Running Base & Stink Base

 Two games we played in my school in the Ozarks that I have never seen reference to in any way was Running Base and Stink Base. Any number of people could play the games. Two of the better runners would flip a coin to see who would get first choice in choosing his team. They would then alternate in choosing until all people who wanted to play had been chosen.

            You would take a stick and draw opposing lines in the dirt. The distance between the two opposing lines would depend on what land was available. I would say that the distance was usually about the distance between home base and second base on a baseball diamond. Sometimes we set out of bounds as off the school property and sometimes we set no out of bounds.  The object was to capture all the opposing players. One team would send out a player from its base and when the opposing player would come after him a faster runner would be sent who you would hope would catch the runner from the first team. The player who had touched his home base last was considered poison. If he caught the player he was chasing before someone from the opposing team touched him that person was considered captured and they would continue back to the base of the one who captured him. The captured person would then be a member of the team which had captured him and when one team had captured all the players on the opposing team the game was over.

            Stink Base was different in that on the right of each line drawn in the dirt you would draw a circle attached to the line and each captured player was placed in the circle. If one of his team members could touch his out stretched hand before being captured by the opposing team he was free to go back and actively compete for his team. Each person who has been placed into the circle (Stink Base) had to have one foot inside the circle. He could reach out as far as his arms could stretch as long as he left at least one foot inside the circle. When all people of an opposing team were captured the game was over. 

            I preferred playing Stink Base to Running Base because there was no penalty to Running Base. I believed that some boys would intentionally get caught so they could be with their friends. We mostly played Stink Base. I never did see a game won, but I think it had to do with time restraint. We played during recess at school. We had at most 45 minutes which with the number of players it was not possible to complete a game.