The Old Ba' Game

"Thanks," Thomson said. "I need this to get my nerves back."

He took a swig and handed back the flask. Then he lifted himself up over a wall and dropped back into the riot.

* * *

Three days before the Christmas ba', Ian Smith diagrammed game strategies while sitting next to a coal fire in his house overlooking the town. At 60, Smith is one of the oldest men still participating in the ba'. He has played for 45 years, never missing the twice-annual game despite heart surgery, a hip replacement, nine broken ribs and two knee surgeries. A butcher and a lifelong Orcadian -- he refuses to call himself Scottish -- Smith identifies first and foremost as a Doonie.

When the ba' game was first played in Kirkwall, teams were divided by whether a player was born closer to the ocean (a Doonie) or the wall (an Uppie). A hospital opened in Kirkwall about 50 years ago and became the location for all births, so now family history determines the teams. Newcomers to the island usually move into recent housing developments near the wall and declare themselves Uppies, which has created an imbalance. With almost twice as many men, the Uppies have won 15 of the last 16 ba's.

Smith promised friends he would hold off on retirement until after the next Doonie win, a vow that further stretches the conventions of good sense with each passing year. Arthritis has begun to seize his already weathered hands, making it impossible for him to clench them into fists. Because Smith believes his body has started to shrink, he grumbles when asked his height. "I'm five-feet-and-who-gives-a-damn," he said. "Mind your own bloody business."

For this year's Christmas ba' (after a week of recuperation, the game also is played on New Year's Day), Smith had solicited help from his two sons in hopes of finally pushing the ba' into the ocean. Kevin, 27, had traveled from Edinburgh to play in the game, his first trip home in a year. Sean, 25, had agreed to participate in the ba' for the first time since he lost consciousness in the middle of a 2003 scrum. The brothers had decided to play mainly because they wanted to cash in on their father's retirement promise before a ba' left him seriously disabled.

"What they don't know is that even if the ba' goes down, I'll probably keep playing," Smith said. "What's life in the Orkneys without a ba'?"

Librarians have traced the Kirkwall ba' back to the 1650s, but several local legends place its origins even earlier. Many Uppies believe the ba' is the descendant of a game played by Vikings here in the ninth century. Smith and most Orcadians swear the ba' began in the 1400s, when a Kirkwall leader beheaded a neighboring tyrant and residents kicked and shoved his skull across town.

Ba' players have preserved the game by steadfastly refusing to modernize it. There is no set of written rules, no official organization, no record-keeping of any kind. Even the four-pound, black-and-brown-striped ba's still are made specifically for each game by a rotation of local craftsmen. To survive the scrum, a ba' must withstand the equivalent pressure of a two-ton weight. The craftsmen stuff Portuguese cork into London leather and spend three days stitching the ba' together with 50 yards of eight-cord flax.

Neither Uppies nor Doonies wear uniforms or distinguishing marks of any kind. Players are supposed to recognize their teammates because their fathers played together, and their grandfathers before that. If anyone should get confused about who's who in the midst of the 300-person tangle of arms, legs and faces, he's wise to keep it to himself. Leaders on both teams said confusing an Uppie with a Doonie often warrants banishment from the next ba' game.

Since local newspapers began writing about the ba' in the late 1800s, the historical record indicates the game has existed predominantly in isolation and in peace. A 10-person crew of voluntary paramedics and an unwritten code of sportsmanship have limited ba'-related fatalities to one, in 1903. There always has been a boys' ba' for children 15 and younger at 10:30 a.m. on Christmas and New Year's Day, followed by a men's ba' at 1 p.m. An experimental attempt to start a women's ba' in the 1940s lasted only two years because of meager participation.