Portsmouth Rockinghams to Play Ball (Again)

Long before Portsmouth area residents rooted for the Red Sox, they cheered on another team, the Portsmouth Rockinghams, who are now ready to make a come back.

The new Essex Baseball Organization team isn't going to walk out of a cornfield like in the movie "Field of Dreams," but league President Brian Sheehy said they will recreate what baseball was like when it was first played by teams in Massachusetts and New Hampshire more than a century and a half ago.

In an e-mail, Sheehy wrote that the Portsmouth Rockinghams last played in the city from 1866 to 1867. He wrote they will have team tryouts this spring.

"On May 4 we are having an open recruiting/practice day at Strawberry Banke at 12pm and then in August the Rockinghams will be playing the Lowell Base Ball Nine. This is a rematch of a game that took place in the 1860s and will be sponsored by the Portsmouth Athenaeum," Sheehy wrote.

Sheehy said the Essex Baseball Organization, which has five teams in Massachusetts, seeks to educate the public about how baseball was played during its earliest days by playing games the way they were played. Teams don't use baseball gloves, wear authentic uniforms and many of the players even sport signature handle bar mustaches.