Baseball Exhibit Currently on Display at the Beachville Museum

Sunday, 19 July 2015 11:48

The public can explore the rich history of baseball that resides in Beachville

BEACHVILLE - Oxford County has many unique attractions to offer but many are unaware of Beachville's special connection with baseball.

Assistant at the Beachville Museum, Amy McCulloch, explains what the exhibit provides. "Beachville has a pretty rich history in baseball, it is the site of the first recorded site of baseball in North America. There has always been baseball artifacts coming in, we get a lot of people that know that Beachville has something to do with baseball, but they aren't sure what so the exhibit gets to explain that a lot."

The exhibit at the Beachville Museum is promising to be a home run for families, and McCulloch knows the public can thank one man in particular for documenting this historic game. "Dr. Ford wrote a letter in 1886 about a game that he witnessed when he was 7 in 1838. It was fact checked that this game did take place in 1838 because he wrote a letter to a magazine called the Sporting Life that ended up publishing what he saw." Many of the artifacts present in the museum located on Beachville Road have been checked had their significance confirmed by professors from the University of Western Ontario.

McCulloch knows this exhibit is an experience like no others. "It was kind of a totally different experience when you are actually in a room full of the artifacts, and you know that these artifacts came from the community that were used in the 1800's to play baseball. Looking at pictures and reading online does not really do the history justice. People that have any sort of baseball knowledge, or even people that don't will really be surprised of the origins of the game and it is very different than it is now." The game may have changed significantly over a span of nearly 2 centuries but the fundamental rules still apply. The exhibit outlining the timeline of baseball will be on display until July 31st.