The first organized base ball club in Valparaiso can be traced back to 1867 when, on April 25th of that year, a small blurb in the Valparaiso Republican noted that “some of the young men in town are organizing a Base Ball Club.” By August, the paper reported that the team was in full operation and had chosen an umpire and treasurer, fixed up practice grounds, and had drawn up by-laws, one of which imposed up to a ten cent fine for swearing on the field or at a club meeting. It also reports that the name “Lookout” was adopted for the club (the name is written as “Look Out” and more commonly “Lookouts”), and lists 18 players and their positions, broken up into two teams, a “first nine” and a “second nine.” The club practiced on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evenings, and only competed in inter-squad matches during their first year. Nonetheless, these matches still drew a crowd, and were greatly attended by the “small boys” in town who narrowly avoided encounters with flying bats and balls. While the boys may have avoided harm, the paper does note a few bodily injuries to players, including a couple “fingers hurt.”
By 1868, base ball fever had spread to the Valparaiso Collegiate Institute, a Presbyterian College opened in 1861 on the lot where Valpo’s Central Elementary stands today. The boys from the Institute organized a club called the “Hoosiers” and were challenged by the Lookouts to a nine-inning match game on June 12th, 1868 on the Lookout grounds. This would appear to be the first match played by the Lookouts against an outside club, and according to the Valparaiso Republican from June 18th, 1868, the game was attended by “a large number of citizens.” Interestingly enough, out of 18 men on the Lookouts roster the previous year, only one, George Quinn, played for the Lookouts in the game. It was a closely contested match with a barrage of scoring in the final innings. With the Hoosiers leading 19-17 heading into the seventh inning, the Lookouts exploded for 17 runs, going on to win the game 50-43 in a match that lasted for just over three hours.
Valparaiso base ball was full of drama in1869. The Lutheran Valparaiso Male and Female College (later Valparaiso University) organized a ball club, called “The Gazelles” and challenged the Hoosiers of the Institute to a match game on May 22nd at the College. The Hoosiers came out victorious, but the match was plagued by contested calls, a disputed score, and overall poor sportsmanship. The Hoosiers even marched home from the field singing “We’ll hang the Gazelles from a sour apple tree” to the tune of the Civil War standard “John Brown’s Body.” The Porter County Vidette published several letters from both teams over the course of the following months accusing each other of foul play and ungentlemanly conduct.
As for the Lookouts, their roster seems to have gotten a bit younger, picking up some boys (presumably graduates) from the Hoosier club in 1868, including one of their best ballists, catcher Andy Letherman. This personnel shift might have been accompanied by some organizational restructuring of the club, as they ceased to be recognized as the “Lookouts” in the papers this year, instead being referenced as either the “Valparaiso First Nine,” the “Valparaiso Base Ball Club,” or the “Arctics” (the Lookouts name returned in 1870). Regardless of what they called themselves, the Valparaiso club competed twice against a new team from Crown Point, beating them badly here in Valparaiso, by the incredible score of 121-57 and then again by 26 tallies at their field. In June, Valparaiso came up five tallies short against the Laporte Junior club in a muddy afternoon game. Unlike the poor sportsmanship and bickering displayed by the college teams earlier that year, The Porter County Vidette reported that during this game between LaPorte and Valparaiso, “good order was preserved, and the most perfect harmony prevailed upon both sides throughout the whole contest.” On July 8th, the Valparaiso club playing as “the Arctics,” battled the Mutuals of Chicago on the old Lookout grounds and fell short of victory by just one tally.