[2] The Massachusetts Game was more wide-open than modern "New York" baseball, with more scoring and, its proponents claimed, more excitement.
The absence of foul territory allowed a skillful striker to literally "use the whole field" when he put the ball in play.
One of a striker's greatest skills (writes David Block) was to tip the ball back over the catcher's head.
Others playing by the Massachusetts Rules included the American, Bay State, Bunker Hill, and Rough-and-Ready Clubs (all organized in 1857), and the Alpha of Ashland, Bowdoin, Fayville of Southborough, Lowell, Shawmut, Takewambait of Natick, Yankee of Natick, and Waponset Clubs.
As Kirsch relates in Baseball in Blue and Gray, in June 1857 an informal Massachusetts championship tournament was held, with about 2,000 spectators attending the first round.
In June 1858 the Winthrop Club of Holliston beat the Olympics on Boston Common by a score 100 to 27, in a 4-hour game before 3,000 spectators.
The two-day match drew huge crowds to the Boston Agricultural Fair Grounds, to see the Unions defeat the Winthrops, 100–71.
One sporting periodical announced: The National Association or "New-York game" is now almost universally adopted by the Clubs all over the country; and the Massachusetts, and still more ancient style of playing familiar to any school-boy, called "town ball," will soon become obsolete.
No lover of the pastime can regret this, as the New-York mode is superior and more attractive in every way; and better calculated to perpetuate and render "our national game" an "institution" with both "young and old America.