The forgotten Romanian national sport that may have inspired baseball

Despite a long history, Romania’s national stick and ball game oina, similar to the American baseball, is almost forgotten and only kept alive by a handful of amateur players.

Not any kind of amateurs, though; fierce, madly passionate players. This is what Romanian photographers Sorin Vidis and Bogdan Baghitoi discovered when they started documenting oina in 2014, when it officially became the country’s national sport. Back then, the state attempted to revive the old tradition and promote oina in Romania’s schools and public space. The game also has a national federation representing its interests. But the sport lacks sponsorships. Those who still play it also fund it. First documented in the 14th century, the oina is now almost entirely forgotten. According to some, oina is the precursor of baseball, brought to the US by Romanians from Transylvania who emigrated there. When Sorin Vidis and Bogdan Baghitoi decided to document this rather obscure sport, they did not have any grants or sponsorships lined up, just their personal savings. Sorin was an engineer working for a construction company, while Bogdan, with a PhD in philosophy, was working in research. Both men liked their jobs, but what they really dug was documentary photography, that intellectual, under-sponsored Cinderella of photography. None of them had played oina in childhood, nor as teenagers, but there was a strong hook there. For three years, they documented Romania’s national sports and now the duo wants to publish a photography book about it. They have started a crowdfunding campaign to help them fund it. https://youtu.be/pw8abRh7OjY The game A mixed team of US and Romanian soldiers at the Mihail Kogalniceanu (MK) base in South Eastern Romania faced border police’s oina team Tomis Constanta in a competition of oina. Baseball and oina met on that field in 2007. The Romanian is “similar to, although not as popular as our American baseball”, according to a Joint Task Force East presentation video. Oina consists of two teams of 11 players, one attacking side or "at bat" ("l a bataie") and one defending side or "at catch" ("la prindere"), whose roles switch at half time. https://youtu.be/VFHHRtuqwxo Most of the oina