The University of Arkansas Razorback baseball team is one of the top ranked teams in the country! It is now ranked 13th (twice), 16th, 17th and 25th (twice)! Confused?

Unlike football and basketball where you only really have a couple of national polls ranking the best collegiate teams in the country, collegiate baseball has no less than six seperate organizations that put up weekly poll numbers for the colleges and universities of America.

Currently the Razorbacks are ranked 13th by the NCAA (my favorite) and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers of America. USA-Today ranked the Hogs at No. 16 with “Collegiate Baseball” pegging Arkansas at the No. 17 position. Finally, the UA diamond men are ranked 25th by both the “Baseball America” people and the folks at “Perfect Game.”

When I mentioned that I liked the NCAA poll best, that’s just for this week. As long as they rank the Hogs the highest, they will continue to be my favorite poll.

Although very few college baseball teams actually turn a profit through the course of a season, collegiate baseball has been on the rise since the 1980s. Though baseball’s rise to prominence has come fairly recently, collegiate baseballs’ presence started over 150 years ago. The first collegiate baseball game onrecord was the matchup between Amherst College and Williams College in 1859. Amherst won 73-72 on what must have been a “shortened” game.

What I mean by shortened game is that in the 1850s, most teams were playing by what were then called the Massachusett Rules of Baseball.

Under those rules, teams were supposed to score 100 runs to win. One such game between Medway and Upton in 1859 started on Sept. 25, lasted through Sept. 26, 27 and 28 with a two-day break on Sept.

29 and 30, with the game continuing on Oct. 1, 4 and 5 before a winner was finally declared. There was once another game that took 211 innings to complete.

Of course, the Massachusetts rules were a bit different than what you might imagine. First off, the hitter stood halfway between home and first base. Secondly, there was no such thing as foul territory so one of the best “hits” to hit was a tipped pitch that went over the catcher’s head.

Thirdly, there was no force play on a base and runners could run anywhere they wanted to to avoid a tag. I suppose a runner could advance from first to second viathe center field fence if they could evade the tag that way. Of course, the tag could be painful as a thrown ball striking a runner counted the same as a tag. That was called “plugging.”

Now that I have had time to think about it, Massachusetts rule baseball seems a lot like Pea Ridge 4-year-old T-Ball, if you have ever attended one of those games.

Thankfully, college teams switched over to the New York Rules which is the basis of modern baseball.

Back to the Razorbacks, they have been one of the best teams in America for the past several years with attendance figures second only to Lousiana State University. Several publications have proclaimed the Razorbacks’ home field as the best college ball park in the nation.

The recent victory over LSU set a new home attendance record of 11,103, which now ranks as the 23rd biggest turnout in collegiate history for a home game. Interestingly enough, of the other 24 marks of the top 25 all-time, they are held exclusively by LSU and Mississippi State. Mississippi State has the overall home record of over 14,000 and Bulldogs have the top nine attendance records, 14 of the top 25.

LSU holds the other 10 marks.

While the old, old, old days of baseball had some peculiar (to us) rules in play, I wonder if 100 years from now folks will wonder “why in the world did college baseball need six polls to rank their best teams?”

At least in baseball, as compared to football, there are head to head playoffs with 64 teams that determine a national champion. The College World Series determines the national champ, a procedure which does a good job of determing a legitimate winner.

The weather is getting better by the day.

It’s a good time to catch some baseball, be it Little League, high school Blackhawks, college Razorbacks or minor league Naturals.

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Editor’s note: John Mc-Gee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at prtnews@nwaonline.

com.

Sports, Pages 10 on 04/20/2011