Two Pocket Knife Games

By Edward Morris
Published on May 1, 1978
article image
Photo by Norma Morris
This is the starting position for both of the pocket knife games, mumbly-peg and baseball.

A guide to playing two pocket knife games: mumbly-peg and knife baseball.

Caution: This article is from the MOTHER Archive — we do not necessarily still recommend trying this game at home …

Back when I was a lad — a period during which the pterodactyl was our national mascot — the pocket knife was as common as . . . well . . . pockets. And when it wasn’t gouging out a corncob for a pipe, sharpening a pencil or hacking amorous indelicacies into tree trunks, the instrument was usually being flipped around in a game of mumbly-peg.

Later, city slickers would mutate the competition into something called knife baseball, but only the language and the scoring changed. The moves stayed the same.

When playing pocket knife games choose a serviceable two-bladed pocket knife, it will cost anywhere from $1.50 to $10 or more, but the cheaper the better if it’s going to be used mainly for games. I bought the one I still carry — a Barlow — at a Pennsylvania feed-and-grain store seven years ago for 98 cents.

In mumbly-peg, the object is to score 300 points before your opponent does. And it used to be that the loser had to pull a matchstick-sized peg out of the ground with his or her teeth (hence the name of the game).

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