BINGO FAT:

The Brooklyn Fat Men's baseball team traveled to Long Island to take on the Fat Men's Club of Flushing. Upon arriving, Brooklyn's starting nine crammed onto a hay scale. They weighed in at 2,211 lbs., or 245 per person. The New York Times described the team in a colorful article that ran on October 9, 1885. 

"They were all [formerly professional] baseball men ... since grown obese on beer and politics, but they were a lusty set of athletes and they declared that they could run their own bases and only wanted two small boys to assist the catcher."

After the weigh-in, the Brooklyn players positioned "resuscitating beer kegs ... at convenient intervals" while their captain addressed the media. Identified only as "Supervisor Jones," he did not hide his discriminatory approach to roster building. 

"I say with pride," Jones bellowed, "that no man is allowed in this organization who weighs less than 212 pounds." Leading by example, he tipped the scale at an impressive 325. "His general appearance," the reporter from The Times noted, "was that of the man in the moon in the gibbous state."

Jones was looking forward to the game, but dressing for it had proved challenging. He paid a boy 25 cents to help stuff him into his uniform. As the Brooklyn players finished their warmup, they noticed something was missing. Their opponents were nowhere to be seen. 

"The Flushing men," The Times reported, "had mysteriously disappeared, all save the captain, who was discovered peering over the fence in unspeakable awe. Upon the arrival of the massy Brooklynites, they had become stricken with remorse at their own puny showing, which would not average more than 225 pounds to the player." 

"The Brooklynites were highly indignant and so were the spectators, and their rage was with difficulty modified by frequent potations of the amber flood." In other words, the big boys got their drink on. 

Despite this story's anticlimactic ending, the day was not without drama. The wagon that had carted the "individual masses of rotund corpulency" from the train station to the ballpark nearly collapsed. 

If you start researching the Fat Men's Clubs that enjoyed prominent social status across America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the first motifs you notice is that transportation was often perilous -- but not for the clubs' members.

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