The past is present at Fort Sill game

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Published: July 11, 2009

FORT SILL — "Dances With Wolves” author Michael Blake will throw the first pitch at a baseball game at 1 p.m. today on the original grounds where the games were first played 140 years ago at the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark Museum, 437 Quanah Road at Fort Sill.

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Blake has had a long relationship with Towana Spivey, director and curator of the museum (and inspiration for the character Corporal Spivey in "Dances With Wolves”), in researching his books.

"The Holly Road,” a sequel to "Dances With Wolves,” is in preparation for filming and Blake will be on hand for autographs.

The game will pit the Fort Sill Cannonballs, a team of Fort Sill U.S. Army soldiers, against the Fort Sill Indians, a team of descendents of American Indian soldiers. The 19th-century baseball game is taken from the history of the frontier Army post where the first organized baseball games were played in Oklahoma.

From January to March 1869, Col. George A. Custer played baseball routinely with the 19th Kansas Volunteers while the men of the 10th U.S. Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers began building the new fort. The game was commonly played by the Army during the Mexican War, the Civil War and throughout the West in the latter half of the 19th century.

In the late 1890s, the famous Apache war leader Geronimo played baseball at Fort Sill. American Indian teams were organized and actively played baseball at Fort Sill during the 1880s and 1890s.