tasks on foot. City Hall was just a block north of Western on 19th street and the Hotel Grant was but a good stone’s throw from the newspaper’s offices. Most of the town’s service clubs—Rotary, Lions, etc.—met in the Grant and occasionally found me sharing their tables, lunch tab picked up by publisher Bill Hamel, and scribbling notes as the speaker expounded.
Other times, Dave Schultz and I would hop in a car and travel a mile or two for a feature story, like the one on the two elderly brothers—former managers at a local factory—who decades earlier renounced shirts and ties to begin farming. On a frigid January day in 1972, we talked with them in a barn as they contemplated their upcoming sale—they were giving it up after years riding a tractor, taking lunches in a small outbuilding on the farm, enduring the ups and downs of the agricultural cycle before returning home each night to the home they shared with their sister, like them unmarried.
Stories like these or ones featuring residents with ties to television movies of the week had a big impact. Many people in town knew them personally or had heard of them or had dealings with these townspeople. It was a small town—for good and ill.
The “ill” part came early in my time at the Journal-Gazette. Primarily, I covered sports for Kimball. Occasionally, I edged into his beat, Mattoon High School sports, like the day I was dispatched to take a photo of an athletic team, got them lined up, only to discover there was no film in my camera. Most sports assignments though were the through-the-cracks variety. That season both of Mattoon junior high schools had good basketball teams—Central, located at 21st and Western, the old high school building, and Jefferson, an early 1960s structure on the southeast side of town. That Jefferson team---particularly by a few parents—was envisioned the second coming, a future visitor to and winner of the state high school championships. For good reason, Kimball avoided in-person coverage of junior high and grade school sports. But the final meeting of Central and Jefferson at the latter’s gym generated too much pressure, especially after the legendary Bob Fallstrom of the Decatur Herald broke his similar rule and ran a piece on this supposed powerhouse-in-the-making down in Mattoon.
The Jefferson 9th grade squad was a very good team, frequently running up 100 points in its games, powered by a full-court press and run-and-gun offense. In addition to being skilled athletes, many of these players had reached what would be their full height, making them taller than opponents. Hoping for future physical growth, many anticipated the young men switching from blue and white uniforms to green and gold and within a year or two leading Mattoon to glory in the Assembly Hall. Most passionate in this view were a few of the players’ fathers. And some took that passion beyond the limits of reason, one of them reportedly getting in a fistfight or close to it with the father of a Central player.
On February 27, 1972—the showdown--Jefferson’s gymnasium was packed with supporters of both teams. Expectations for an easy Jefferson victory were brought up short by a scrappy Central team, led by a player who would later be backup quarterback on EIU’s national championship team. The game was exciting. Jefferson pulled away, only to have Central battle back until finally with just over seven minutes left, Central’s key player fouled out and the hosts attained a comfortable victory margin obscuring the game’s closeness.
My game story included the back-and-forth rhythm, the skills of the Jefferson team and the persistence of Central’s, plus statements from both coaches assigning the game’s turning point to the Central player’s departure. It was just another story about an exciting schoolboy game. Or until the afternoon newspaper was picked up off the front steps at two houses.
Stretched out on a couch at home, resting before yet another evening assignment, my peace was disturbed by a ringing telephone. The caller--Jefferson’s coach, literally screaming as he denounced the story and my general incompetence. No sooner than his tirade subsided, leaving me wondering if The Twilight Zone had a Mattoon episode, the phone ran again. The father of one of Jefferson’s leading players unleashed a screed that made the coach’s seem mild. His, as I recall, either included threats of physical violence or right up to the edge of it. That conversation may have ended with me hanging up the phone.
And the common source of the two tirades? The story had praised Jefferson’s team too little and Central’s too much.
Two reactions slowly settled in. First, would I get fired? Was this story so screwed up and, according to the Jefferson callers, biased in favor of the losing team that my months-old job would disappear? The second reaction had more long-term consequences. What kind of nut jobs would go ballistic over a junior high school basketball game? And, more significantly, if I were ever to write another story making people this mad shouldn’t it be about something important, a situation affecting a community or helping those who were voiceless or better yet, afflicting the powerful?
The first questions were answered quickly in the newsroom the next morning. Kimball, Kelly and Closson agreed the story was fine, pointing out my angry callers had reputations for this sort of behavior. And if any reassurance was needed, it came when the player’s father strode into the office seeking my head. He came down the aisle between news and advertising, and, leaning on a counter on the newsroom side, berated Closson. Coolly, Ralph Closson listened but made it clear the newspaper stood behind the game account. After a couple of decades at the JG, he was used to crackpots, realizing the best strategy was to allow the steam to blow, letting inaction provide the most powerful answer.
Contemplating the second set of questions, however, slowly shifted my goals away from the Busch Stadium press box and toward a less-defined but more attractive path, no doubt influenced by the exciting events recounted by the Chicago Sun-Times staff at its peak and what I later learned in graduate school was “zeitgeist,” the spirit of the age.
Even with Pamela McClenahan working full-time at St. Anthony’s Grade School in Effingham and my small J-G salary, it was a struggle to pay the rent and the car payment and our other tiny expenses, even with occasional help from my parents. Professional and economic needs drove my ambition. And when Jim Kimball kindly passed along my name to a legendary sports editor looking for help, a major opportunity to feed it appeared.
Loren Tate was the sports editor of the Champaign News-Gazette, then a powerhouse newspaper in central Illinois, boasting a huge news hole, seemingly endless space for sports coverage. Tate handled University of Illinois sports, but his staff was primarily concerned with prep coverage in its large circulation area. And working on that Tate-led staff had paved the way for others to jobs on papers higher up the food chain.
In fact, that was the problem. Tate had lost yet another and when we met in the litter-strewn old News-Gazette newsroom on the east side of Champaign’s downtown, it was clear he was ready to hire me. Except he demanded a promise to stay at least three years. In probably the only successful salary negotiation of my life, I took advantage of his need to make what I thought were outrageous money demands. He excused himself to meet with some higher-up and, returning, said, yes, we can make that happen.
Asking for a few days to talk it over with my wife, I promised a response soon. Back in Mattoon, while excited about the salary and prestige, the three-year commitment to sports troubled me. Was this what I wanted, was this my passion? The questions we ask ourselves and the answers we give at such moments, I can see now, determine life’s course. Mine was “no,” and that, with thanks for his consideration, was explained to Tate.
Some weeks later, another sports opening appeared at the Decatur Herald, led by the equally legendary Bob Fallstrom—someone I had literally grown up reading at the kitchen table. It was a good interview. It did not get as far as the one with Tate because as Bob and I had our pleasant and quite interesting conversation (Fallstrom was a great reader of non-sports books. My friend, the late Steve Fox, who worked for him termed Bob the “Mao” of sports editors), it was clear to both of us that sports was not my future. As it turned out, a bit down the road the impression I made played a role in my future.
And so I remained at the Journal-Gazette, transitioning to Lakers baseball and continuing as the newsroom utility player—covering the school board, trotting off to the Hotel Grant to interview whoever blew into town, assembling the “Odds and Ends” column for the editorial page (a collection of humorous stories provided by a news service), preparing the “Glancing Back” editorial page feature consisting of news snipped from papers of 50 and 25 years past, and whatever other duties--including janitorial--Closson deemed important.
Much of it has slipped from memory, preserved in long-forgotten and rarely readJournal-Gazette pages, but my state of mind in those months is clear—agitation. Like a nerve in a root canal performed without anesthetic, my ambition never stopped twitching, driving the desire to get better at my job and creating the uncertainty that plagues youth.
Questions peppered my mind daily. The answers were coming.

Mattoon, IL, circa 1972