Fielding dreams

(Correction: Because of a graphic artist's error, a map with a story about the Town of Clinton's baseball field in Sunday's City & Region section incorrectly labeled two routes. Route 70 was wrongly labeled 33 and Route 110 was marked as 128.)

CLINTON -- Think of a lazy fly ball to center that rides a sudden gust out of the ballpark for a home run.

Fuller Field was just a modest baseball diamond in a modest old mill town -- until the map.

Discovered tucked away in a town building, a fraying, watermarked map from 1878 puts the ball field at the heart of a lofty -- if difficult to prove -- claim: that it is the world's oldest baseball field in continuous use.

Little inspires nostalgia in America like baseball, and little ignites excitement among fans more than the game's storied past. So as news of the discovery spreads across Clinton, the town is wondering eagerly whether its run-of-the-mill diamond about 35 miles west of Fenway Park might become a real-life field of dreams for ballpark buffs.

''You start to think, 'I'm standing in the same spot as players better than 100 years ago,' " said Peter McNally, 31, who has played at Fuller Field since he was 13. ''In a small way, you're part of history."

The claim rests largely on the map, unearthed last summer by a local historian and bearing the words ''Clinton Base Ball Ground." Comparisons to modern photographs show that Fuller Field lies in precisely the same place.

It began when the historian A.J. Bastarache was combing through old box scores as he researched a recently published history of the town. He concluded that organized baseball has been played at the diamond without interruption since at least 1878, when Tim Keefe, later inducted into the Hall of Fame as a pitcher, played third base for the Clinton Base Ball Club. A few years later, Billy Hamilton, a renowned base stealer and another eventual Hall of Famer, played at the field.

''It's like a time warp," said Bastarache, 46. ''Keefe and Hamilton could come back today and recognize the field instantly."

Newspaper accounts indicate that it has hosted organized baseball games at many levels ever since, Bastarache said.

Baseball historians say they cannot independently confirm Bastarache's discovery. Many have greeted the claim with enthusiasm and confidence of its authenticity; others are dubious.

If it holds up, it would be the second major baseball discovery in Massachusetts in as many baseball seasons. Last year, baseball historian John Thorn discovered a 1791 town ordinance in Pittsfield prohibiting baseball from being played near a new meetinghouse. (That far predated Abner Doubleday's putative invention of the game in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1839, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame concluded that the ordinance was the first known written reference to the game.)

Thorn, for one, is unimpressed by the field claim. He noted that baseball had been played for years across the country by the 1870s, and that many old maps depict baseball fields.

''This seems to be a search for another category of firsts," he said.

But Clinton is hoping the bragging rights could be a boon.

Don Lowe, the town's director of community and economic development, is optimistic that baseball fans holding romantic visions of the game's early days would travel to see the world's longest-running diamond.

''There are a lot of baseball buffs out there," he said. ''It could become another destination point for day-trippers."

Maegen McCaffrey, executive director of the Wachusett Chamber of Commerce in Clinton, is not drawing up plans for a visitors' center just yet. But she relishes the possibility of traditionalists flocking to town to pay homage.

''It could be a wonderful thing for this area," she said. ''If that becomes something we can promote to bring people to shop in our shops and eat in our restaurants, we'll absolutely be on board."

Bastarache's quest started about a year ago, when he came across box scores of the Clinton Base Ball Club while combing through newspapers from the 1870s. He wondered where home games were played.

He determined the field was probably exactly where it sits today -- on the northern edge of town along the Nashua River. But he could not prove it until a historical society member, at his prodding, went looking through old maps in a storage closet.

Though darkened and dog-eared by age, the four-by-five-foot oilcloth survey map shows a visible date and clearly depicts the field in its present location.

Ballpark experts caution that the field's age cannot be determined definitively. But they say the map's spelling of baseball as two words and its reference to the field as ''grounds" are consistent with 1870s lexicon.

''That certainly lends it credibility," said Phil Lowry, a ballpark historian with the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and the author of ''Green Cathedrals," one of the first histories of baseball stadiums.

Organized baseball was particularly popular in the 1870s in Central Massachusetts mill towns such as Clinton, where there are newspaper references to games dating back to 1873, according to local historian Terry Ingano.

Bastarache has submitted the first claim that a field is the oldest in continuous use to the Guinness World Records, and he plans to lobby the National Park Service to name the field a historic landmark. (The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown only keeps track of Major League parks.)

''A hundred twenty seven years in the same spot is a very big deal," said Bob Bluthardt, chairman of SABR's Ballparks Committee and Dorchester native.

Fuller Field's main competition appears to be Labatt Park in London, Ontario, which bills the 1877 ballpark as the world's oldest diamond in continuous use, an assertion most baseball historians had generally supported. Bastarache believes London's claim is unjustified, because the diamond has moved several times over the years because of flooding, most recently in 1934.

Kent McVittie, manager of recreation services and attractions for London, acknowledges that the diamond moved but said it has always remained on the same grounds. The park would need ''compelling evidence" and outside corroboration before it would consider dropping its claim, he said, adding that park and tourism officials in Ontario have always been careful to add that Labatt Park is ''believed to be" the world's oldest diamond still in use.

For his part, Bastarache holds no illusions that Fuller will forever have this distinction. But he is confident the field deserves it for now.

''Until someone else finds an old map in a closet," he said.

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.