Welcome to:
Project 3.18 is a weekly publication where a fan-first writer tells strange and surprising stories from baseball history and culture.
Forfeits, ejections, promotions gone wrong. Characters so colorful they’ll make you squint. Fascinating episodes hidden in a game of routines. Famous firsts, infamous lasts, overlooked moments of mayhem and/or grace, and times when baseball’s history transcends sport and business and becomes the history of us.
After more than 150 years, anything can be a baseball story, and there’s a baseball story for everything.
If you’d like to see a few of our favorites:
START HERE: How About a Baseball Story?
Hey there! We’re glad you found us. Can we help you find something?
Project 3.18 publishes weekly, usually on Monday. We write long-form, deep-dive stories, the kind you might find featured in a monthly magazine.
Substack-featured and reader-lauded baseball stories
Oh, sure, swirly awards are great and all, but here’s what some of our favorite readers from our nearly 1,200-strong community have said about their favorite Project 3.18 stories:
I'm enjoying the bejezus outa these tales. Please keep it up.
I came here for the baseball but I’m staying for the history stuff. This is among the best short pieces I’ve read anywhere this year.
This is only Part 1? This is one of the best sports stories I've ever heard!
I can't get enough of this outside-the-lines history of our once and future national pastime.
The events related herein are worthy of epic status. And you’re clearly the best man for the job. Don’t forget to drop Hollywood a line.
Clear the Field Podcast
For those who like to listen, we’ve created Clear the Field, a podcast that highlights some of our favorite sideways-stories from baseball history. We’re telling true stories of baseball’s forfeits, mad scientists, and general mayhem, brought to you by two writers, history nuts, and lifelong fans.
Free Subscribers
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Get access to a subscriber-exclusive story as a thank you for signing up
Paid Subscribers
For a $5 monthly subscription (or just $50 for an annual subscription), paid subscribers:
An exclusive, multi-part epic every December
Occasional “Postscript” stories that build on recent features
Access to bonus footnote content on feature stories
About “3.18”
From the Official Baseball Rules (1971), Division 3, “Game Preliminaries”:
Rule 3.18: The home team shall provide police protection sufficient to preserve order. If a person, or persons, enter the playing field during a game and interfere in any way with the play, the visiting team may refuse to play until the field is cleared.
PENALTY: If the field is not cleared in a reasonable length of time, which shall in no case be less than fifteen minutes after the visiting team’s refusal to play, the umpire may forfeit the game to the visiting team.
Though the designation number has changed frequently, a version of this rule is one of the few non-playing rules that has been in place and relatively unchanged since the first National League Constitution was handwritten in 1876. It gives you a sense of the rule’s importance that the document’s framers included it (in Article XIII) in full while saying of their playing rules, essentially: “We’ll write those down soon and get back to you.”
Moments in history when Rule 3.18 has been invoked (or should have been) are one of our favorite topics.
Telling stories together
After we write about an event here at Project 3.18, readers are always invited to share their anecdotes, memories, and reactions via comments or emails sent to project318@substack.com.
Design work for Project 3.18 by Ketaki Kulkarni.
