Earnest Franklin: I’ve known a game of base to last two or three hours because some of the runners were so good. The game was usually played at school and took the place of our baseball today. Most one-room schools could about make a good team if they used all the kids they had. You have to have an umpire because the game gets pretty confusing.
Any number of people can play. They are divided into two equal teams and each team is assigned to a base. The two bases face each other twenty to thirty feet apart or more depending on the running ability of the players, the terrain, etc. The bases are long enough so that each player can touch the base simultaneously.
The object of the game is to circle the opponent’s base and return “home” without being caught and tagged out by one of the opponents. There is usually no restriction on how far a player runs. [Ernest remembers one time that a player circled so far through the woods around an opponent’s base that he didn’t get back until after school was finished for the day.] Play continues until all the players on one side are out—or until the referee stops the game.
The rule to remember is that if a player has touched his base since you left yours, he can tag you out unless you beat him back to your home base or he is intercepted and chased away or tagged out by one of your teammates.
Play usually begins with a player from one side approaching the enemy base and getting as close as he can to it without being tagged out. When a member of the opposite team is taunted into chasing him, he gets back to his home base as quickly as he can. If he is tagged before he gets home, he drops out. Meanwhile, another player from the same base may be trying to circle the opposite team’s base. If this player makes it back home safely, the opposite team has to eliminate one of their men. They usually pick one of their slower men and make him drop out and save their strongest runners for as long as they can.
At least one player stays on base at all times to protect it.
—Foxfire 6
I’ve never played this game, but I used the trick Ernest mentioned when we played hide and seek. Although I didn’t go near that far!
Most often our base for hide and seek was the back step of Papaw and Mamaw’s house (in later years it was Uncle Henry’s house). I would go around the front of the house and try to make a big loop and come out of the woods in back of the house while whoever was it was chasing other people. Sometimes it worked.
Tipper
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We played a similar game called running base. We played it during recess in elementary school. There was a large cleared area much like a field beside the school which served as a playground. There was no playground equipment, just the flat empty field. It was mowed and had just grass with a row of cedar trees on the far side. We would chose up teams and draw a long line across 2 opposing sides. Those were the bases. We would have a person to call start. Each team lined up at the base line on their side so you had two long lines of runners. When the order to start was called each runner would run towards the opposite side trying to tag as many people as possible on the way. If you were tagged, you now taken back to the other teams base line. Once you were over the line nobody could tag you and you were safe until the next round. All tagged players now belonged to the team that tagged them. The game ended when all players on a team were tagged and none were left. There was constantly changing teammates and the larger a team got the more players there were to run after you. In the end everyone was chasing the best runners. If a runner got to the opposite base without being tagged, they were safe for that round. Those folks would go back to their own line and a new round would be called. The game could last for a long time.
Hi Tipper. We played Annie Over, Dodge Ball, Red Rover, Red light/Green Light and Mother May I. We played Marbles, Jacks, Hopscotch, Mumbly Peg, Jump Rope, Chinese Jump Rope, Kick The Can, Duck Duck Goose, Hide and Seek, Tug of War, Hot Potato, Hula Hoops, Musical Chairs, Frisbee, I Spy, Tetherball, Simon Says, Tag, Blind Man’s Bluff, Follow The Leader, Pick Up Sticks, and Leap Frog.
I’m not familiar with base, but I’m my BSA Troop we often played two outside games. One was called kick the can and the other was British Bulldogs. Had anyone else heard of these. This was in the 1960’s so BSA was all boys then.
Was there no live on Monday?
I’ve never heard of this game. We played hide and seek out outside of school and there were so many places in the woods to hide. We’d play for hours. On the subject of dodge ball, I recall that game to have definitely have been a form of bullying in elementary school. The ball would be hurled at certain students by boys who were allowed to get by with such behavior. The students were hit anywhere, even in the head. I am surprised someone was never really hurt…maybe they were, but wouldn’t tell. How could teachers stand by and allow this to go on? We knew it was wrong, and hurtful to our classmates, yet I don’t remember ever saying anything. I am glad finally someone recognized this was not a school yard game and saw it for what it was. Sadly, things seem to have only escalated. Lord help our children to know right and wrong and love thy neighbor.
In less than one more generation all those old games will be lost. Kids don’t play outside. If, by some accident of fate, or the loss of an Internet connection, kids are forced outside by frazzled parents, there are no other neighborhood kids from a quarter mile away to come play with them.
We played outside from after breakfast until supper time. We played our games but we had the most fun when another kid introduced us to a new game learned from another neighborhood.
Do you suppose in 2 or 3 generations there will be folks talking about the good old days of playing games on their computers using the Internet? Or, will this activity fade faster than snowball in Hell?
Base sounds like a game a bunch of kids could really enjoy! We played dodge ball in school in early 1970’s grade school and basically you lined up on two sides and wailed a ball (with a spin that burned when it hit the leg) back and forth and if it touched a body, they were out until the last kid standing. My grandfather who’d be well over a hundred years now adored baseball. Balls are used in play all over the world and it’s a healthy outlet of physical exercise and play. It seems balls have been used hundreds of years for games. I’d love to be the kid or his friend who left school and was “found” after school let out still playing. I bet he was popular that year…here’s to the trend setter and those who can’t be contained in the “box.” Here’s to fun, running and laughter of children. It’s one of life’s greatest joys. To sit and watch them in action makes me tired yet brings memories of being little back to me. If it ain’t rained every day here over a month, I’m a monkey’s uncle. We need rain, but not rottening to the ground rain. All the wild cherry trees here are looking dead and yellow leaves falling off. My yard has had 2 box drains with pipe tubing installed just to keep my basement dry just yesterday. I had a window well I had to use hydraulic concrete (and floor too in an area) and a reinforced barrier around it of concrete to keep the basement dry. It’s been a rough go of sorts going through this experience, but it seems taken care of. If you’ve never heard of box drains or hydraulic cement, it’s all great stuff and a flooding game changer. I pray you’re all high and dry and don’t have mold issues in your head or home. YIKES. School started here on the 11th and a young man I raised starts his junior year of college today…it stays darker later in the morning and gets darker earlier in the evening.
Sadie, I reckon I am doing good, I am high and dry! There have been storms all around me but I am getting very little rain, last night one came very close but I hardly got enough rain to settle the dust. The blessing is I am not having the damage other areas that are getting the storms and plenty of rain are having from the strong winds and some with flooding. I have been getting more rain this summer than in the last years, but noticed this week the water coming over the waterfall in the creek on my property is hardly more than a good trickle.
We did play Base when we were kids but I had forgotten about it.
We never played Hide-and-Seek as some have mentioned, we played Hoopy-Hide!
My first thought was to joke around: “Standup ‘base’ or electric?”, because that’s the sort of individual I am. Some things you don’t joke about, but deliberately confusing soundalike words in a playful manner, when the subject is about playing, well, I can’t see the harm! 😉
My favorite school yard game was dodge ball, which satisfied normal competitiveness while releasing energy. The downside of that game was a tendency for stronger, more aggressive boys to throw the ball harder than was necessary. That was a form of bullying, of course, which is why dodge ball rightly fell into disfavor.
We played a game in New England called “Keep Away” which sounds similar although I don’t think there were bases. It was great to hear about this game.
I haven’t heard of this game, but can see where it could get pretty crazy.
I hope everyone came out of the storms ok last night.
Never played base, but like Tioper, it reminds me of hide-and-seek. Us grandkids played that in Grandma’s yard using the yardlight pole as base. I liked to be where I could watch everything “it” did. If the hiding place wa good enough, I’d not come in to base at all. Mostly though the idea was to work around and sneak back to base safely, never getting caught at all.
We never played games like that at my one room for each grade country grammar school. The boys played baseball and the girls played other things at recess. The boys and girls were not allowed to play together. Grammar or elementary school was 1st- 7th grades and high school 8th-12th grades. We did not have kindergarten or middle school. We did play tag or hide and seek after church was over on Sunday nights while the adults would stay and stand around talking to one another. Nowadays it seems like after the service is over everyone is trying to leave as fast as they can and the only games the children are interested in is on their cell phone.
I’ve never played Base, but played Hide and Seek many times in my youth. Then later on with my daughter and much later with my granddaughter when they were both young. I’ve even played it with my kids class at church. Lots of fun memories playing Hide and Seek.
God bless the Pressley and Wilson families, God bless Papaw Tony, Matt’s father, with deliverance from sickness and disease, Lord heal his body and make him well in Jesus name, God bless anybody else sick,suffering and struggling in Jesus name
I never played this game, it’s sounds fun. I played hide and seek, red rover, and lots of hand clapping games, and dodge ball. I did a lot of swinging. I’d travel far and do all kinds of things in my mind.
The name Earnest Franklin is what is sticking out to me. My grandfather’s name was Ernest Franklin from Sevierville County. Wondering if any connection? I never heard of that game, but me did play similar games like that. Have a great day.