Northville's earliest known baseball game occurred on Monday, August 30, 1869, between the home town 'Eclipse' and the 'Lone Star' team of Plymouth. The match persisted for three hours-forty-five minutes and when nine full innings were finally completed, the Eclipse had out-tallied their neighboring opponents, 53-36.

As the Northville nine left the ball-grounds and parted on their various paths homeward, who could have envisioned that 134 years later, someone would actually seek a way to recreate the evening's diversion? That someone would be Wayne Titus, a transplant from Ohio, who had played on the Canal Fulton 'Mules', a vintage base ball club competing against other teams by the rules and more gentlemanly conduct of the 1860s.

One of Wayne's personal goals in starting his business in downtown Northville was to give back to the community. He volunteered to assist the Chamber of Commerce by selling chicken sandwiches at the 2002 Victorian Festival, and soon realized that the only era-appropriate attire in his closet was his old 'Mules' uniform. When the uniform was recognized by someone in the crowd, the resulting exchange spawned an idea. By the following week, Wayne was conducting research and probing to see if there might be any interest in forming a local vintage ball club. Through the Northville District Library, Wayne learned of the August 30th, 1869 game and soon presented his plan to the Recreation Department, Historical Society, and various other community organizations, gradually gaining support and an increasing roster of potential players.

The new team would embrace the nickname of the 'Eclipse' club that played its only chronicled game a century before last. But what inspired the original club to adopt such a moniker? On the very day of Sam Little's inaugural edition of the Wayne County Record, (later renamed Northville Record) a scientifically significant solar eclipse swiped a path across the Midwest and passed just south of our state offering a portion of its full effect to Northville and southeastern Michigan. Could this celestial event have been the reason that, just twenty-three days later, a team of local base ballists took the field as the 'Eclipse'?

When this question was tossed out to the online discussion list of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research), several members responded with lengthy and articulate perspectives on the topic. Author and noted baseball historian, John Thorn, offered:

'I think we need to look not only to the heavens for the source of inspiration but also to the horse-race tracks. In May of 1823, at a racecourse in Queens, the northern-bred horse 'Eclipse' defeated a southern challenger named 'Henry'. 'Eclipse' was also known as 'American Eclipse', to distinguish it from the Arabian horse of the same name that won fame in the previous century (and whose name still honors champions through the Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year). This 'English Eclipse' was foaled on April 1, 1764, during a solar eclipse. The symbolic value of this race was not lost upon the sporting community and 'Eclipse' came to be synonymous with fortitude, endurance, supreme athletic ability, and high character.'

The name, 'Eclipse', was also assigned to a famous clipper ship; a couple of period fiddle tunes and, other ball clubs of the 19th century. The impetus for the naming of Northville's 1869 team, will likely remain a topic for speculation, the truth long lost when the voices of some bygone brain-storming session or impromptu prattle echoed and then soon dissipated into unrecorded silence.

While the recreated Eclipse team employs the old nickname, it did not initially manage to achieve the old club's success on the field. In the first eleven games of the season, it had yet to score half as many runs as did the 1869 club on a single evening! Winning is not the primary objective of the current Northville Eclipse Base Ball Club, however. The notion hatched from Wayne Titus's mind in September of 2002, has given fifteen to twenty participating members a chance to merge their love of baseball and history and offers to the community yet another charming feature upon its Victorian face.

From the early newspaper account, we know the names and positions of the 1869 players, and while the new Eclipse abstains from taking on those identities, they have instead revived the lost art of saddling their comrades with befitting handles such as 'Anchor,' 'Barrister,' 'Bullhorn,' 'Cashbox,' 'Crusher,' 'Doc,' 'Hammer,' 'Inky,' 'Kid,' 'Lucky,' 'Paddy,' 'Pig Pen,' 'Pops,' 'Preacher,' 'Slugger,' 'Sticky Feet,' 'Stogie,' 'Toad,' 'Toes,' and 'Z'. Most Eclipse players concede to having physically matured beyond their athletic prime. Some have stepped back onto the diamond after years of inactivity while others have grown weary of the competitive, trash-talking posture seeming to prevail in the baseball and softball leagues of past affiliations. Vintage base ballists instead compliment and congratulate one another with almost superfluous, gentlemanly, 19th century etiquette, oft engaging in waggish dialogue for the amusement of participants and spectators alike.

They are therefore interpreters as much as ballplayers. The excitement of a well-struck ball, a show of 'ginger' on the base paths, or a fine defensive play occasionally induces players to slip briefly into contemporary jargon, but they readily catch and correct themselves to renew their personal pact to apply 19th century terminology and pleasantries to the occasion. This, along with old-style uniforms; subtle rule variants; player positioning; and corresponding strategy modifications set vintage base ball apart from the baseball with which most of us are familiar.

As part of the 2003 Victorian Festival activities, the Eclipse Base Ball Club hosted the Canal Fulton Mules on Saturday, September 13th, and the Rochester Grangers the following day, at Northville's Ford Field, adjacent to Mill Race Village. Wayne Titus wasn't selling chicken sandwiches at the 2003 festival. He did so the previous year, and for that reason, he instead tramped the sod of the local ball grounds with new friends and acquaintances who thought his idea was first rate!