According to many baseball historians baseball didn’t always have 9 players. Actually depending on which version of baseball you are talking about it some times had as many as 20 or 30. But the version you know of today may have been played with 8-11 players. The codified rules of 1857 was the first time the rules mandated nine players. In the 1870s there was actually talk of adding an extra shortstop evening out the field to 10 players each (let’s not get in to the designated hitter here).

Playing modern day vintage baseball can leave some teams short of players at the last minute. I have played in a couple of games in which we were short a player for each team, limiting us to 8 players each. We managed to get by with the batting team supplying the catcher. (It really is an honest game.)

It appears that 19th baseball teams sometimes had problems fielding a full nine for games. In 1869 the Red Rover Base Ball Club of Fairhaven played the Union Base Ball Club also of Fairhaven. The Red Rover, using only eight players, beat the Union club by a score of 35 to 28. The box score for the game suggests that the Red Rover went without a left fielder.  I would guess that they shifted their fielders around when they needed.

Probably one of the more unique games with less than nine involved the Riverside Base Ball Club of Acushnet and an “unattached nine” of New Bedford.  Both clubs took the field with only 7 players. The unattached went without a right and left fielder while the Riverside club went with out a shortstop and center fielder.

Some how it seems that the Riverside club made the better choice in using two outfielders. But the unattached players beat them 45-22 in 5 innings. Unfortunately the newspaper at the time didn’t give any information about how the game was played with so few players other than the box score and line score:

Runs in each Inning.

Riverside,                  0          0          8          10        4

Unattached,               9          14        12        3          7

A couple of weeks before this game the same two teams played. It is not noted in the papers of the time if both teams had their full 9 players for the game but these unattached fellows beat the Riverside club in that game 70-34. Not bad for “9″ guys without a team.