Old Timers’ GamesA Transformation from Player Benefits Events to Clubs’ Historical Celebrations and the Rise of a Baseball Goodwill Communion

John McGraw famously quipped a century ago that baseball is about one thing: “The main idea is to win.”¹ Yet that is not the purpose of old timers’ games, the ceremonial and celebratory exhibitions by retired professional players whose ages and elapsed times since retirement may vary widely. The purposes and functions of the old timers’ game evolved from one-off independent charitable fund-raising events to club-based traditions focused on marketing and public relations for the sport. Fund-raising agendas dominated the earliest old timers’ games, particularly from the Civil War era to the middle of the Great Depression. Beneficiaries included individual ballplayers, war efforts, and civic charities such as local hospitals. Emulating these fundraising successes, the MLB clubs and the Hall of Fame incorporated an old timers’ game into their portfolio of special events to spur ticket sales. Old timers’ exhibitions for the most part do not honor single players (as do player appreciation events), nor do they pursue victory so much as they express general love of the game by ritual embrace of ceremony and celebration. A common theme, regardless of the specific purpose of a game, is that old timers’ games function as a secular baseball communion for remembering heroes past and generating baseball goodwill.

Of the thirty current MLB teams, only the Yankees continue to stage an old timers’ game. This study covers roughly the first century of baseball history, beginning with the New York Knickerbockers, who wrote the first rules in the 1840s, to 1947, the year the Yankees staged their first Old Timers’ Day. For this study, to be counted as an old timers’ game, an event had to have a connection to MLB players or a clear baseball significance. Using this definition, perhaps as few as eleven old timers’ games were played in the nineteenth century, and there were as few as forty-four such contests in the subsequent half-century through 1947 (see details in Appendices One and Two).² In contrast, there were more than 80,000 regular Major League, post-season, spring training, and in-season exhibition games in the same period. Thus, old timers’ games represent an infinitesimal proportion of all games played, perhaps 1 in 1,500.

There is no official database for old timers’ games. The glossary of Baseball-reference.com does not include a listing for old timers’ games,³ and since these games are unofficial exhibitions, they are not listed in comprehensive Retrosheet.org database nor in any of the online regular season compilations of box scores.

Nineteenth century old timers’ games

The rough and tough nineteenth century produced an estimated dozen scheduled old timers’ games, of which ten were actually played. As the game evolved, so too did the concept of the old timers’ game. Some games were against other professional teams, while other were against selected amateur teams who served as likeable and easily beaten opponents. The games went a full nine innings except with the intervention of inclement weather, cold or rain.

Given the challenges of defining an old timers’ game, and the overlap in early baseball history between amateur and professional activities, it is not surprising that declaring which game was the first old timers’ game is subject to debate. There are four nineteenth-century games that might claim to be the “first” old timers’ game: [1] William Ryczek, in Baseball’s First Inning, proposes that the first such game took place on October 14, 1864, when the elder players staged a contest against their newer, hopeful replacement Atlantics. The Brooklyn Eagle of October 14, 1864, used the term “old-fellers” to describe those elder players.⁴ [2] John Thorn, in Baseball in the Garden of Eden, argues that the first old timers’ game was staged by the non-professional amateur dues-paying gentlemen Knickerbockers on the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, on September 26, 1875.⁵ The October 9, 1875, edition of the New York Clipper used the term “old duffers.”⁶ [3] The first all-professional baseball...