1609.1

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Revision as of 06:05, 22 October 2012 by 66.249.71.53 (talk) (Mass Replace South with US South in Chronology Location)
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Polish Origins of Baseball Perceived in Jamestown VA Settlement

Salience Noteworthy
Location US South
Game Xenoball
Text

"Soon after the new year [1609], [we] initiated a ball game played with a bat . . . . Most often we played this game on Sundays. We rolled up rags to make balls . . . Our game attracted the savages who sat around the field, delighted with this Polish sport."

The source is Zbigniew Stefanski, Memorial Commercatoris [A Merchant's Memoirs], (Amsterdam, 1625), as cited in Block's Baseball Before We Knew It, page 101. Stefanski was a skilled Polish workingman who wrote a memoir of his time in the Jamestown colony: an entry for 1609 related the Polish game of pilka palantowa (bat ball). Another account by a scholar reported adds that "the playfield consisted of eight bases not four, as in our present day game of baseball." If true, this would imply that the game involved running as well as batting.

"For your information and records, I am pleased to inform you that after much research I have discovered that baseball was introduced to America by the Poles who arrived in Jamestown in 1609. . . . Records of the University of Krakow, the oldest school of higher learning in Poland show that baseball or batball was played by the students in the 14th century and was part of the official physical culture program."

Letter from Matthew Baranski to the Baseball Hall of Fame, March 23, 1975. [Found in the Origins file at the Giamatti Center.] Matthew Baranski himself cites First Poles in America 1608-1958, published by the Polish Falcons of America, Pittsburgh and unavailable online as of 7/28/09. We have not confirmed that sighting. Note: Per Maigaard's 1941 survey of "battingball games" includes a Polish variant of long ball, but does not mention pilka palantowa. Query: The next Protoball reader finding himself/herself in Krakow might drop by the University and find out more? And could a Polish speaker try some online searches for pilka palantowa and its history?

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