Columbus Capitals
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- This page is on the baseball team. For the indoor soccer team see Columbus Capitals (indoor soccer).
The Capital Base Ball Club is a vintage base ball team based on the original Capital Club which was one of three baseball clubs formed in 1866 in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The Capitals play an active schedule of approximately 15-20 matches a season. Their uniforms —- dark blue trousers and hats, blue and white checked shirts with white shields -— were designed from newspaper accounts of those worn by the original 1866 Columbus team.
The Capital Club often holds its matches at the playing field at the Ohio Village on the grounds of the Ohio Historical Society at 17th Avenue and I-71 on the north side of Columbus, near the Ohio State Fairgrounds. The Capitals also play on other local venues, often partnering with the Ohio Village Muffins to present an entertaining and educational demonstration of how the national pastime was played in the 1860s. One such joint effort is an annual game at Schiller Park in the German Village area of Columbus which re-creates an actual match of July 11, 1867 held on those very grounds (known as City Park at that time) between the Columbus Capitals and the visiting Washington Nationals. In this historic re-creation game, the Capitals portray their forebears, and the Muffins portray the visiting Nationals, one of the top clubs of the 1860s and the first eastern club to make a tour of western cities. Columbus was the first stop on the Nationals' historic tour in 1967 when baseball was spreading into the Midwest and becoming known as the national game.
The Capitals-Nationals match is notable in that three members of the Baseball Hall of Fame were on the field. George Wright was in the lineup for the Nationals. Harry Wright, George's brother and the captain of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, came up from the Queen City to umpire the game and escort the Nationals to the next stop on their tour. Henry Chadwick, the 19th-century sportswriter, rules expert, and originator of the box score, accompanied the Nationals as their official scorer and wrote articles about the tour for the eastern newspapers.
In addition to its matches in Columbus, the Capital Base Ball Club also embarks on road trips several times a year to play other vintage team throughout Ohio and other states. Recent out-of-state trips have included games at The Museum of the Civil War Soldier (Pamplin Park) in Petersburg, Virginia, the World Series of Base Ball at Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the annual National Road Festival in Addison, Pennsylvania, the Field of Dreams film location in Dyersville, Iowa, and the Silver Ball Tournament in Rochester, Minnesota. The Capitals are also regular participants in the Ohio Cup Vintage Base Ball Festival hosted every year by the Ohio Historical Society over the Labor Day weekend.
The Columbus Capital Base Ball Club was founded in the off-season of 1997-98 by a group of members of the Ohio Village Muffins. At that time, the Ohio Historical Society was considering changing the time period of Ohio Village from 1860 to the turn of the century. In order to preserve the opportunity to continue playing vintage base ball by the rules and practices of the 1860s, the Capital Club was formed. Research was conducted on early Columbus-area teams and the Capital Club was selected as the model for the new vintage club. When OHS abandoned plans to change the time period of Ohio Village, the Capital Club was maintained since the research done on the founding of the original club showed a heritage worthy of preservation. Members of historic Columbus Capital Base Ball Club also continue to participate in vintage base ball as players, scorekeepers, umpire and interpreters for the Ohio Village Muffins. The Capital Club is a member of the Vintage Base Ball Association and takes great satisfaction and enjoyment from re-creating base ball as it was played in Columbus during the game's formative years.
