Gettysburg 19th Century Base Ball Festival showcases game’s history

• Scott LaMar
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  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

 Scott LaMar/WITF

Airdate: July 13th, 2023

Major League baseball just played its annual All-Star game Tuesday night and but if you’re looking for a chance to watch the game in its purest form, go to Gettysburg this weekend.

The Gettysburg National 19^th Century Base Ball Festival will be played Saturday and Sunday with 30 clubs from all over the country competing in a field on a family farm.

Bruce Leith, President of the Gettysburg 19th Century Base Ball Festival, described the festival on The Spark Thursday,”The best way to explain it is it would be like watching the Gettysburg Battle reenactments. But instead of using fake bullets, we would actually be using real ones. They’re going to be playing baseball by the same exact rules that we played that was played in 1864 in the Adams County area. Baseball was going on there. We’re going to be using the same style of uniforms and equipment and playing by the same rules and customs as as you would have seen back then, in the mid-19th century.”

Leith was asked what some of the differences are between base ball in 1864 and today’s game,”The ball is going to be coming in underhanded. It’s not going to be thrown at a hundred miles an hour. Back then, it was it was made to put up there almost on a tee so that people could hit it. It was a hitter’s game, not really a pitching game. So the ball come in underhanded. But the the pitcher’s mound that we know today was really a flat spot. It was only 45 feet away, instead of 60 feet away. And it’s 12 feet long. So a pitcher can stand anywhere inside that box to throw the ball. The bats will be, for the most part, they’re hand turned bats that a lot of people make themselves. Or there’s a couple special companies that make them, but that’s the style that they had back then. It’s a little bit thicker handle, a little bit different barrel, but they’re all be wood bats. And then what one of the other big things you’ll see is you can get an out, you can get it on one bounce. So if you hit the ball 400 feet in the air, it bounces once and the outfielder gets underneath it and catches a bounce, you’re out. Same thing when you foul tip the ball back to the catcher who doesn’t have any equipment on. You know, it’s just his bare hands. None of us have any kind of equipment whatsoever. There’s no catcher’s equipment, no gloves, nothing like that. So if you tip the ball back to the catcher who’s standing probably about ten feet behind you, he can catch on one bounce. So there’s little things like that that fans will see. You can’t over run first base. If you do, you can get tagged out.”