Kingston Guards bring baseball back to the basics

These aren’t your standard gym rats trying to relive their high school or college glory.

The Kingston Guards are playing ball the way it used to be played. To be specific, they’re playing baseball by the rules of 1864, the last full season before the Civil War. To them, it’s a purer form of the game, devoid of constant rule changes and all that pesky equipment like gloves, helmets and catchers’ masks. Sure, there are umpires, but they’re really there more to settle arguments than make actual calls.

The whole game feels less aggressive and more friendly. In fact, many of the players on the Guards and other teams in the vintage baseball scene came from softball leagues that had simply become too competitive. These aren’t your standard gym rats trying to relive their high school or college glory. More often, they’re history buffs looking for something a little more athletic than the synchronized marching of Civil War reenactments — though, to be fair, some of them are still Civil War reenactors.

While decidedly less competitive, this brand of vintage baseball isn’t necessarily less involved. The Guards practice every week. They travel the eastern seaboard playing teams like the Boniva Dairymen, the Ulster Nine and the Hunky Dory Base Ball Club of Lansdale. They even attend a two-day vintage base ball festival in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where teams from across the country gather to take in a side of military history with their friendly competition.

The vintage baseball movement appears to have gotten its start in the mid-1990s, perhaps as a response to the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, which resulted in a canceled postseason and World Series. As the Major League Baseball Players Association prepares to renegotiate its collective bargaining agreement after the 2026 season, rumors swirl of another such eventuality. With many baseball fans disillusioned by an increasingly capitalistic league, another strike could fuel interest in vintage baseball.

The rules are the same for all these clubs, but the uniforms certainly are not. The Guards wear thick woolen uniforms that team member Brock “The Badger” Mehan describes as not just hot, but “humid.”The Dairymen, in the Catskills, don slacks, button-down blouses, suspenders and newsboy caps. But no matter the uniform on their backs, everybody seems to be on the same team.

You can catch the Guards in all their old-time action when take the field at the Rhinebeck Aerodrome on Aug. 14 and Sept. 11.