Keller connects baseball past and present
When Hingham’s vintage baseball team faces off against a team from New Bedford later this month, the rules won't be the only thing from another era.
The 1890s-style players will be wielding bats from that period made by fledgling historian and craftsman Jeff Keller of Norwell.
Keller, who sustains a Norwell-Hingham baseball connection dating back to the 1880s—something Keller learned through his own research-- is one of more than 30 players on two Hingham teams who will be playing at Derby Academy on Aug. 23 against the Ironsides Vintage Base Ball Club of New Bedford.
Some Hingham players will swing bats made from a tree that was struck by lightning on the former property of Baseball Hall of Famer Mike “King” Kelly—who lived in Hingham in the 1880s when he was a star for the Boston Beaneaters.
Last summer, the vintage team held a party at Kelly’s sprawling former home, now owned by Moira and Cameron Congdon. As wine and beer flowed and music played, a storm rolled in. Soon, partygoers were gasping and cheering as lightning struck several trees surrounding the pool and patio area.
The party had been moved inside the property's large barn and no one was hurt, but players, being a superstitious lot, saw the charred tree and its wood as a symbol of good luck.
“It was a sign from Kelly,” Keller said.
This story has been revised from an earlier version, which incorrrectly reported that the Aug. 23 games would be played in New Bedford.
With the encouragement of teammates, Keller, a woodcrafter who travels to fairs and festivals a few times a year to sell handcrafted pieces, gathered the debris and set to work making bats from wood that wasn’t scorched or marred by insects and other natural enemies of wood and its crafters.
Several of the finished bats--made to the same size and specifications as 1880s bats and based on photographs and replicas—have been donated to Hingham’s Historical Society as memorabilia. Others are used by players on the field.
In addition to bat making, Keller has been pursuing another Norwell-Hingham baseball for six years.
It involves Ansel Grose, one of three sons of Charles Grose, a prominent Norwell shoemaker whose factory, barns, stables, and homes surround the High Street area in Norwell, once called Ridge Hill.
Keller, the associate publisher of New England Real Estate Journal in Norwell, lives in on eof those homes. It's a Victorian that was built in 1867 by Charles Grose and refurbished by Keller.
Keller heard that Ansel Grose played for an amateur baseball team in Hingham and began to scour town records and archives for evidence. Keller has been to numerous state historical organizations and local cemeteries, and even met with Grose descendants living in Texas.
What was supposed to be a quick endeavor begun in 2003 has become a research project lasting more than six years and has unearthed a wealth of information, documents, and photographs about the Grose family and shoemaking in Norwell.
For all intents and purposes, Keller is now an expert on the Grose family.
“I was curious about who lived herem and there was this mystery about what happened to the Ansel kid,” Keller said. “It’s one of those things—the more you look the more questions you have and the more you need to keep going.”
Unfortunately, Keller said, he learned that Ansel’s story doesn’t have a happy ending.
Described as a sickly child who fought a thin frame weak system, Ansel was tenacious and quick on the ball field for a team in Hanover and then in Hingham in 1887. He stopped playing in 1888 after an artery rupture. He then developed tuberculosis, and after trying numerous remedies, Ansel died in 1891 of consumption, nine days shy of his 25th birthday.
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