Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that loves baseball as much as Ozzie Smith loved doing backflips.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about one of the most bizarre baseball games of all time.

Some things just don’t go well together.

Jeff Kent and motorcycles, Curt Schilling and video games, Lenny Dykstra and options trading; there’s really a bunch of examples.

I’d probably put baseball and ice skating on that list too, but in the 1860s, both sports were getting immensely popular at the same time.

At some point, people got the bright idea to combine them.

Obviously, this is a terrible and extremely dangerous idea, but this was the 1860s - it was a wild time back then.

On New Year’s day, the Lone Stars and the Live Oak baseball clubs played each other in the first ever baseball game on ice.

About 2,500 people showed up and the fans absolutely loved it.

So much so, that the baseball teams in Brooklyn decided to give it a try.

On February 4, the Brooklyn Atlantics laced up their skates to play the Brooklyn Charter Oaks on Litchfield Pond.

The prize for the winner was a silver ball, the size of an ordinary baseball, donated by the Fifth Avenue Railroad Company.

Some sources estimate there was up to 30,000 people in attendance that day; most of whom were on skates.

The umpires painted red squares on the ice instead of bases, and both teams had 10 players; a starting nine plus an extra catcher.

From what I can tell, the game was an absolute shitshow, but it was probably fun to watch.

The Atlantics took a massive lead early on.

After three innings, they were ahead 18-2.

They got careless during the middle innings of the game and let the Charter Oaks rally back.

The Oaks scored 20 runs in the fourth, fifth, and six.

Ultimately, the Atlantics did come out on top, but look at this insane box score.

The final score was 36-27; a combined total of 63 runs.

Just to put that into perspective, the highest-scoring game in MLB history was in 1922 when the Chicago Cubs beat the Phillies, 26-23.

Dickey Pearce, who is credited with pioneering the shortstop position and inventing bunting, was the star of the game.

Reporters said he was “as good on the ice as he was on a summer’s day.”

The game was considered a success and they played another one between the Atlantics and Pastimes two days later.

Baseball played on ice declined in popularity over the next few decades, but there were still a few examples of it being played in the early 20th century.

ROOTING FOR THE UNDERDOG

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WEBGEM WEDNESDAY

BASEBALL TRIVIA

Find the answer at the bottom of this email!

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why?

Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Ivey and his brother, Al Wingo, both played in the big leagues, but Ivey was definitely the better of the two.

He became a World Series champion in 1919, but that didn’t really count since the whole series was fixed by gamblers.

The rest of Ivey’s time in the show was relatively uneventful.

He wasn’t stellar at the plate, but he was durable and ended up catching a ton of games over the course of his career, but he made a ton of errors.

To this day, he holds the major league record for most career errors by a catcher in the modern era (234).

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:

• The Twitch: Jim Eisenreich’s miraculous comeback

• The Hitman: Minor leaguer joins the mafia

• The Superfan: Wild Bill Hagy

BASEBALL TRIVIA ANSWER: 1962 New York Mets