Pensacola usually had a great influx of hedgeapple pickers every fall. Workers migrated from as far away as Milton and Mobile to stay in the migrant camps and earn what was to them big money in the hedgeapple harvest. Young men would use barrel staves to knock the fruit from the branches of the trees. The idea was to climb into the tree and swat the ripe fruit toward a coworker on the ground.

Since competition was great and workers were paid by the piece, they would sometimes hone their skills at lunch break by tossing unripened (and thus unwanted) fruit to a picker armed with a stout barrel stave. The striker was originally called a "Bitter" because of the tart spray back that sometimes emanated from a smartly struck hedgeapple. Soon a game of sorts developed where the person catching a swatted fruit was allowed to throw the object at the head of the bitter. To avoid being struck, the bitter would run to a designated safe spot—usually a wooden crate spaced almost 90 feet away. Because a bruised hedgeapple would sometimes become too slick and slimy to handle after it had been struck a few times, players would sometimes apply a little pine tar resin, called pitch, to their hands to secure a better grip. The hedgeapple tosser was often called a pitch guy. Later it was shortened to pitcher. My great-great grandfather, Mortimer Potemkin, was a proponent of using dried bull excrement to dry the hand prior to throwing. He and his family members became known as bull slingers for their efforts.

Rules began to evolve and soon a fairly well regulated game developed. It often served as a vehicle for some heavy gambling. As a matter of fact, the term "hedging one's bet" developed from the practice of Pensacola bookies who would back up their bets by making counter bets. The main object of the game was to strike a hedgeapple and begin navigating through a series of safe crates before someone could bounce a hedgeapple off your head. Fights and disputes were common and the game seemed to attract the most base elements in surrounding communities. Indeed, the Pensacola City Council and the Escambia County Commissioners briefly outlawed this "Base Game" following a medical scandal in the 1840's. It seems that young men would get bulked up using the newly invented growth hormones intended for use in the local cattle industry. Hedgeapples were soon being swatted far past the boundaries of the hedgeapple orchards. The game was reinstated and strictly regulated by local politicians when they discovered they could tax the new game and charge spectators to watch. Some communities even used tax dollars to fund huge hedgeapple orchards designed to be used to accommodate the game and spectators!

Pensacola fielded the first professional team in what was being called Base Apple. The great hedgeapple blight of 1850 limited the fruit supply and almost destroyed the game until alternate objects were chosen. Things looked bleak for a time as local teams struggled through Base Brick, Base Cow Pie, Base Fishhead, Base Dead Chicken and Base Boot before the game was finally saved by a young man who had recently seen the game of croquet being played in the affluent community of Scenic Hills.  As striking a croquet mallet with a barrel stave seemed rather unrewarding and pointless, someone eventually suggested using the round croquet ball and Base Ball quickly became a nation's pastime.

Originally, the term for a player to hit a runner in the head with a hedgeapple was an "ouch."  By chance it was decided to allow each side to accumulate three "ouches" before losing their turn. Since being struck in the head with a wooden croquet ball would normally render a runner unconscious, the act was referred to as "knocking out a runner." Eventually it was simply shortened to an out or a put-out.

Escambia University, having literally dozens of hedgeapple groves in the area, became a leader in the early collegiate version of the new sport. Escambia University was responsible for creating the first written rules for the sport.  Local sportswriters selected Escambia University as the mythical national champions through most of the early 1800's.  Escambia University and the surrounding professional teams had great difficulty in adapting to the new rules and equipment. They tried to maintain the hedgeapple as the game's main object even after the introduction of the new ball started a popular trend that has continued until modern times. Some feel that this reluctance to adapt to new realities has marked the Escambia County area over the years.