Property:Digger Activity
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
This is a property of type Text.
B
<p>Bill made enormous contributions in bringing to print <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Base Ball </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Founders</span> this spring. This solid new reference work contains about 40 essays on th4e earliest base ball clubs in the New York metropolitan area, Philadelphia, and Massachusetts. </p>
<p> </p> +
<p>An April conference in Newbury MA on early base ball is being organized by Digger <strong><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">[[Brian Sheehy]].</span></em></strong> Players from the expanding number of VBB clubs in eastern New England will comprise a good share of conference attendees.</p> +
<p><strong>Brian Turner</strong> reports that his recent research has remained focused on bat-ball and bat-and-ball, but has also focused on settlement patterns in western Massachusetts, to tease out whether that tells us something about why ball games were apparently named one thing (bat-ball) in one town (Northampton) in 1791 and another thing in other towns (such as the names ball games were known by Pittsfield). </p> +
<p><strong>Brian Sheehy </strong>is planning a meeting in mid-April for VBB players to discuss themes in the evolution of base ball in the pre-professional era. For details on the Newbury MA mini-conference, contact Brian at <a href="mailto:historyball@yahoo.com">historyball@yahoo.com</a>.</p> +
<p><strong>Bob Tholkes to Address Local SABR Chapters</strong></p>
<p>Bob Tholkes will be a presenter at the November meetings of the SABR chapters in Pittsburgh and Providence. The Pittsburgh meeting is focusing on baseball statistics, and Bob will discuss the birth of base ball stats. Last year, Bob made presentations at the Chicago and San Antonio-Austin SABR chapters.</p> +
<p><strong><em>Bill Ryczek</em></strong> has 4 essays on early ballplaying posted at the National Pastime Museum site at <a href="http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/author/william-ryczek/historians-corner">http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/author/william-ryczek/historians-corner</a>. Included are an account of the Excelsiors’ 1860 tour of New York State and an account of the evolution of pitching from the 1850s onward. Access requires you to register for the site, which took just 3 or 4 hours in our recent experience. </p> +
<p><strong><em>Bill Humber </em></strong>is working on the story of Canada’s earliest base ball, focusing in partonWilliam Shuttleworth, a key person on an 1854 team. Bill is also continuing to identify the nature of the “Canadian game,” which preceded the arrival of the New York game in Canada.</p> +
A
<p><strong><em>Anita Broad</em></strong> is also now listed as a digger. Anita has recently written her Master’s thesis, “Stoolball Through the Seasons: It’s Just not Cricket,” and now serves as Research and Education Officer of Stoolball England. She has already helped Protoball sort out what the English safe-haven games Pentoss (a form of ladies’ cricket) and Target Ball were all about. She and her daughter play stoolball, as did her mother and grandmother. She is now working on a grant that funds a primary school education project on the history of stoolball.</p> +
B
<p><span>Long-term preparation for a special </span>exhibit on cricket and baseball<strong> </strong><span>is under way by Beth.</span><span> </span><span>The exhibit is slated for spring of 2010 at Lord’s Cricket Ground in </span>London<span>, home of the MCC cricket museum, where Beth serves as a guest curator.</span><span> </span><span>The exhibit may also tour in the </span>US<span> and </span>Australia<span>.</span><span> </span><span>For details, send Beth an email</span><span>.</span><span> </span><span>Beth, a Yale-educated Cleveland Indians fan, has 20 years experience in curating social-history events at Australian and American museums.</span></p> +
<p><span>Brock is collecting information on baseball history in towns -- like </span>Syracuse<span> and </span>Troy NY<span> -- that once had, but then lost, major league teams.</span><span> Shoot him an email</span><span> if you want to know more, or to help out.</span></p> +
<p><span>Bob has founded and is editing </span><em>Origins, </em><span>the monthly e-newsletter of the SABR Committee on the Origins of Baseball.</span><span> </span><span>Bob also edits </span><em>The Base Ball Player’s Chronicle</em><span>, the Vintage Base Ball Association’s three-times-a-year newsletter.</span><strong><br/></strong></p> +
<p><span>Bill is putting together a narrative history of baseball from 1845 to the Civil War</span><span>.</span><span> </span><span>Look for it to hit the shelves in 2009.</span></p> +
<p><span>Beth notes that April 2010 is the time slotted for her exhibition on Cricket and Baseball at the Marylebone Cricket Club [Lord’s Grounds] in </span>London<span>.</span><span> </span><span>It is possible that the exhibit would also be shown in </span>Australia<span> and at </span>Cooperstown<span> afterward.</span><span> </span><span>Part of the exhibition will focus on bat and balls games prior to 1840, and Beth is looking into stoolball history and the 1755 William Bray diary as well.</span></p> +
A
<p><span>Angus is investigating the earliest days of </span>California<span> base ball. </span><span>He identifies the local Knickerbockers as the first CA team, and is working with Mexican historian Cesar Gonzalez to ascertain the role of the New York Volunteer Regiment, which sailed to CA in 1846, in implanting baseball in </span>Mexico<span>.</span></p> +
<p><span>Andrew notes that his new biography of Henry Chadwick, </span><em>The Father of Baseball,</em><span> is scheduled for early 2008.</span><span> </span><span>To order this $29.95 McFarland offering, or for more details, go to </span><a href="http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/">http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/</a><span> and search “Schiff.”</span><span> </span><span><br/></span></p> +
B
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Swinging Away</span> (Marylebon Cricket Club and Scala Press, 2010) is curator <strong><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">[[Beth Hise]]’s </span></em></strong> new book on her exhibitions on base ball and cricket at Lord’s and at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Besides writing two essays on cricket in the United States for the recent <em>Origins Issue </em>of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Base Ball</span>, Beth has contributed a paper on the English response to exhibition base ball games in England in the early 1900s.</p> +
<p><em>“Not Likely to Flourish,” </em>appearing in<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Base Ball</span>,volume 6, number 2 (Fall 2012), pp. 22 ff, is [[<strong><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Bob Tholkes’]] </span></em></strong> survey of the New York game for the 1862 base ball season. The season began with the sadly mistaken conjecture that the Civil War would end soon enough to save the ballplaying season. Still, 1862 saw William Cammeyer’s historic opening of the enclosed ballfield at the Union Grounds, the June visit of Philadelphia clubs to New Jersey, Brooklyn and games with three NYC clubs at Elysian Fields, and the October death of Excelsior Club great Jim Creighton.</p> +
<p> [[Brian Turner]] co-wrote a contribution to the "Special Protoball Issue" of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Base Ball </span>this Spring:</p>
<ul>
<li>Turner, Brian and Larry McCray (2011) "<a title="1621 -- Pilgrim Stoolball an the Profusion of American Safe-Haven Ballgames">1621 -- Pilgrim Stoolball and the Profusion of American Safe-Haven Ballgames</a>." <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Base Ball</span>. <strong>5</strong>(1): 10 -16.</li>
</ul>
<p>The article surveys base ball's the many predecessor games before the New York game was established.</p> +
<p> </p>
<p>[[Beth Hise]] contributed two essays to the <em>Special Protoball Issue</em> of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Base Ball</span> this May.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<div class="source_note">"<a title="1744 -- "How Is It, Umpire?" The 1744 Laws of Cricket and Their Influence on the Development of Baseball in America">1744 -- "How Is It, Umpire?" The 1744 Laws of Cricket and Their Influence on the Development of Baseball in America</a>." <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Base Ball</span>. <strong>5</strong>(1): 25 - 31.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="source">"<a title="1862 -- American Cricket in the 1860s">1862 -- American Cricket in the 1860s</a>." <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Base Ball</span>. <strong>5</strong>(1): 143 - 148. </div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="source_note"> </div> +
<p>“I can read all about variant games in books and on the net, but I find I don’t really understand them until I play them,” reports Brian Sheehy. Brian teaches “Sports of the Past” to upperclassmen at North Andover High School, north of Boston. Among the safe-haven games the students have studied (and played) are Knickerbocker rules base ball, the Massachusetts game, wicket, cricket, stoolball, and rounders. He is thinking about trying the ancient Russian game of lapta, and perhaps Irish rounders, in the spring.</p> +