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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