Semantic search

England

English Base-Ball

Johann Gutsmuths, an early German advocate of physical education, devotes a chapter of his survey of games to "Ball mit Freystaten (oder das Englische Base-ball)" that is, Ball with free station, or English base-ball. He describes the game in terms that seem similar to later accounts of rounders and base-ball in English texts. The game is described as one-out, side-out, having a three-strike rule, and placing the pitcher a few steps from the batsman.

Block advises [11/6/2005 communication] that Gutsmuths provides "the first hard, unambiguous evidence associating a bat with baseball . . . . We can only speculate as to when a bat was first employed in baseball, but my intuition is that it happened fairly early, probably by the mid-18^th century."

Gutsmuths Johann C. F., Spiele zur Uebung und Erholung des Korpers und Geistes fur die Jugend, ihre Erzieher und alle Freunde Unschuldiger Jugendfreuden [Schnepfenthal, Germany] per David Block, page 181.. This roughly translates as: Games for the Exercise and Recreation of Body and Spirit for the Youth and His Educator and All Friends of Innocent Joys of Youth.

For Translated Text: David Block carries a four-page translation of this text in Appendix 7, pages 275-278, of Baseball Before We Knew It.

In 2011, David Block added to his assessment of Gutsmuth in "German Book Describes das Englische Base Ball; But Was it Baseball or Rounders?," in Base Ball Journal (Special Issue on Origins), Volume 5, number 1 (Spring 2011), pages 50-54. He notes the absence of the use of bats in base-ball in England, except in this single source, while rounders play commonly involved a bat.

College

South Carolina

Town Ball, Old-Cat Games

Youth

"Much of the trouble of the (U. of S. Carolina) professors have have no doubt been obviated if there had been outdoor sports or athletics to relieve pent up animal spirits.  A game of ball, perhaps, 'town ball,' or 'cat', was played."

Edwin L. Green, A History of the University of South Carolina (The State Company, 1916), page 242.

The text does not state the exact period that is described in this account.

New York State

Old-Cat Games

Juvenile

"The popular game among the boys previously."

M. F. Roberts, A Narrative History of Remsen, New York (private printing, 1914)., page 220.  Described in Originals, volume 4, number 10 (October, 2011), page 2.

Reportedly the author writes of Remsen ballplaying before the Civil War.  Remsen, a town in Central New York,  is about 20 miles N of Utica NY and about 60 miles E of Syracuse and, if you must know, about 60 miles NW of Cooperstown.     Its current population is about 1,900. 

New York State

American Cricket, Old-Cat Games, Barn Ball

Juvenile, Youth

1885-1902, National League President, Nicholas Young

"I was born [in 1840] in Amsterdam in the beautiful Mohawk Valley, and while I played barn ball, one old cat, and two old cat in my  early boyhood days, cricket was my favorite game, and until I enlisted in the army I never played a regular game of base ball, or the New York game as it was then called." 

Letter, Nicholas Young to A. G. Mills, December 2, 1902, in the Mills Commission file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.  He was resonding to the Mills Commission's call for knowledge on the origins of base ball.

Young first played base ball in 1863 his cricket friends in the Army could not find opponents to play the game.  See entry 1863.19.

Fiction

Juvenile

A small work of juvenile fiction published in 1844 contains this description of a youthful ballplayer:  "Johnny is a real good hand to play with the older boys, too. At base, they cannot hit him with the ball, any more than if he were made of air. Sometimes he catches up his feet, and lets it pass under him, sometimes he leans one way, and sometimes another, or bows his head; any how, he always dodges it." 

Another scene describes several boys sitting on a fence and watching "a game of base."

Willie Rogers, or Temper Improved, (Samuel B. Simpkins, Boston), 1844.

David Block observes: "the sentence describing the boy's skill at taking evasive action when threatened by soaking seems significant to me. I don't recall ever seeing this skill discussed before, and, although long obsolete, it must have stood as one of the more valuable tools of the base runner in the era of soaking/plugging ."  

Chapbooks for Juveniles

Bat-Ball, Base Ball, Cricket

Juvenile

An 1852 book's woodcut on trap-ball "shows a tiny bat that looks more like a Ping Pong paddle and bears the caption 'bat ball'."

As for other games, the book grants that Little Charley "also plays at cricket and bass ball, of which the laws or [sic] quite too complicated for me to describe." 

Little Charley's Games and Sports (Philadelphia, C. G. Henderson, 1852).

From David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 214.

This book reappeared in 1854, 1857, and 1858 as part of a compendium.

Fiction, Holidays

Cricket

"On fourths of July, training days and other occasions, young men from the country around, at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, would come for the purpose of competing for the championship of these contests, in which, in which, as the leader of the school, I soon became conspicuous. Was there a game at cricket or base-ball to be played, my name headed the list of the athletae." 

The following page has an isolated reference to the ball grounds at the school. Mayo was from upstate NY.  The fifth edition [1850] of Kaloolah is available via Google Books, and was accessed on 10/24/2008; the ballplaying references in this edition are on pages 20 and 21.

W.S. Mayo, Kaloolah, or Journeying to the Djebel Kumri. An Autobiography (George P. Putnam, New York, 1849), page 20.

Posting to 19CBB by Richard Hershberger, 1/24/2008. Richard considers this the first appearance of base-ball in American fiction, as the games in #1837.2 and #1838.4 above are not cited as base ball and could be another type of game.

New England

Wicket

"A great game of ball, says the Berkshire Courier, cam off in that village on Friday last. The parties numbers 17 on a side, composed of lawyers, justices, merchants mechanics, and in fact a fair proportion of the village populations were engages wither as participants or spectators . . . . The excitement was intense . . . best of all the game was a close one, the aggregate count in [illeg: 8?] innings being 192 and 187."

BostonEvening Transcript, April 18, 1856. Accessed bia subscription search 2/17/2009. 

Berkshire MA is about 5 miles NE of Pittsfield and about 10 miles E of New York state border. 

This may have been a wicket match. One wonders why a Friday match would have been held.

Bans

Illinois

Cricket

Section 34 of an Indianapolis IN ordinance said:

"Any person who shall on the Sabbath day play at cricket, bandy, cat, town ball, corner ball, or any other game of ball within the limits of the corporation, or shall engage in pitching quoits or dollars in any public place therein, shall on conviction pay the sum of one dollar for each offense."  [See the very similar #1837.7, above.] 

Richard pointed out in 2008 that these very similar regulations give us the earliest citation for the term "town ball" he knows of, but in 2014 he found the very similar 1834 prohibition on Springfield IL at 1834.9. 

Indiana Journal, May 13, 1837.

Note: A dollar fine for "pitching dollars?"

College

Michigan

American Cricket, Base Ball, Wicket, Old-Cat Games

Youth

A member of the class of 1849 recalls college life: "Athletics were not regularly organized, nor had we any gymnasium. We played base-ball, wicket ball, two-old-cat, etc., but there was not foot-ball."

"Cricket was undoubtedly the first sport to be organized in the University, as the Palladium for 1860-61 gives the names of eight officers and twenty-five members of the "Pioneer Cricket Club," while the Regents' Report for June, 1865, shows an appropriation of $50 for a cricket ground on the campus."

The college history later explains: "The game of wicket, which was a modification of cricket, was played with a soft ball five to seven inches in diameter, and with two wickets (mere laths or light boards) laid upon posts about four inches high and some forty feet apart. The 'outs' tried to bowl them down, and the 'ins' to defend them with curved broad-ended bats. It was necessary to run between the wickets at each strike."

Wilfred Shaw, The University of Michigan (Harcourt Brace, New York, 1920), pp 234-235. Accessed 2/10/10 via Google Books search ("wilfred shaw" michigan).

The dates of wicket play are not given.

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

"Brooklyn vs. New York. - An interesting game of Base Ball will come off at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, to-day, commencing at 10 A. M., between the New York and Brooklyn Clubs."

This game appears to have been the first game between what were called "picked nine" -- in our usage, "all-star clubs" from base ball players in two major local regions.

New York Sun, November 10, 1845, page 2, column. 6. Submitted by George Thompson, June 2005.

See also David Dyte, "Baseball in Brooklyn, 1845-1870: The Best There Was," Base Ball Journal Volume 5, number 1 (Special Issue on Origins). pages 98-102.

The Knickerbockers continue to play intramural matches at Elysian Fields, but play no further interclub matches until 1851.

Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, Club Books 1854-1868, from the Albert G. Spalding Collection of Knickerbocker Base Ball Club's Club Books, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Per Gushov, p. 167.

US

Base Ball

"The academy, the village church, and the parsonage are on this cross-street. The voice of memory asks, where are those whose busy feet have trodden the green sward? Where are those whose voices have echoed in the boisterous mirth or base-ball and shinny?" 

S. H. M. (only initials are given), Miranda Elliot: or, The Voice of the Spirit (Lippincott, Grambo & Co., Philadelphia, 1855), page 229.

This passage involves a small party's slow country walk, one that is incessantly interrupted by a sermonizing narrator. There is no indication of who played ball, or how long ago they played. The setting seems to be the U.S; some place where orange trees grow.

Greater New York City

Adult

At the end of the 1854 season, there were evidently only three organized Manhattan clubs, and they had only played seven match games all year.  Most games were intrmural contests.

In the first two months of the 1855 season, ten other clubs were at play, including four in Brooklyn and four in New Jersey.  By the end of 1855, 22 clubs were on the field, and 82 games had been reported.

Things would never be the same again.

See Larry McCray, "Recent Ideas about the Spread of Base Ball after 1854" (draft), October 2012.

Data on reported 1855 games and clubs is taken from the Protoball Games Tabulation, version 1.0, compiled by Craig Waff.  

It remains possible that the increase was, in part, a reporting effect, as game reports were more frequently seen as a service to newspaper readers in these years.

Greater New York City

Adult

Numerous clubs, many of them colonized by former members of the New Yorks and the Knickerbockers, form in the New York City area and play under the Knickerbocker rules. Interclub competition becomes common and baseball matches begin to draw large crowds of spectators. The capacity for spectators in the New York Game is aided by the foul lines which serve to create a relatively safe area for spectators to congregate and yet remain close to the action without interfering with play. This feature of the New York Game is in sharp contrast to cricket and to the Massachusetts Game, both of which are played "in the round" without foul lines.

This item is from the original Thorn and Heitz chronology, which did not give sources.  The explosion of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey clubs 1855-1859 is clear from a perusal of the Craig Waff's Protoball Games Tab http://protoball.org/images/3/35/GT.NYC.pdf

Club Constitutions/Bylaws

US

Base Ball

Adult

They include base ball clubs in Stamford CT [Mazeppa BB Club], Newburgh NY [Newburgh BB Club], Louisville [KY]? [Louisville BB Club], New York City [Independent BB Club], South Brooklyn [Olympic BB Club], Jersey City [Hamilton BB Club], and, formed to play the Massachusetts Game, the Takewambait BB Club of Natick MA.

David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 224

Bans, College, Pre-Knicks NYC

Youth

"It appearing that a play at present much practiced by the smaller boys . . . with balls and sticks," the faculty of Princeton University prohibits such play on account of its being dangerous as well as "low and unbecoming gentlemen students."

Quoted without apparent reference in Henderson, pp. 136-7. Sullivan, on 7/29/2005, cited Warnum L. Collins, "Princeton," page 208, per Harold Seymour's dissertation.

Wallace quotes the faculty minute [November 26, 1787] in George R. Wallace, Princeton Sketches: The Story of Nassau Hall (Putnam's Sons, New York, 1894), page 77, but he does not cite Collins. The Wallace book was accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Book search for "'princeton sketches.'" The college is in Princeton NJ.

Caveat: Collins - and Wallace -believed that the proscribed game was shinny, and Altherr makes the same judgment - see Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), pages 35-36.

Note: Princeton was known as the College of New Jersey until 1896.

Can we determine why this "shiny" inference was made?

Females

According to a 2007 article in a Canadian magazine, there is poetry in which a milkmaid calls to another, "Oi, Rosie, coming out to Potter's field for a whack at the old stool?" The article continues: "The year was 1393. The place was Sussex . . . the game was called stoolball, which was probably a direct descendant of stump-ball".

The article, by Ruth Tendulkar, is titled "The Great-Grandmother of Baseball and Cricket," and appeared in the May/June 2007 issue of The Canadian Newcomers Magazine. As of 2007, we have been unable to find additional source details from the author or the magazine.

http://www.cnmag.ca, as accessed 9/6/2007.

Caution: The editor of The Canadian Newcomers Magazine informed us on 1/10/2008 that the Tendulkar piece "was strictly an entertainment piece rather than an academic piece." We take this to say that the verse is not authentic. Email from Dale Sproule, Publisher/Editor.

Is "stumpball" actually a known game?  Have we done adequate searches for this name?

Females

Stoolball

Adult

"In the early seventeenth century, an Oxford fellow, Thomas Crosfield, noted the customs of Shrovetide as '1. frittering. 2. throwing at cocks. 3. playing at stooleball in ye Citty by women & footeball by men.'" Shrovetide was the Monday and Tuesday [that Tuesday being Mardi Gras in some quarter] preceding Ash Wednesday and the onset of Lent.

Griffin, Emma, "Popular Recreation and the Significance of Space," (publication unknown), page 36.

The original source is shown as the Crosfield Diary entry for March 1, 1633, page 63. Thanks to John Thorn for supplementing a draft of this entry. One citation for the diary is F. S. Boas, editor, The Diary of Thomas Crosfield (Oxford University Press, London, 1935).

Can we find and inspect the 1935 Boas edition of the diary?

Bans

Henderson: "The testimony of Beleth and Durandus, both eminently qualified witnesses, clearly indicates that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the ball had found a place for itself in the Easter celebrations of the Church." In fact, Beleth and Durandus had both opposed the practice, seeing it as the intrusion of pagan rites into church rites. "There are some Churches in which it is customary for the Bishops and Archbishops to play in the monasteries with those under them, even to stoop to the game of ball" [Beleth, 1165]. "In certain places in our country, prelates play games with their own clerics on Easter in the cloisters, or in the Episcopal Palaces, even so far as to descend to the game of ball" [Durandus, 1286].

Note: This source appears to be Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], pp. 37-38. Page 37 refers to an 1165 prohibition and page 38 mentions 12^th and 13^th Century Easter rites. Henderson identifies two sources for the page 38 statement: Beleth, J., "Rationale Divinorum Officiorum," in Migne, J. P., Patrologiae Curius Completus, Ser 2, Vol. 106, pp. 575-591 [Paris, 1855], and Durandus, G., "Rationale Divinorum Officiorum," Book VI, Ch 86, Sect. 9 [Rome, 1473]...Henderson does not say that these rites involved the use of sticks.

Bans, Famous

Xenoball

Youth

Saint Augustine

In his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo - later St. Augustine - recalls his youth in Northern Africa, where his father served as a Roman official. "I was disobedient, not because I chose something better than [my parents and elders] chose for me, but simply from the love of games. For I liked to score a fine win at sport or to have my ears tickled by the make-believe of the stage." [Book One, chapter 10] In Book One, chapter 9, Augustine had explained that "we enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown up games are known as 'business. . . . Was the master who beat me himself very different from me? If he were worsted by a colleague in some petty argument, he would be convulsed in anger and envy, much more so than I was when a playmate beat me at a game of ball."

Saint Augustine's Confessions, Book One, text supplied by Dick McBane, February 2008.

Can historians identify the "game of ball" that Augustine might have played in the fourth Century? Are the translations to "game of ball," "games," and "sport" still deemed accurate?

Famous

Xenoball

Juvenile

Saint Cuthbert

Mulling on whether the ball came to England in Anglo-Saxon days, Joseph Strutt reports "the author of a manuscript in Trinity College, Oxford, written in the fourteenth century and containing the life of Saint Cuthbert, says of him, that when young, 'he pleyde atte balle with the children that his felawes [fellows] were.' On what authority this information is established I cannot tell."

Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (Chatto and Windus, London, 1898 edition), p. 158.

The claim of this unidentified manuscript seems weak. As Strutt notes, the venerable Bede wrote poetic and prose accounts of the life of Cuthbert around 715-720 A.D., and made no mention of ballplaying. That a scholar would find fresh evidence seven centuries later would be surprising. Warton later cites the poem as from Oxford MSS number Ivii, and he also places its unidentified author in the fourteenth century, but he doesn't support the veracity of the story line. The poem describes an angel sent from heaven to dissuade Cuthbert from playing such an "ydell" [idle] pastime. Warton, Thomas, The History of English Poetry from the Close of the Eleventh Century to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century (Thomas Tegg, London, 1840, from the 1824 edition), volume 1, page 14.

Unnamed Games - Czech

Unknown

[A]  H. Guarinoni describes a game he saw in Prague in 1600 involving a large field of play, the hitting of a small thrown ball ["the size of a quince"] with a four-foot tapered club, the changing of sides if a hit ball was caught.   While not mentioning the presence of bases or of base-running, he advises that the game "is good for tender youth which never has enough of running back and forth."

[B] "German Schlagball ["hit the ball"] is also similar to rounders. The native claim that these games 'have remained the games of the Germanic peoples, and have won no popularity beyond their countries' quite obviously does not accord with facts. It is enough to quote the conclusion of a description of "hit the ball" by H. Guarnoni, who had a medical practice in Innsbruck about 1600: 'We enjoyed this game in Prague very much and played it a lot. The cleverest at it were the Poles and the Silesians, so the game obviously comes from there.' Incidentally, he was one of the first who described the way in which the game was played. It was played with a leather ball and a club four-foot long. The ball was tossed by a bowler who threw it to the striker, who struck it with a club rounded at the end as far into the field as possible, and attempted to make a circuit of the bases without being hit by the ball. If 'one of the opposing players catches the ball in the air, a change of positions follows.'"

[A] Guarinoni, Hippolytis, Greuel der Verwustung der menschlichen Gesschlechts [The horrors of the devastation of the human race], [Ingolstadt, Austrian Empire, 1610], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, pages 167-168.  See also pp. 100-102 for Block's summary of, and a translation of the Guarinoni material.

[B] Source: from page 111 of an unidentified photocopy in the "Origins of Baseball" file at the Giamatti Center of the Baseball Hall of Fame, accessed in 2008. The quoted material is found in a section titled "Rounders and Other Ball Games with Sticks and Bats," pp. 110-111. This section also reports: "Gyula Hajdu sees the origin of round games as follows: 'Round games conserve the memory of ancient castle warfare. A member of the besieged garrison sets out for help, slipping through the camp of the enemy. . . . '" "In Hungary several variants of rounders exist in the countryside."

This unidentified source may be W. Andrei and L. Zolnay, Fun and Games in Old Europe [English translation from Hungarian] (Budapest, 1986), pp. 110-111, as cited in Block, fn 16, page 304. 

What is the basis of the Andrei/Zolnay report of a circuit of bases in the Czech game?

Does Mehl's discussion of the Czech game add anything?

Can we verify the Gyula Hajdu source? Is it Magyar Nepraiz V. Folklor?  Does Hungarian rounders Belong in this entry?  If not, how do we date it?

Females

Adult

In a ground floor room at the Casa Borromeo in Milan, Italy is a room with wall murals depicting the amusements of Fifteenth Century nobility.  One of the images depicts five noble women playing some sort of bat and ball game.  One woman holds a bat and is preparing to hit a ball to a group of four women who prepare to catch the ball using the folds of their dresses.  This Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs published an article about the Casa Borromeo frescoes in 1918 and included a black and white photo of the female ball players.  A color version of the fresco is available online.

Lionel Cust, "The Frescoes in the Casa Borromeo at Milan," The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 33, No. 184 (July 1918), 8.  Link to color image:  http://www.storiadimilano.it/Arte/giochiborromeo/giochiborromeo.htm

Note: This drawing is listed as "contemporary" on the premise that it was meant to depict ballplaying in the 1400s.

Palm Play

Youth

So cruel prison how could betide,alas,

As proud Windsor [Castle]? Where I in lust [pleasure] and joy

With a king's son my childish years did pass

. . .

Where each of us did plead the other's right;

The palm play [handball?], where despoiled [disrobed] for the  game,

With dazed eyes oft we by gleams of love

Have missed the ball and got sight of our dame,  

[The full selection, and email notes by John Bowman, are shown below.]  

Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey), So Cruel a Prison, Norton Anthology of Poetry, 3rd edition, 1983:  from Songes and sonettes, written by the right honourable Lorde Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey (London, A. R. Tottel, 1557).

We are not certain that "palm play" could have been a baserunning game.  It may be an Anglicized form of jeu de paume, a likely French antecedent to tennis.

The reference to "large grene courtes" in the full ball-play stanza suggests a tennis or handball-type pastime.

Have scholars indicated the likely nature of "palm play?"  Could it have involved the batting of a ball with the palm?

Famous, Females

England

Stoolball

Youth, Adult

Lady Mary Dudley, Sir Philip Sydney

"A time there is for all, my mother often sayes

When she with skirts tuckt very hie, with gyrles at stoolball playes"

Sir Philip Sydney, Arcadia: Sonnets [1622], page 493. Note: citation needs confirmation.

Sir Philip Sydney (1554-1586) died at age 31 in 1586.

As of October 2012, this early stoolball ref. is the only one I see that can be interpreted as describing baserunning in stoolball - but it still may merely describe running by a fielder, not a batter. (LMc, Oct/2012)

Sydney's mother was the sister of Robert Dudley, noted in item #1500s.2 above as a possible stoolball player in the time of Eliizabeth I.

Further interpretations are welcome as to Sydney's meaning.

Holidays

Cricket

Adult

"Of course, there are many bare announcements of matches played before that time [the 1740's]. In 1700 The Postboy advertised one to take place on Clapham Common."

Note: An excerpt from a Wikipedia entry accessed on 10/17/08 states: "A series of matches, to be held on Clapham Common [in South London - LMc] , was pre-announced on 30 March by a periodical called The Post Boy. The first was to take place on Easter Monday and prizes of £10 and £20 were at stake. No match reports could be found so the results and scores remain unknown. Interestingly, the advert says the teams would consist of ten Gentlemen per side but the invitation to attend was to Gentlemen and others. This clearly implies that cricket had achieved both the patronage that underwrote it through the 18th century and the spectators who demonstrated its lasting popular appeal."

Thomas Moult, "The Story of the Game," in Moult, ed., Bat and Ball: A New Book of Cricket (The Sportsmans Book Club, London, 1960; reprinted from 1935), page 27. Moult does not further identify this publication.

Caveat: The Wikipedia entry is has incomplete citations and could not be verified.

Can we confirm this citation, and that it refers to cricket? Do we know of any earlier public announcements of safe-haven games?

Contemp. "Base Ball" usage

Base Ball

Unknown

"BASEBALL, (From base and ball) A rural game in which the person striking the ball must run to his base or goal." 
Additionally, the dictionary lists the following as one of its definitions for the word "base":
BASE "A rural play, also called baseball."

"A General Dictionary of the English Language, Compiled with the Greatest Care from the Best Authors and Dictionaries Now Extant." Its authors are identified only as "A Society of Gentlemen." per 19cbb post by David Block, Dec. 2, 2011

Still, it's fairly significant in that it becomes, by far, the earliest known appearance of baseball in a dictionary. The next earliest one we know of was almost 80 years later, in James Orchard Halliwell's 1847 "Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words."
It is quite interesting that "baseball" appears as one whole word, not the two-word "base ball," or hyphenated "base-ball" that were customary in the era.
Also of note is the dictionary's indication that the word "base" was an alternate name for baseball. 

"A Society of Gentlemen" was the pseudonym under which the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica was first published, also in 1768.

Bat and Ball

Juvenile

'[A]t the same time a game called simply 'bat and ball' began to be appear in English writings.  A 1790 book listed a young man's amusements as including 'marbles, bat and ball [and] hop-step-and-jump.'" 

David Block, German Book Describes das English Base-ball, Base Ball, volume 5, number 1 (Spring 2011), page 51.  The original source is Incidents of Youthful Life; or, the True History of William Langley (1790), page 94. 

Cricket, Bat and Ball

Juvenile

"A 1797 newspaper article, praising the layout of a new school ground, noted "it affords ample space for cricket, for bat and ball, or any other school-boy exercise."

David Block, German Book Describes das English Base-ball, Base Ball, volume 5, number 1 (Spring 2011), page 51. The original source is Westminster School, The Oracle and Pubic Advertiser (London), August 24, 1797.

Juvenile

"Take care that here on Sunday/None of you play at ball,/For fear that on the Monday/The Devil takes you all." Inscription on the Church Wall of a small village in Wales.

Mercantile Advertiser, August 3, 1799, page 2, column 3.

Weekly Museum, April 19, 1800, Vol. 12, No. 27. page 2.

We have no indication as to when the inscription was carved.

Bat and Ball

Juvenile, Youth

"CRICKET. This play requires more strength than some boys possess, to manage the ball in a proper manner; it must therefore be left to the more robust lads, who are fitter for such athletic exercises. Bat and ball is an inferior kind of cricket, and more suitable for little children, who may safely play at it, if they will be careful not to break windows."

Youthful Sports[London], pp 47-48., per David Block, page 184. An 1802 version of this book, published in Baltimore, is similar to the chapbook at #1801.2, but does not include trap-ball.

Base Ball

Unknown

An entry for "base-ball" in an 1837 English-to Greman dictionary uses the definition "s. dass Ball-spiel mit Freistätten."  {n(oun) the ball-play with free places (safe havens?")}

J. H. Kaltschmidt, A New and Complete Dictionary of the English and German Languages, Leipsic [sic], 1837, page 53.

Retrievable 7/14/2013 via <kaltschmidt base-ball> search.

Richard Hershberger notes on 7/14/2013 that "[u]nfortunately, the second volume of German to English is not available on Google Books."

Is it possible that this entry reflects the 1796 report by Gutsmuths that English and German forms of base-ball coexisted?  Protoball wonders if the 1837 book mistakenly dropped a word following the term "mit" (with).  Gutsmuths called English game "ball "mit freystaten." The Protoball entry for Gutsmuths is at 1796.1

Is there a way to locate the German-to-English version of this 1837 book?

Rounders

Youth

An 1842 reference indicates that rounders was played at an international agricultural school near Bern.

"During a general game, in which some of the masters join (rounders I think the English boys called it) I have observed . . . "

Letters from Hofwyl by a Parent on the Educational Institutions of De Fellenberg, (Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, London, 1842), page 90.

Accessible on Google Books 11/14/2013 via <letters from hofwyl> search.

From David Block: "Unless I'm forgetting something, this may be the earliest example we have of baseball or rounders being played outside of Britain or North America. (I don't count the 1796 description of English baseball by J.C.F. Gutsmuths because there is no evidence that the game was actually played in Germany.)

Was the game dissimilar from the European "battingball games" reported by Maigaard?

Can we determine whether the players were youths or juveniles?

Town Ball

"Town-ball is one of the old games from which the scientific but not half so amusing "national game" of base-ball has since evolved. . . . There were no scores, but a catch or a cross-out in town-ball put the whole side out, leaving others to take the bat or "paddle" as it was appropriately called."

Edward Eggleston, "Some Western School-Masters," Scribner's Monthly, March 1879. Submitted by David Nevard, 1/26/2007. David notes that this is mainly a story about boys tarrying at recess, and can be dated 1845-1850. In other games, a "cross-out" denotes the retiring of a runner by throwing the ball across his forward path. Contemporary Georgia townball [see #1840.24 above] often used paddles. Egglestoiin was an Hoosier historian and novelist. Note: "No scores?

Females

Wicket

Adult

"BAT AND BALL AMONG THE LADIES. Nine married ladies beat nine single ones at a game of wicket in England recently. The gamesters were all dressed in white - the married party with blue trimmings and the others in pink."

Milwaukee[WI] Sentinel and Gazette, vol. 5, number 116 (September 4, 1849), page 2, column 2. Provided by Craig Waff, email of 8/14/2007.

Beth Hise [email of 3/3/2008] reports that the wearing of colored ribbons was a much older tradition.

Note: One may ask if something got lost in the relay of this story to Wisconsin. We know of no wicket in England, and neither wicket or cricket used nine-player teams.

Was cricket, including single-wicket cricket, known in any part of England as "wicket?"

Cricket

Adult

Pycroft, James, The Cricket Field; or, The History and Science of Cricket [London? Pub'r?], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 220.

A Boston edition appeared in 1859 [Mayhew and Baker, publisher].

This book's first chapter, "The Origins of the Game of Cricket," is seen by Block as "if not the earliest, one of the finest early studies of cricket history. The author exhumes a great number of references to cricket and its antecedents dating back to the year 1300." 

Females, Fiction

Cricket, Rounders, Bass Ball

Youth

"The rest of the party strolled about the field, or joined merrily in a game of bass-ball or rounders, or sat in the bower, listening to the song of birds." .

Cricket receives three references (pages 75, 110, and 211)in this book. The first of these, unlike the bass-ball/rounders account, separates English boys from English girls after a May tea party: "Some of the gentlemen offered prizes of bats and balls, and skipping-ropes, for feats of activity or skill in running, leaping, playing cricket, &c. with the boys; and skipping, and battledore and shuttlecock with the girls."

Trap-ball receives one uninformative mention in the book (page 211).

 A Year of Country Life: or, the Chronicle of the Young Naturalists (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1853), page 115.

As a way of teaching nature [each chapter introduces several birds, insects, and "wild plants"] this book follows a group of boys and girls of unspecified age [post-pubescent, we guess] through a calendar year. The bass-ball/rounders reference above is one of the few times we run across both terms in a contemporary writing. So, now: Is the author denoting are there two distinct games with different rules, or just two distinct names for the same game?  The syntax here leaves that distinction muddy, as it could be the former answer if the children played bass-ball and rounders separately that [June] day. 

Richard's take on the bass-ball/rounders ambiguity: "It is possible that there were two games the party played . . . but the likelier interpretation is that this was one game, with both names given to ensure clarity." David Block [email of 2/27/2008] agrees with Richard. Richard also says "It is possible that as the English dialect moved from "base ball" to "rounders," English society concurrently moved from the game being played primarily played by boys and only sometimes being played by girls. I am not qualified to say."

England

Cricket, Rounders

Juvenile, Adult

A cricket historian describes an early attribute of cricket"

" . . . the reason we hear sometimes of he Block-hole was . . . because between these  [two] two-feet-asunder stumps [the third stump in the wicket had not yet been introduced] there was cut a hole big enough to contain a ball, and (as now with the school boy's game of rounders) the hitter was made out in running a notch by the ball being popped into [a] hole (whence 'popping crease') before the point of the bat could reach it."

James Pycroft, The Cricket Field [1854], page 68. 

Note: Pycroft was first published in 1851. See item #1851.1. Was this material in the first edition?

France

Cricket, Rounders

Juvenile

An 1855 French conversation text consistently translates "balle au camp" as "rounders." It also translates "crosse" to "cricket."

A double is seen in "deux camps," as "En voila une bonne! Deux camps pour celle-la" is translated as "That is a good one! Two bases for that."

W. Chapman, Every-Day French Talk (J. B. Bateman, London, 1855), pages 16, 20, 21. Accessed 2/11/10 via Google Books search <"chapman teacher" "french talk" 1855>. The English titles for the translated passages are The Playground and Returning From School.

It is unclear whether the original poems are the English versions or the French versions; if the latter, it seems plausible that these safe-haven games were known in France. 

Would a French person agree that "balle au camp" is rounders by another name? Should we researcher thus chase after that game too? Perhaps a French speaker among us could seek la verite from le Google on this?

Ball in the Culture, Bans

Australia

Base Ball

Youth

"Sabbath Desecration. - A correspondent requests us to call attention to the practice of a number of boys and young men, who congregate in Mr. Wilkinson's paddock, near Patrick and Murray Streets, on Sunday afternoons, for playing at cricket, base-ball, &c., making a great noise, and offending the eyes and ears of persons of moral and religious feeling."

Colonial Times[Hobart], Saturday, September 22, 1855, page 3.

Subsequent comments on 19CBB from Bob Tholkes and Richard Hershberger [11/23/09] led to conjecture that this form of "base-ball" arrived Down Under directly from its English roots, for in 1855 American presence was largely restricted to the gold fields. Note: Hobart is on the northern coast of the island that has been known as Tasmania since 1856.

Famous

Italy

Adult

King Ferdinand II

"Description of a Modern Tyrant" (Ferdinand II of the Kingdom of Naples) ...his favorite old games, foot-racing and tumbling, base ball and wrestling..." Describes Ferdinand as "the scoundrel king of Naples."

Newark Advertiser, Dec. 21, 1855; by an unidentified correspondent in Rome. Summarized in Originals, Newsletter of the Origins Committee of SABR, Vol. 3 no. 11, Nov. 2010.

Chapbooks for Juveniles

England

Juvenile

Pictured is a struck ball heading toward a window. Text: "School's up for to-day, come out boys and play I'll put my trap here on the grass;/ Look out John Thatcher, here comes a catcher, oh dear! It will go through the glass."

Sports for All Seasons, Illustrating the Most Common and Dangerous Accidents That Occur During Childhood . . . [London, J. March], six pages; per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 216-217.

England

Rounders

An English sports manual includes a description and diagram of rounders that Block characterizes as "generally consistent with other accounts of rounders and pre-1845 baseball." This version of the game used a pentagon-shaped infield and counterclockwise base running.

Walsh, J. H. ("Stonehenge"), Manual of British Rural Sports (London, G. Routledge, 1855), per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 216.

England

Rounders

Zoernik, Dean A., "Rounders," in David Levinson and Karen Christopher, Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present [Oxford University Press, 1996], page 329. 

Note: Whaaaat? See #1828.1 above, and the Rounders Subchronology.

Greenland

Bat and Ball

Kane, Elisah Kent, Arctic Explorations: the Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, '54, '55, volume 2 [Philadelphia, Childs and Peterson]. The author, observing a native village, watches as "children, each one armed with the curved rib of some big amphibian, are playing bat and ball among the drifts." Block notes that the accompanying engraving playing with long, curved bones as bats.

David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 218. 

Australia

Base Ball

Adult

"The first recorded baseball event in Australia was a series of three games between Collingwood and Richmond. The scores were astronomical, with Collingwood winning the second match 350-230! The early Australian baseball players were probably playing a variation of cricket, rounders, and the New York Game and possibly counting each base attained as a run."

Joe Clark, A History of Australian Baseball (U Nebraska Press, 2003), page 5. 

Similarly: Phil Lowry reports a 3-inning game in Melbourne, Victoria on February 21 or 28, 1857. The score was 350 to 230, and rules called for a run to be counted each time a baserunner reached a new base." Posting to 19CBB by Phil Lowry 11/1/2006.

Clark then cites "a well-traveled myth in the American baseball community . . . that the first baseball played in Australia was by Americans on the gold fields of Ballarat in 1857 . . . . No documentation has ever been produced for a Ballarat gold fields game [also page 5]."

England

Rounders

Unknown

"Writing in 1857, "Stonehenge" noted that 'it [rounders] was [p. 232/233] formerly a very favourite game in some of our English counties, but is now almost entirely displaced by cricket.' . . . documentary evidence of it is hard to find before the chapter in William Clarke's Boys' Own Book of 1828."

Tony Collins, et al., Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports (Routledge, 2005), pages 232-233.

Rounders made a comeback later, at least as a school yard game played mostly be female players.  Is it clear whether the game was played significantly among men and boys before 1857?

England

Rounders

Juvenile

A group of "youths and lads" were arrested by a park constable for "playing at a game called rounders." Posted to 19CBB by Richard Hershberger on 2/5/2008.

 The Morning Chronicle, March 17, 1857

England

Rounders

Block notes that this "comprehensive and detailed anthology of sports and games includes the full [but unnamed - LM] spectrum of baseball's English relatives." The rounders description of rounders features 5 bases, plus a home base. Block considers the changes described for rounders since the first (1828) account, and descries "the steady divergence of rounders and baseball during those decades to the point of becoming two distinct sports."

Pardon, George, Games for All Seasons [London, Blackwood], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 218. 

Chapbooks for Juveniles

England

Rounders

Juvenile

George Forrest, The Playground: or, The Boy's Book of Games [G. Rutledge, London, 1858, pp. 67-72]. Available via Google Books.

The manual covers rounders, cricket, and trapball - but not stoolball.

Among the features shown: when only a few players were available, backward hits were not in play; leading and pickoffs were used in rounders; the rounders bat is three feet long; two strikes and you're out in trapball; and when a cat is used in place of a ball in rounders, plugging is not allowed.

Famous

England

Base Ball

Duchess of Kent

August 17 was the 72^nd birthday of the Duchess of Kent, celebrated at Windsor. Church bells rang. Royal tributes were fired. And, "amusements principally consisted of cricket, dancing, archery, football, trap and base ball, swinging, throwing sticks for prizes, etc."

"Birthday of the Duchess of Kent," Times of London, Issue 23073 (August 18, 1858), page 7 column A. 

Given the absence of the term "base ball" in this period, one may ask whether "trap and base ball" was a variant of "trap ball." In fact, the phrase appears in an 1862 in a description of a fete held in August 1859, presumably near Windsor, where, after a one-innings cricket contest, "archery, trap and base ball [and boat races] were included in the diversions. Gyll, Gordon W. J., History of the Parish of Wraysbury, (H. G. Bohn, London, 1862), page 55. Available on Google Books [google "trap and base ball"].

Fiction

England

Base Ball

Juvenile

The boys were still restless - ". . . they were rather at a loss for a game. They had played at base-ball and leap-frog; and rival coaches, with six horses at full speed, have been driven several times around the garden, to the imminent risk of box-edgings, and the corner of flower beds: what were they to do?" . The boys appear to be roughly 8 to 10 years old.

Anon., "Robert Wilmot," in The Parents' Cabinet of Amusement and Instruction (Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1858), page 59

Greater New York City

Base Ball

In response to a letter sent by "A Used-Up Old Cricketer", the New York Sunday Mercury, presumably editor William Cauldwell, acknowledged that base ball was undoubtedly the descendant of the game of the same name long played in England.

New York Sunday Mercury Aug. 15, 1858

New England

Base Ball

Youth

"The present game [of baseball] was introduced by George A. Flagg, '62 [and three others and] Frank Wright, '62. Most enthusiastic of these early players was Mr. Flagg, who abandoned the Massachusetts style of baseball for the New York style. The ball then used was a small bag of shot wound with yarn, and could be batted much further than the present baseball. The men just named played among themselves and with town teams. Mr. Wright, of Auburn, New York, was perhaps more responsible than anyone else for bringing the game to New England."

Laurence M. Crosbie, The Phillips Exeter Academy: A History (1923), page 233. Posted to the 19CBB listserve on [date?] by George Thompson. Accessible in snippet view 2/19/2010 via Google Books search (crosbie exeter flagg). 

Is c1858 a creditable guess as to when lads in the class of '62 might have begun playing at Exeter? Is a full view available online? Phillips Exeter is in Exeter NH, about 50 miles N of Boston and about 12 miles SW of Portsmouth.

Chapbooks for Juveniles

England

Rounders

Juvenile

Games and Sports for Young Boys [London, Warne and Routledge] This book's descriptions of rounders, feeder, trap-ball, and northern spell were cloned from the 1841 publication The Every Boy's Book, but many new woodcuts seem to have been inserted.

David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 221. 

Chapbooks for Juveniles

England

Trap Ball, Old-Cat Games

Juvenile

The Boy's Own Toy-Maker [London, Griffith and Farran]. This book has information on making toys and sporting equipment. It spends two pages on tip-cat and three on "trap, bat, and ball." An American edition [Boston, Shepard, Clark and Brown] also appeared in 1859.

David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 220. 

Canada

Base Ball

Adult

"YOUNG CANADA vs. YOUNG AMERICA. - These two base ball clubs of Canada (the former of Toronto, the latter of Hamilton) played the first game of base ball that has ever taken place there, we believe, under the rules of the N. Y. Base Ball Association, on Tuesday, 24^th ult., at Hamilton." 

The New York Clipper, June 11, 1859

Young Canada prevailed, 68-41. 

Are there earlier claims for the first Knicks-style game in Canada? Item #1856.18 above was likely a predecessor game, right?

England

Base Ball

The activities at an August 1859 event of the Windsor and Eton Literary, Scientific and Mechanics Institute included a one-innings cricket match. In addition, "[a]rchery, trap and base ball, were included in the diversions on the firm-set land, as well as boat-racing open the pellucid flood."   

G. W. J. Gyll, The History of the Parish of Wraysbury, Ankerwycke Priory, and Magna Charta Island (H. G. Bohn, London, 1862), page 55. Posted to 19CBB by Richard Hershberger, 3/18/2008.

Richard suggests that this is the last known published reference to home-grown "base ball" play in Britain. This area is about 20 miles west of London. The full list of diversions gives no indication that it was children who were to be diverted at this event, so adult play seems possible. 

Would it be helpful to understand what the membership and purposes of the Institute were? Is "trap and base ball" to be construed here as "trap ball," rather than Austen-style base-ball, in this part of Victorian England?

England

Base Ball

Adult

On October 22, 1859, the touring English cricketers played base ball at a base ball field in Rochester, NY, "about two miles from the town, and had been enclosed at great expense. The base-ball game is somewhat similar to the English game of "rounders," as played by school-boys. . . .Caffyn played exceedingly well, but the English thought catching the ball on the first bound a very childish game."

Fred Lillywhite, The English Cricketers' Trip to Canada and the United States (Lillywhite, London, 1860), page 50. The book [as accessed 11/1/2008] can be viewed on Google Books; try a search of "lillywhite canada."

Chapbooks for Juveniles

England

Stoolball

Doutee Stool: After a ball is thrown or struck, players try to reach a stool further along a circle before the server can retrieve the ball and strike one of them [page 41-42].

Egg Hat: Player A throws a ball into another player's hat, say Player B. Player B tries to retrieve the ball and hit one of the fleeing others, or he is assessing an egg. Three eggs and you're out [pages 42-44].

Feeder: Batter must complete a circle of bases [clockwise] before the pitcher [feeder] retrieves the ball and hits him with it. Not described as a team game [pages 44-46].

Nine-Holes: Egg Hat without hats [pages 54-56].

Rounders: "a most excellent game, and very popular in some of our English counties." One-handed batting; teams of five or more, stones or stakes for bases, runners out be plugging or force-out at home, one-out-side-out, three strikes and out, balks allowed, foul balls in play [pages 57-60].

Stool-Ball: "an old English sport, mentioned by Gower and Chaucer, and was at one period common to women as well as men. Player defends against thrown ball hitting his stool [pages 61 ff]."

Ball Games with Illustrations (Routledge and Sons, London, 1860 [as annotated by the MCC]). Per Google Books, published in 1867.

Females

Stoolball

Adult

"Stoolball was played at Chailey [Sussex] in 1861. Major Lionel King . . . first saw stoolball in the early 'sixties, while still a very small boy. He watched a game in a field belonging to Eastfield Lodge, Hassocks [Sussex], and both men and maidens were playing" 

Russell-Goggs, in "Stoolball in Sussex," The Sussex County Magazine, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 322. Note: Russell-Goggs does not give a source for this report.

Bans

New England

Base Ball

"Sect. 10. No person or persons shall, without the consent of the mayor or board of aldermen, engage in games of ball, foot-ball, or other athletic sports, upon the public garden."

Ordinance and Rules and Order of the City of Boston (Mudge and Son, Boston, 1869), page 132. Accessed 2/18/10 via Google Book search ("ball, foot-ball" ordinances 1869). 

A note identifies this section as having been written in 1862, along with one that prohibits shaking carpets on public lands, including streets, lanes, alleys, etc.

Famous

Base Ball

Henry Ward Beecher

"It is well, therefore, that so many muscular games are coming into vogue. Base-ball and cricket are comparatively inexpensive, and open to all, and one can hardly conceive of better exercise."

Henry W. Beecher, Eyes and Ears (Sampson Low, London, 1862), age 191. Accessed 2/18/10 via Google Books search ("vogue baseball" beecher). 

Beecher is here lauding exercise that is both vigorous and inexpensive.

Baseball Professionalism

Canada

Base Ball

Adult

"BASE-BALL IN CANADA. A meeting of delegates appointed to form a Base-Ball Association in Canada was held in the town of Woodstock on Monday evening, 15th August, 1864."

Wilkes' Spirit of the Times, Sept. 10, 1864

Four clubs, all in Ontario, were represented-- the Young Canadian Club (Woodstock); Maple Leaf Club (Hamilton); Barton Club (Barton); and Victoria Club (Ingersoll)

Pre-modern Rules

Base Ball, Town Ball

"Base Ball resembles our old-fashioned favorite game of Town Ball sufficiently to naturalize it very quickly. It is governed by somewhat elaborate rules, but the practice is quite simple.  Nine persons on a side, including the Captains, play it.  Four bases are placed ninety feet apart, in the figure of a diamond. The Batsman, Ball Pitcher, and one Catcher, take the same position as in Town Ball.  Of the outside, besides the Pitcher and Catcher, one is posted at each base, one near the Pitcher, called the “Short Stop,â€â€”whose duty is the same as the others in the field—to stop the ball.  The Innings take the bat in rotation, as in Town Ball,—and are called by the Scorer.  The ball is pitched, not thrown to them—a distance of fifty feet.  The Batsman is permitted to strike at three “fair†balls, without danger of being put out by a catch, but hit or miss, must run at the third “fair†ball.  He may "tip" or hit a foul.

The full article, with commentary from finder Richard Hershberger, is found below in the Supplemental Text section.

Illinois State Journal, May 10, 1866.

() Any idea why this morsel hadn't turned up before 2014?

() By 1860, the modern game seems well-established in Chicago -- was it still unfamiliar elsewhere in IL as late as 1866? 

() The writer seems unfamiliar with the modern force-out rule; wasn't that introduced prior in base ball prior to 1866?

() Is it possible that the absence of a comment about the modern no-plugging rule means that local town ball already used a no-plugging rule?

() Many throwback articles mention that the new ball is harder than traditional balls.  Could local town ball have already employed hard balls?

Base Ball

Adult

Due to the fine standard of play and the unusually low score (4-2), the Cincinnati Red Stockings' win over the Mutual in Brooklyn on June 15, 1869 in Brooklyn was hailed as the best game ever played.

Greg Rhodes, "A Cunning Play Saves the Streak-- Cincinnati Red Stockings at Mutuals", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 63-64.

Stats and Box Scores

Base Ball

Adult

“Average total bases on hits to a game” first appears in the New York Clipper on December 4, 1869.  It would continue to be used in 1870 and 1871 before falling out of favor. Slugging average—total bases on hits per at-bat—would be adopted by the National League in 1923 as one of two averages, along with batting average, tracked by the official statistician.

New York Clipper (New York City, NY), 4 December 1869: p. 277. 

For a short history of batting measures, see Colin Dew-Becker, “Foundations of Batting Analysis,”  p 1 – 9:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0btLf16riTacFVEUV9CUi1UQ3c/

African Americans

Base Ball

Adult

"To Colored Professionals -- A good catcher and good left hand pitcher are wanted for the Brown Stockings, of St. Louis.  A good salary will be given for the season.  Address Douglass (sic) Smith, 109 North Street, St. Louis."

New York Clipper, April 8, 1871.

Stats and Box Scores

Base Ball

Adult

In a letter published in the New York Clipper on March 11, 1871, H. A. Dobson, a correspondent for the periodical, wrote to Nick E. Young, the Secretary of the Olympic Club in Washington D.C., and future president of the National League. Young would be attending the Secretaries’ Meeting of the newly formed National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, and Dobson urged him to consider a “new and accurate method of making out batting averages.”

“According to a man’s chances, so should his record be. Every time he goes to the bat he either has an out, a run, or is left on his base. If he does not go out he makes his base, either by his own merit or by an error of some fielder. Now his merit column is found in ‘times first base on clean hits,’ and his average is found by dividing his total ‘times first base on clean hits’ by his total number of times he went to the bat. Then what is true of one player is true of all…In this way, and in no other, can the average of players be compared.”

Dobson included a calculation, for theoretical players, of hits per at-bat at the end of the letter; the first published calculation of the modern form of batting average.

Dobson, H.A. “The Professional Club Secretaries’ Meeting.” New York Clipper (New York City, NY), 11 March 1871: p. 888.

While "hits per at-bat" has become the modern form of batting average, and was the only average calculated by the official statistician beginning in the inaugural season of the National League in 1876, the definition of a "time at bat" has varied over time. To Dobson, a time at bat included any time a batter made an "out, a run, or is left on his base." However, walks were excluded from the calculation of at-bats beginning in 1877, with a temporary reappearance in 1887 when they were counted the same as hits. Times hit by the pitcher were excluded beginning in 1887, sacrifice bunts in 1894, times reached on catcher's interference in 1907, and sacrifice flies in 1908 (though, they went in and out of the rules multiple times over the next few decades and weren't firmly excluded until 1954).

Consequently, based on Dobson's calculation, walks would have counted as an at-bat but not as a hit, so a negative result for the batter. This was the case in the first year of the National League as well, but was "fixed" by the second year. A fielder's choice would  have been recorded as an at-bat and not a hit under Dobson's system, as it is today.

For a short history of batting measures, see Colin Dew-Becker, “Foundations of Batting Analysis,”  p 1 – 9:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0btLf16riTacFVEUV9CUi1UQ3c/

Base Ball

Adult

As the Professional Era took shape, 50-cent admission fees were common, if not standard, in the new league.

(Add data on typical crowd sizes?) (On typical bathroom facilities?) (On available food and drink availability and prices?) (On other now-forgotten practices?)

Debate on admission fees persisted for the AA and the NL was to persist into the 1880s.

Admission gave attendees access to standing room.  A seat in the grandstand was (always? sometimes?) extra, and within 2 or three years grandstand seats were being sold for one dollar.

Sources?

Youth

Ching Tsung was the new Chinese emperor at the age of 15. "As soon as he could escape from the morning levee, the young Emperor rushed off to play ball. His habits were well known in the city, and in the summer of 824 someone suggested to a master-dyer named Chang Shao that, as a prank, he should slip into the Palace, lie on the Emperor's couch and eat his dinner, 'for nowadays he is always away, playing ball or hunting.'" The prank was carried out, but those prankish dyers . . . well, they died as a result.

Waley, Arthur, The Life and Times of Po Chu-I, 772-846 [Allen and Unwin, London, 1949], p. 157. Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

Do we know what Chinese "ballplaying" was like in the ninth century?

Ever try to throw a ball, even a non-breaking pitch, without using your thumb?

"The carpometacarpal joint of Australopithecus afarensis would have allowed he range of thumb movement necessary for both key grips used in baseball."

This extinct hominid (think Lucy), thought to be as close to Homo sapiens as any species then alive, lived in eastern Africa.  Their hands weren't yet adapted to throwing, but their thumbs had evolved in that general direction.

Richard W. Young, "Evolution of the human hand: the role of throwing and

clubbing,"Journal of Anatomy (2003), pp165–174. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1571064

Four of our metacarpal bones are aligned in the back of our hands. This fifth is between our wrist and or thumb knuckle. 

Adult

Wall inscriptions in Egyptian royal tombs depict games using bats and balls.

According to Egyptologist Peter Piccione, "A wall relief at the temple of Deir et-Bahari showing Thutmose III playing under the watchful eye of the goddess Hathor dates to 1460 BC. Priests are depicted catching the balls . . . this was really a game."

Per Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], p. 20.

Henderson's source may be his ref #127-- Naville, E., "The Temple of Deir el Bahari (sic)," Egyptian Exploration Fund. Memoirs, Volume 19, part IV, plate C [London, 1901]. Also, Batting the Ball, by Peter A. Piccione, "Pharaoh at the Bat," College of Charlestown Magazine (Spring/Summer 2003), p.36. See

also http://www.cofc.edu/~piccione/sekerhemat.html, as accessed 12/17/08.

According to SABR member César González, "There are remains of rubber balls found since the time of the Olmeca culture between 1500 and 700 BC." He reports that it is believed that one of the earliest Mesoamerican games was played with a stick. A dozen rubber balls dating to 1600 BCE or earlier have been found in El Manatí, an Olmec sacrificial bog 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) east of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan.

[Haslip-Viera, Gabriel: Bernard Ortiz de Montellano; Warren Barbour "Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs," Current Anthropology, Vol. 38, No. 3, (Jun., 1997), pp. 419-441]

Per email from César González, 12/6/2008.

Can we add specific sources for these points?

Xenoball

Unknown

"Recent excavations near Cairo, Egypt, have brought to light small balls of leather and others of wood obviously used in some outdoor sport, and probably dating back to at least 2000 years before Christ. These may be the oldest balls in existence. Hence Egypt maybe the birthplace of the original ball game whatever it was. We know, however that the Greeks and Romans played ball at a remote period. We do not know the exact nature of any of these ancient games, Egyptian, Greek, or Roman."

William S. Walsh, A Handy Book of Curious Information (J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1913), page 83. Available via Google Books search "to light small balls," 1/27/2010.

Does recent scholarship agree that these were balls, were used in sport, and date to 2000 BC? Is there further evidence about their role in Egyptian life?

Females

Xenoball

Adult, Unknown

The main chamber of Tomb 15 at Beni Hasan has a depiction of catching a ball, as well as throwing.  Two women, each riding on the back of another woman, appear to be doing some form of ball-handling. The image of one woman pretty clearly depicts her in the act of catching ("fielding”) a ball, and the other is quite plausibly about to throw a ball toward her.

Henderson, Robert W.,Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], page 19; the image itself is reproduced opposite page 28.

Sekar-hemat

[A]“The earliest known references to seker-hemat (translation: “batting the ball”) as a fertility rite and ritual of renewal are inscribed in pyramids dating to 2400 BC.”  Egyptologist Peter Piccione reads Pyramid Texts Spell 254 as commanding a pharaoh to cross the heavens and “strike the ball” in the meadow of the sacred Apis bull.

[B]Piccione’s reading seems consistent with Robert Henderson’s identification of ancient Egypt as the source of ballplaying: “It is the purpose of this book to show that all modern games played with bat and ball descend from one common source: an ancient fertility rite observed by Priest–Kings in the Egypt of the Pyramids.”

[A] Piccione, Peter, “Pharaoh at the Bat,” College of Charlestown Magazine(Spring/Summer 2003), p.36.  From a clipping in the Giamatti Center’s “Origins” file in Cooperstown. 

[B]Henderson, Robert W.,Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], page 4.

David Block [Baseball Before We Knew It, page 303 (note 1)] writes that Piccione’s identification of seker-hemat with baseball is “apparently speculative in nature.”

It would be good to confirm details in an academic source and to see whether Egyptologists have any other interpretations of this text – and how Egyptian rites employed the ball as a symbol of fertility. 

Unknown

Writing in 1891, Stewart Culin reported “the discovery by Mr. Flinders-Petrie of wooden ‘tip cats’ among the remains of Rahun, in the Fayoom, Egypt (circa 2500 B.C).”  Culin infers that these short wooden objects, pointed on each end, were used in an ancient form of the game later know as Cat.

Culin, Stewart, “Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y.,” Journal of American Folklore, Volume 4, number 14 (July-September 1891), page 233, note 1.

Do contemporary archeologists and/or historians agree that such items were evidence of play? Have they since found older artifacts that may be associated with cat-like games, or ball games? Can they suggest any rules for such games... Batting? Running? Fielding? Team Play?

Om El Mahag

Adult

In 1937 the Italian demography researcher Corrado Gini undertook to study a group of blond-haired Berbers in North Africa, and discovered that they played a batting/baserunning game in the sowing season. 

They called the game Om El Mahag. It employed a "mother's base" and a "father's base, and baserunners were retired if their soft-toss pitch resulted in a caught fly or if they were plugged when running between bases.

[A] Contemporary experts were persuaded that the "blondness of the Berbers suggests that they brought the game with them from Europe" some fifty or more centuries earlier when cold northern climates drove civilization southward.  

[B] For later accounts of this research and its interpretation, see below.

[A] Erwin Mehl, "Baseball in the Stone Age (English translation), Western Folklore, volume 7, number 2 (April 1948), page 159.

[B] For a succinct recent summary, see David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It (UNebraska Press, 2005), pages  95-100.  For a rollicking but undocumented take on possible very early safe haven games, including Om El Mahag, see Harold Peterson, The Man Who Invented Baseball (Scribner's, 1969), pages 42-46. 

Today's reader will want to determine how modern demography sees the advent of blond-haired Berbers and the evidence on the preservation of games and cultural rituals over scores of human generations.  

Peterson sees a striking resemblance of Om El Mahag to Guts Muths' "German game" as described in 1796.

Has this game been observed in other North African communities since 1937?  Are alternative explanations of Om El Mahag now offered, including a much more recent importation from cricket-playing and baseball-playing areas?   

Famous

Xenoball

Unknown

Galen

The Greeks, famous for their athletics, played several ball games. In fact the Greek gymnasium ["palaistra"] was often known to include a special room ["sphairiteria"] for ballplaying . . . a "sphaira" being a ball. Pollux [ca 180 AD] lists a number of children's ball games, including games that loosely resemble very physical forms of keepaway and rugby, and the playing of a complicated form of catch, one that involved feints to deceive other players.

The great physician Galen wrote [ca. 180 AD] especially fondly of ballplaying and its merits, and seems to have seen it as an adult activity. He advised that "the most strenuous form of ball playing is in no way inferior to other exercises." Turning to milder forms of ball play, he said "I believe that in this form ball playing is also superior to all the other exercises." His partiality to ballplaying stemmed in part from its benefit for the whole body, not just the legs or arms, as was the case for running and wrestling.

As far as we are aware, Greek ball games did not include any that involved running among bases or safe havens, or any that involved propelling a ball with a club or stick (or hands).

Stephen G. Miller, Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources [University of California Press, 2004]: See especially Chapter 9, "Ball Playing." The Pollox quote is from pp. 124-125, and the Galen quote is from pp. 121-124. Special thanks to Dr. Miller for his assistance.

Did any of the Greek games share attributes with modern baseball?

Newspaper Coverage

Town Ball

Adult

Clippings from Cincinnati in 1858 report on the Gymnasts' Town Ball Club match of July 22, 1858: "They played for the first time under their new code of bye laws, which are more stringent than the old rules." The game has five corners [plus a batter's position, making the basepaths a rhombus in general shape], sixty feet apart, meaning 360 feet to score. The fly rule was in effect, and plugging was disallowed, and the rules carefully require that a batsman run every time he hits the ball.

The New York Clipper carried at least four reports of Cincinnati town ball play between June and October of 1858. The earliest is in the edition of June 26, 1858 - Volume 6, number 10, page 76. Coverage suggests that teams of eight players were not uncommon, although teams of 13 and 11 were also reported. 

An oddity: in a July intramural contest, batter Bickham claimed 58 runs of his team's 190 total, while the second most productive batsman mate scored 30, and 5 of his 10 teammates scored fewer than 6 runs each. One wonders what rule, or what typo, would lead to that result.

Pre-modern Rules

Cat-and-Dog

In cat-and-dog, two holes are cut at a distance of thirteen yards. At each hole stands a player with a club, called a "dog." [. . . ] His object is to keep the cat out of the hole. "If the cat be struck, he who strikes it changes places with the person who holds the other club, and as often as the positions are changed one is counted as won in the game by the two who hold the clubs.

Jamieson, Scotch Dictionary (Edinburgh, 1841). As cited in A.G. Steel and R. H. Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 4.Detail provided by John Thorn, email of 2/10/2008.

Note that this is not described as a team game.  A winner is that player who most frequently puts a ball into a goal.

Does Jamieson describe other ballgames?

Fiction

Cat-and-Dog

Youth

[Author?] The Scotch rogue; or, The life and actions of Donald MacDonald, a Highland Scot [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 176. The [apparently fictional] hero recalls; "I was but a sorry proficient in learning: being readier at cat and doug, cappy-hole, riding the burley hacket, playing at kyles and dams, spangboder, wrestling, and foot-ball (and such other sports as we use in our country) than at my book."

Block identifies "cat and doug," or cat and dog, as a Scots two-base version of the game of cat that was most commonly played in Scotland.  It was the likely forbear of the American game of two-old-cat."

David Block, Baseball Before Knew It (U Nebraska Press, 2007), page 176.

For more on cat-and-dog, see http://protoball.org/Cat-and-Dog.

Chapbooks for Juveniles

A woodcut, recycled from Mary's Book of Sports (1832.3, above) does not relate to this book's story.

William Johnson; or, The Village Boy (New Haven, S. Babcock) per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 195.

Cricket

This eight-page book shows cricket and "bat and ball" being played in the backgrounds of pastoral views.

Happy Home [New York and Philadelphia, Turner and Fisher, ca 1835], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 199.

Are the players children?

Xenoball

Included among the games is das Giftball (the venomball, roughly). Block observes that this game "is identical to the early French game of la balle empoisonee (poison ball, roughly) and that an illustration of two boys playing it "shows it to be a bat-and-ball game." For the French game, see the 1810c.1 entry above.

Jugendspiele zur Ehhjolung und Erheiterung (boys' games for recreation and amusement) [Tilsit, Germany, W. Simmerfeld, 1845], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 207.

Does Block link the two descriptions, or does the German text cite the French game

Famous

Stoolball, Tennis

Adult

Galileo

The great scientist wrote, in a treatise discussing how the ball behaves in different ball games, including tennis: "Stool-ball, when they play in a stony way, . . . they do not trundle the ball upon the ground, but throw it, as if to pitch a quait. . . . . To make the ball stay, they hold it artificially with their hand uppermost, and it undermost, which in its delivery hath a contrary twirl or rolling conferred upon it by the fingers, by means whereof in its coming to the ground neer the mark it stays there, or runs very little forwards."

(see Supplemental Text, below, for a longer excerpt, which also includes the effect of  "cutting" balls in tennis as a helpful tactic.) 

Galileo Galilei, Mathematical Collections and Translations. "Inglished from his original Italian copy by Thomas Salusbury" (London, 1661), page 142.

Provided by David Block, emails of 2/27/2008 and 9/13/2015.

David further asks: "could it be that this is the source of the term putting "English" on a ball?"

Can we really assume that Galileo was familiar with 1600s stoolball and tennis?  Is it possible that this excerpt reflects commentary by Salusbury, rather that strict translation from the Italian source?

Wicket

Madame Knight, "in her inimitable journal of her ride from Boston to New York in 1704, speaks of ball-playing in Connecticut."

"The Game of Wicket and Some Old-Time Wicket Players," in George Dudley Seymour, Papers and Addresses of the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut, Volume II of the Proceedings of the Society, [n. p., 1909.] page 284. Submitted by John Thorn, 7/11/04. John notes 9/3/2005 that Seymour observes that Madame Knight does not specifically name the sport as wicket, but he excludes cricket as a possibility because cricket was not then known to have been played in America before 1725; however, John adds, we now have a cricket reference in Virginia from 1709. [See #1709.1, below.]

Base

Youth

"Notwithstanding bloody affrays [in war times] between the English and Indians, they were generally of familiar terms in times of peace, and  often mingled together  in athletic sports.  The game of 'base' was a peculiar favorite with our young townsmen, and the friendly Indians, and the hard beach of 'Garrison Cove' afforded fine ground for it."

W. Southgate, The History of Scarborough, 1633 - 1783, Collections of the Maine Historical Society, Volume III (Portland, 1853), page 148.  G-Books search <"bloody affrays like these">, 4/2/2013.

One wishes there was more evidence that this form of "base" was a ball-game, and not a game like tag or capture-the-flag.  If "base" was a ball-game, this report of native American play nearly 3 centuries ago is certainly remarkable. 

Scarborough Maine is about 8 miles SW of Portland ME (then still a part of Massachusetts).

College, Harvard College

Bat-and-Ball

Youth

From Harvard College,

In a letter written from Harvard College dated March 30, 1729 to Nicholas Gilman, John Seccomb wrote:  “The Batchelors Play Batt & Ball mightily now adays which Stirs our bloud greatly”

Nicholas Gilman papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, as cited in Clifford K. Shipton, New England Life in the Eighteenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 287.  

Brian Turner notes that this find "predates by 33 years the 1762 ban on bat-and-ball (along with foot-ball, cricket, and throwing snow-balls and stones in the streets of Salem -- see entry 1762.2).  It also predates by two decades a reference in a 1750s French & Indian war diary kept by Benjamin Glazier of Ipswich."  (See entry 1758.1)

Gilman was from a leading family of New Hampshire, mainly centered in Exeter, a bit inland from Portsmouth, where Elwyn gave a description of 1810's "bat & ball," in which he certainly seems to name a specific game.  (See entry 1810s.9).  Seccomb, also spelled Seccombe, was born and lived in Medford, Mass., and later in life wound up in Nova Scotia -- not because he was a Loyalist, but for other reasons.

Brian notes that "By “Batchelors,” Gilman probably means students pursuing a bachelor’s degree, hence the categorization of this entry under "Youth."  For over two centuries, 14 was the age at which boys entered Harvard." (Email of 9/1/2014.)

Unknown

Adult

 
"The same Day a Gentleman in this City, for a Wager of 10l [ten pounds] struck a Ball over the Weather-Cock of the English Church, which is above 163 Feet high. He had half a Day allow'd him to perform it in, but he did  it in less than half the Time."
 

American Weekly Mercury, Philadelphia, July 6, 1732, page 3, column 2;

from a series of paragraphs/sentences datelined *New-York, July 3.  The preceding paragraph had begun "On Friday last."

Protoball doesn't know of other early references to pop-fly hitting.

Is it fair to assume that the gentleman used a bat to propel the ball? 

Are such feats known in England?

Is a 160-foot weather-vane plausible?  That's well over 10 stories, no?

Pre-modern Rules

Base

Juvenile, Youth, Unknown

"Dear Spirit:  . . .

"I shall state [here] that which has come under my observation, and also some of my friends, during the last four years of the ball-playing mania . . .   

Base ball cannot date back to so far as [cricket], but the game has no doubt, been played in this country for at least one century.  Could we only invoke the spirit of some departed veteran of he game, how many items of interest might we be able to place before the reader.

"New England, we believe, has always been the play-ground for our favorite game; and the boys of the various villages still play by the same rules their fathers did before them.  We also find that many games are played, differing but little from the well-known game of Base.

" . . .  Although I am a resident of State of New York, I hope to do her no wrong by thinking that the New England States were, and are, the ball grounds of this country, and that many of our  present players were originally from those States.  

"The game of Base, as played there, was as follows: They would take the bat, 'hand over hand,' as the present time, 'whole hand or none.'  After the sides  were chosen, the bases would be placed so as to form a square, each base about twenty yards from the other.  The striker would stand between the first and fourth base, equi-distant from each.  The catcher was always expected to take the ball without a bound and it was always thrown by  a player who would stand between the second and third bases. A good catcher would take the ball before the bat cold strike it.  A hand was out if a man was running the bases should be struck with the ball which was thrown at him while he was running.  He was allowed either a pace or a jump to the base which he was striving to reach; or if a ball was caught flying or on first bound.  There was no rule to govern the striker as to the direction he should knock the ball, and of course no such thing as foul balls. The whole side had to be put out, and if the last man could strike a ball a sufficient distance to make all the bases, he could take in one of the men who had been put out. The ball was not quite the same as the one in present use, and varied very much in size and weight, it also was softer and more springy.  

"The bats were square, flat, or round -- some preferring a flat bat, and striking with it so that th4  edge, or small side, would come in contact with the ball.  Another arrangement of bases is, to have the first about two yards from the striker (on this right), the second about fifty down the field, and the third, or home, about five. . . .

"Yours, respectfully,  X"

Base Ball Correspondence," Porter's Spirit of the Times, Volume 3, number 8 (October 24, 1857), page 117, column 2. The full text of the October 20 letter from "X" is on the VBBA website, as of 2008, at:

http://www.vbba.org/ed-interp/1857x1.html

The writer present no evidence as to the earliest dates of known play.

The game described by "X" resembles the MA game as it was to be codified a year later except: [a] "a good catcher would frequently take the ball before the bat cold strike it," [b] the runner "was allowed either a pace or jump to the base which he was striving t reach," [c] the bound rule was in effect, [d] all-out-side-out innings were used, [e] the ball was "softer and more spongy" than 1850's ball, [f] the bats were square, flat, or round," and [g] there was a second field layout, with three bases. [This variation reminds one of cricket, wicket, and "long town or "long-town-ball, except for the impressive 150-foot distance to the second base]."

Can we interpret the baserunning rule allowing "a pace or jump to the base [the runner] was striving to reach?"  Plugging didn't count if the runner was close to the next base," perhaps?

Military

Bat-and-Ball

Adult

In 1758, Benjamin Glazier recorded in his diary that "Captain Garrish's company played 'bat and ball'" near Fort Ticonderoga.

Benjamin Glazier, French and Indian War Diary of Benjamin Glazier of Ipswich,1758-1760.  Essex Institute Historical Collections, volume 86 (1950), page 65, page 68. The original diary is held at the Peabody-Essex Museum, Salem MA. 

Note: Brian Turner notes, August 2014, that: "I've had to cobble together the above citation without seeing the actual publication or the original ms.  The Hathi Trust allows me to search for page numbers of vol. 86, but not images of those pages, and when I put in "bat and ball" I get hits on p. 65 and p. 68.  P. 65 also provides hits for "Ticonderoga" and "Gerrish's," so that would be the most likely place for all the elements to be cited.  The original clue came from a website on the history of Fort Ticonderoga, but I can no longer find that website."

Fort Ticonderoga is about 100 miles N of Albany NY at the southern end of Lake Champlain.  Ipswich MA is about 10 miles N of Salem MA.

Can the date of the diary entry be traced?

Youth

"When Saturday afternoon chanced to be rainy, and no prospect of bat and ball on the common, some half a dozen of us used now and then, to meet in an old wood-shed, that we shall never forget, and fume it away to our own wonderful aggrandizement."

"Use of Tobacco from Dr. Waterhouse's Lecture before Harvard University," American Repertory, September 3, 1829 ("from the Columbian Centinel.") Accessed via subscription search, May 5, 2009. From internal references, this appears to be an account of the well-known public anti-smoking lecture by Professor Benjamin Waterhouse in November 1804.

Caution: dating this reference requires some assumptions. Waterhouse was born in 1754, and thus, if this recollection is authentic, he speaks of a penchant for ballplaying [and smoking] he held in his teens. He was born at Newport, RI and remained there until 1780.

Bans, College

Playing with Balls

Youth

Dartmouth College's founding president Eleazar Wheelock thought his students should "turn the course of their diversions and exercises for their health, to the practice of some manual arts, or cultivation of gardens and other lands at the proper hours of leisure." That would be "more useful" than the tendency of some non-Dartmouth students to engage in "that which is puerile, such as playing with balls, bowls and other ways of diversion."

Eleazar Wheelock, A Continuation of the Narrative [1771], as quoted in W. D. Quint, The Story of Dartmouth College (Little, Brown, Boston, 1914) , page 246. Submitted by Scott Meacham, 8/21/06. Dartmouth is in Hanover NH.

College, Harvard College

Youth

"And that no other person was present in said area, except a boy who, they say was playing with a Ball From the testimony some of the persons in the kitchen it appeared that the company there assembled were very noisy That some game at Ball was played That some of the company called on the Boy to keep tally; which Boy was seen by the same person, repeated by running after the Ball, with a penknife & stick in his hand, on which stick notches were cut That a Person who tarried at home at Dr. Appleton's was alarmed by an unusual noise about three o'clock, & on looking out the window, saw in the opening between Hollis & Stoughton, four or five persons, two of whom were stripped of their coats, running about, sometimes stooping down & apparently throwing something . . ."

Source: Harvard College Faculty Records (Volume IV, 1775-1781), call number UAIII 5.5.2, page 220 (1781).

Posted to 19CBB by Kyle DeCicco-Carey [date?]

Famous

Ball

Adult

"Sat. [August] 22 played at ball self and son John vs. Messrs Aitken and Anderson beat them four Games."

The Journal of John Sevier, published in Vols V and VI of the Tennessee Historical Magazine, 1919-1920.

See http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Tennessee/_Texts/THM/5/3/Sevier_Journal/1795*.html

Accessed via <sevier "22 played at ball"> search, 6/30/2014.

Editor's footnote #73 (1919?): "'Played at ball.' Sevier and son beat their antagonists four games.  There were not enough (players?) for town-ball, nor for baseball, evolved from town-ball, and not yet evolved.  There were not enough for bullpen.  The game was probably cat-ball."

Revolutionary War veteran John Sevier was nearly 50 years old in August 1795.  He became Tennessee's first governor in the following year.  His son John was 29 in 1795.

Hazard

NYC

Adult

"DIED.  Last Evening of surfeit, playing ball, M[r] John McKibben, merchant of this city."

New York Spectator, September 11, 1811, page 2.

John Thorn adds: "It is surely a coincidence that John McKibbin, Jr. was president of the Magnolia Ball Club of 1843, about which I have written. The Magnolias'  McKibbin and his father were born in Ireland.

Famous

Western New York

Adult

A story, evidently set in 1880 in Rochester, involves three boys who convince their grandfather to attend a Rochester-Buffalo game. The grandfather contrasts the game to that which he had played in 1827.

He describes intramural play among the 50 members of a local club, with teams of 12 to 15 players per side, a three-out-side-out rule, plugging, a bound rule, and strict knuckles-below-knees pitching. He also recalls attributes that we do not see elsewhere in descriptions of early ballplaying: a requirement that each baseman keep a foot on his base until the ball is hit, a seven-run homer when the ball went into a sumac thicket and the runners re-circled the bases, coin-flips to provide "arbitrament" for disputed plays, and the team with the fewest runs in an inning being replaced by a third team for the next inning ["three-old-cat gone crazy," says one of the boys]. The grandfather's reflection does not comment on the use of stakes instead of bases, the name used for the old game, the relative size or weight of the ball, or the lack of foul ground - in fact he says that outs could be made on fouls.

Samuel Hopkins Adams, "Baseball in Mumford's Pasture Lot," Grandfather Stories (Random House, New York, 1947), pp. 143 - 156. Full text is unavailable via Google Books as of 12/4/2008.

Adams' use of a frame-within-a-frame device is interesting to baseball history buffs, but the authenticity of the recollected game is hard to judge in a work of fiction. Mumford's lot was in fact an early Rochester ballplaying venue, and Thurlow Weed (see entry #1825c.1) wrote of club play in that period. Priscilla Astifan has been looking into Adams' expertise on early Rochester baseball. See #1828c.3 for another reference to Adams' interest in baseball about a decade before the modern game evolved in New York City.

We welcome input on the essential nature of this story. Fiction? Fictionalized memoir? Historical novel?

Famous

Western New York

Base Ball

Adult

[A] "Your article on baseball's origins reminded me of an evening spent in Cooperstown with the author Samuel Hopkins Adams more than 30 years ago. Over a drink we discussed briefly the folk tale about the "invention" of baseball in this village in 1839.

"Even then we knew that the attribution to Abner Doubleday was a myth. Sam Adams capped the discussion by pulling from his wallet a clipping culled from a Rochester newspaper dated 1828 that described in some detail the baseball game that had been played that week in Rochester."

[B] Adams' biography also notes the author's doubts about the Doubleday theory: asked in 1955 about his novel Grandfather Stories, which places early baseball in Rochester in 1827 [sic], he retorted "'I am perfectly willing to concede that Cooperstown is the home of the ice cream soda, the movies and the atom bomb, and that General Doubleday wrote Shakespeare. But," and he then read a newspaper account of the [1828? 1830?] Rochester game."

[C] "Will Irwin, a baseball historian, tells us he was informed by Samuel Hopkins of a paragraph in an 1830 newspaper which notes that a dance was to be held by the Rochester Baseball Club."

[A] Letter from Frederick L. Rath, Jr, to the Editor of the New York Times, October 5, 1990.

[B] Oneonta Star, July 9. 1965, citing Samuel V. Kennedy, Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing (Syracuse University Press, 1999), page 284.

[C] Bill Beeny, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 17, 1965.

 Priscilla Astifan has looked hard for such an article, and it resists finding.  She suspects the article appeared in a newspaper whose contents were not preserved.

Newspaper Coverage

Bass-ball

Juvenile

Under the heading "School-boy Anecdote," this item tells of a "pupil in one of the common schools in New-York" who responded in an oral spelling quiz with an indistinct answer.  The teacher pressed him on his answer:  "Did you say 'a' or 'e'?"

"Why, you take ary [sic] one on 'em!" said the boy, and he scampered [to the front of the classroom] "like a boy at bass-ball, and placed himself at the head of the class."

Carried in the New-Hampshire Statesman and Concord Register, [Concord, NH], June 6, 1829, page 4, column 3:  Attributed to the Berkshire American (no date given).

One source identifies the Berkshire American as being published in Pittsfield MA 1825-28.

Pittsfield is in westernmost MA and within 10 miles of the New York border.  It is about 35 miles SE of Albany NY.

Females, Fiction

Bat-Ball

Juvenile

Tom Altherr located a fictional story in The Child's Friend (January 1848) in which a mother recounts to her son, George, how she 'liked boys' playthings best' when she was a little girl and could 'drive hoop, spin top, bat ball, jump, and climb' as well as her brothers could."

The Child's Friend, January 1848.  Full citation needed.  Submitted by Deb Shattuck, May 2013.

It is, of course, difficult to specify a reasonable date for a fictional account like this one.

Pre-modern Rules

Base Ball

Youth, Adult

Ball Playing -- Old Boys at it!

Base-ball was a favorite game of the early settlers at the gatherings which brought men and boys together -- such as raisings, bees, elections, trainings, Fourth of Julys, etc., etc., and we are glad to see that the manly sport is still in vogue, at least in 'benighted Ashtabula.'  We learn by the Sentinel that a matched game came off at Jefferson on the 4th, fourteen selected players on each side, chosen by Judge Dann and Squire Warren.  The party winning the first hundred scores was to be the victor.  Judge Dann's side won the game by eleven scores.  The Sentinel says:

There were thirteen innings without a tally.  [This suggests that, at least by 1859, this game used one-out-side-out innings.] The highest number of scores was made by James R. Giddings, a young chap of sixty-four, who led the field, having made a tally as often as the club came to his hand. The game excited great interest, and was witnessed by a large number of spectators.  The supper was prepared by 'our host' at the Jefferson House.

Note:  Protoball's PrePro data base shows another reference to a group, including Giddings, playing this predecessor game in Jefferson; see http://protoball.org/In_Jefferson_OH_in_July_1859. 

Cleveland [Ohio] Daily Leader, Saturday July 9, 1859, First Edition.

See clipping at http://www.newspapers.com/clip/2414996/18590709_cleveland/.

We have assigned this to a date of ca. 1830 on the basis that players in their sixties seem to have played this (same) game as young adults.  Comments welcome on this assumption.  Were the southern shores of Lake Erie settled by Europeans at that date?

Ashtabula (1850 population: 821 souls) is about 55 miles NE of Cleveland OH and a few miles from Lake Erie.  The town of Jefferson OH is about 8 miles inland [S] of Ashtabula.

"The Sentinel" is presumably the Ashtabula Sentinel. 

Further commentary on the site and date of this remembered game are welcome.

Was the Ashtabula area well-settled by 1830?

Long Ball (European baserunning game), Town Ball

Juvenile

"Here we played town ball, corner ball, sow ball and long ball.  Sometimes we would jump, to see how high we could leap; then it was hop, step and jump.  Once in a while we played ring, provided the girls would help, and generally they would..." 

Samuel Penniman Bates, Jacob Fraise, Warner Beers, History of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Containing a History of the County, its Townships, Towns, Villages, Schools, Churches, Industries, Etc; Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men; Biographies; History of Pennsylvania, Statistical and Miscellaneous Matter, etc. (Chicago: Warner, Beers and Company, 1887), page 300.

This observation is attributed to John B. Kaufman, a teacher turned surveyor in Franklin County, PA , reflecting on his childhood spent in a log school house in  "50 odd years ago": Kaufman was born in 1827.  Find confirmed 10/9/2014 via search of <"john b. kaufman" "long ball">

Franklin County PA is in south central PA, on the Maryland border.  Its population in 1830 was about 35,000.

"Sow Ball?"

Images

Youth

A miniature 8-page book shows four boys playing at ball. "What more boys at play! I should not think you could see at play. Oh, it is too late to play at ball, my lads. The sun has set. The birds have gone to roost. It is time for you to seek your homes."

Mary's Book of Sports. With Beautiful Pictures [S. Babcock, New Haven CT, 1832].

Chapbooks for Juveniles, Images

Cricket

Youth

In part four of this book, cricket play is treated in some detail, and a small woodcut of ball play has the caption, "This picture is intended to represent the Franklin school house in Boston. It is now recess time, and some lads are playing at ball on the green lawn before the portico of the brick building."

The Child's Own Book (Boston, Munroe and Francis, 1832), cited by Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 195.

Chapbooks for Juveniles

Ballplaying woodcut surfaces in CT.

The Picture Exhibition [New Haven, S. Babcock], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 195. The reused woodcut is from Mary's Book of Sports see1832.3 entry, above). Block does not mention any text relating to ball play.

Bans

Town Ball, Cricket, Old-Cat Games

"Any person who shall on the Sabbath day play bandy, cricket, cat, town ball, corner ball, over ball, fives, or any other game of ball, within the limits of the Corporation, or shall engage in pitching dollars, or quoits in any public place, shall on conviction thereof, be fined the sum of one dollar." 

Illinois Weekly State Journal, June 14, 1834.

Richard Hershberger writes: "If I recall correctly, the earliest known cites for "town ball" are reportedly from 1837, from local ordinances in Canton, IL and Indianapolis, IN.  This is a similar ordinance, from Springfield, IL, from 1834." 

Goal Ball, Base Ball, Base

Boy's Book of Sports: A Description of The Exercises and Pastimes of Youth [New Haven, S. Babcock, 1839], pp. 11-12, per Henderson, ref 21. David Block, in Baseball Before We Knew It, page 197-198, points out that the first edition appeared 4 years before the edition that Henderson cited.

In its section on "base ball," this book depicts bases in the form of a diamond, with a three-strike rule, plugging, and teams that take the field only after all its players are put out. The terms "innings" and "diamond" appear [Block thinks for the first time] and base running is switched to counter-clockwise.

This book also has a description of "Base, or Goal Ball," which described: "gentle tossing" by the pitcher, three-strike outs, a fly rule, counter-clockwise base-running in a circuit of four bases, and the plugging of runners, and all-out-side-out innings.

For Text: David Block carries a page of text, and the field diagram, in Appendix 7, pages 282-283, of Baseball Before We Knew It.

The text for "Base, or Goal Ball" appears in Preston Oren, Baseball (1845-1881) From the Newspaper Accounts (P. Oren, Altadena CA, 1961), pages 2-3.

Contemp. "Base Ball" usage

Base Ball

Youth

After buying a book that would hold his diary entries for the next year and beyond, 11 year old James Terry wrote in his first entry, dated April 4, 1835, "Then played base ball til noon, then went to get wintergreen . . . ." 

Two days later he wrote "got my dinner; then went to watch the boys play ball; then went to the store."  On June 1, 1836, he wrote that some local boys "went and played ball and I stood and looked on.  I then went up to my chamber and stayed there a while."   

Unpublished journal of James Terry, written near  what is now Thomaston CT.

Thomaston, CT is about 10 miles N of Waterbury CT and about 20 miles SW of Hartford.

James Terry, son of a prominent clock manufacturer,  later founded what became the well-known Eagle Lock Company.

Terry's initial diary entry April 4 entry begins "This morning I painted my stick: then thought I would begin to write a journal" just before recording his ballplaying.  He adds that he later "went and see-sawed. and then I painted my stick again, then ate supper."

Is it possible that the stick was his base ball bat?  Were painted bats common then?

Contemp. "Base Ball" usage

Juvenile

"I have a handwritten journal kept by a young boy for the years 1835 and 1836.  This young man grew up to be a person of note in Connecticut but that is not what I am writing about.  On the very first page of his two year journal, actually the very first sentence he states, 'this morning I painted my stick.' A few sentences later me mentions that he 'played base ball til noon.' He was 11 years old when he wrote this and ther are other mentions of base ball and his stick here and there and generically playing with the boys. There is no description of how they played the game. . .

"Respectfully, Ed Cohen"

Email from Ed Cohen to Retrosheet, October 8, 2013.

Protoball replied to Mr. Cohen, but communication was lost, and we are unable to add detail or context to this find, as of 11/22/2013.

Are there any contemporary references to "base ball" in CT before this?

Females, Pre-modern Rules

Bat and Ball

Youth

"Sports in Honolulu. One evidence of the increasing civilization in this place, and not the least gratifying, is to see the ardor with which the native youth of both sexes engage in the same old games which used to warm our blood not long since. There's good old bat and ball, just the same as when was ran from the school house to the 'Common' to exercise our skill that way; and then there is something which looks much like 'quorum,' and 'tag' too . . . ."

Polynesian, December 26, 1840. Posted to the 19CBB listserve by George Thompson January 3, 2010. Accessed via subscription search May 4, 2009. George sees the column as likely written by the newspaper's editor, James Jarves, who was born in Boston in 1818.

Wicket

Adult

"WICKET BALL -- The ball players of this city met those of Granville, Mass., in accordance with a challenge from the latter, at Salmon Brook, about 17 miles from here (half way between the two places) on Wednesday last, for the purpose of trying their skill at the game of 'Wicket.' The sides were made up of 25 men each, and the arrangement was to play nine games, but the Hartford players beating them five times in succession, the game was considered fairly decided, and the remaining four games were not played.  The affair, we understand, passed off very pleasantly, and the parties separated, with the utmost harmony, after partaking of a dinner provided for the occasion."

Hartford Times, June 27, 1840, page 3.

Granville MA -- 1850 population about 1300 -- is about 22 miles NW of Hartford, very near the MA-CT border.  Hartford's population in 1840 was about 9500.

Bass Ball

Adult

"A matched, political game of bass Ball came off in this village on Friday last.  Twelve Whigs on one side, and twelve Loco Focos on the other.  Rules of the game, one knock and catch out, each one out for himself, each side one inns.  The Whigs counted 81 and the Locos 10.  The game passed off very pleasantly, and our political opponents, we must say, bore the defeat admirably."

Note: The Whigs were a major political party in this era, and the Loco Focos were then a splinter group within the opposing Democratic Party.

Frontier Sentinel [Ogdensburg, NY], April 23, 1844, page 3, column 1.

The Frontier Sentinel was published 1844-1847 in Ogdensburg (St. Lawrence County) NY.

Ogdensburg [1853 population was "about 6500"] is about 60 miles downriver [NE] on the St. Lawrence River from Lake Ontario.  It is about 60 miles south of Ottawa, about 120 miles north of Syracuse, and about 125 miles SW (upriver) of Montreal.  Its first railroad would arrive in 1850.

The HOF's Tom Shieber, who submitted this find, notes that this squib may just be metaphorical in nature, and that no ballplaying had actually occurred.  But why then report a plausible game score? 

Comment is welcome on the interpretation of the three cryptic rule descriptions for this 12-player game.

[1] "One knock and catch out?"  Could this be taken to define one-out-side-out innings?  Or, that ticks counted as outs if caught behind the batter? Or something else?  Note: Richard Hershberger points out that 1OSO rules could not have likely allowed the scoring of 81 runs with no outs.  That would imply that the clubs may have used the All-Out-Side-Out rule.

[2] "Each one out for himself?"  Could batters continue in the batting order until retired?  That too, then, might imply the use of an All-Out-Side-Out inning format

[3] "Each side one inns?"  So the Whigs made those 81 "counts" in a single inning? 

Richard Hershberger also surmises that the first two rules are meant to be conjoined: "One knock and catch out, each one out for himself."  That would declare that [a] caught fly balls (and, possibly, caught one-bound hits?) were to be considered outs, and that [b] batters who are put out would lose their place in the batting order that inning; but were there any known variants games for which such catches would not be considered outs?   

Military

Adult

"Saturday March the 6^th. We drilled as before and through the day we play ball and amuse ourselves the best way we can. It is very cool weather and clothing scarce."

Bill Swank adds:  "Private Azariah Smith (age 18 years) was a member of the Mormon Battalion (United States Army) that marched almost 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa To San Diego, California during the Mexican War.  Hostilities had ended shortly before their arrival in San Diego.  On March 6, 1847, his Company B was in bivouac at Mission San Luis Rey (Oceanside, CA) when Smith made his journal entry.

"During the summer of 1847, Smith was mustered out of the army and traveled north to Coloma, CA.  Remarkably, he was also present when gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, as noted in his diary on January 24, 1848." 

Smith, Azariah, The Gold Discovery Journal of Azariah Smith [Utah State University, Logan UT, 1996], page 78. Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

Email from Bill Swank, March 6, 2013

This game was presumably a pre-modern form of ballplaying.

Pre-modern Rules

Wicket

Adult

"THOSE GAMES OF WICKET --

which Wolcottville challenged Litchfield to play, came off on our green, last Saturday afternoon; 25 players on a side; . . .  

[Scoring report shows Litchfield winning over three innings, 232 to 150.]

"This is the first effort to revive "BANTAM," since the Bat and Ball, were buried (literally buried,) 10 years ago, after two severe floggings, by this same Wolcottville."

Litchfield Republican, July 6, 1848, page 2.

Litchfield CT (1850 pop. about 3,950) is about 30 miles W of Hartford.  Wolcottville is  evidently the original name of Torrington CT, which reports a population of about 1900 in 1850. Torrington is about 5 miles NE of Litchfield.

"Bantam" game?

Wicket

Adult

"BALL-PLAYING -- Westfield vs. Granville --

"The match of wicket ball made between the players of Westfield and Granville, came off about midway between the two towns, yesterday. There were 30 on each side, and the winners in three of five games were to be awarded the victory.  On the first game, the Westfield boys led by about 10 ball; on the second about 20, and the third about 40; and so won the game.  The conquerors in many a well fought field were vanquished; or, as our correspondent expresses it, 'the Gibraltar of ball playing is taken.'  The Granville players were never beaten before but once, by a party from Hartford.

"Over 400 persons were on the ground, and the greatest excitement existed throughout the whole strife.  A supper followed the result.  The tables were set in a grove near Loomis's Hotel.  The beaten party paid the bills." 

Springfield Republican, July 6, 1849.

The score is reported in "balls," not the more common "tallies."

Westfield MA (1850 pop. about 4200) is about 30 miles N of Hartford CT and about 10 miles W of Springfield MA.  Granville MA (1850 pop. about 1300) is about 8 miles SW of Westfield. 

Pre-modern Rules

Wicket

Adult

GAME OF WICKET BALL --

"The Granville ball players challenged the Westfield players, recently, to a game of ball.  The challenge was accepted, and the game came off, on Saturday last, about one mile this side of East Granville.  They were to have thirty men on a side, the best in five to be declared victorious, and the defeated party to pay the suppers for all.  The following is the tally:

[Each club won two games, and the fifth game was listed as Westfield 112, Granville 25 . . . with only ten Granville players evidently on the field....]

"On the fourth [fifth?] game, the Granville players made but a few rounds, and becoming disheartened, declined to finish the game, and refused, also, to pay for the suppers.  Great excitement ensured, and we are sorry to learn that some personal collision was he consequence. Several blows were exchanged.  There was great excitement during the day, there being from 600 to 800 people upon he ground.  The Westfield players, not to lose their supper, paid for it themselves, and went home."

Springfield Republican, July 23, 1850

In the game account, runs are termed "crosses."  In the text they are called "rounds."

Granville is about 15 miles SW of Springfield, and Westfield is about 10 miles E of Springfield.

California

Base Ball, Or Old Fashioned Base Ball

Juvenile, Youth, Adult

From February 1851 through January 1852, there are six reports of ballplaying in San Francisco:  

[1] February 4, 1851.  "Sport -- A game of base ball was played upon the Plaza yesterday afternoon by a number of the sorting gentlemen about town." 

[2] February 4, 1851. Sports on the Plaza.  "The plaza has at last been turned to some account by our citizens. Yesterday quite a crowd collected upon it, to take part in and witness a game of ball, many taking a hand. We were much better pleased at it, than to witness the crowds in the gambling saloons which surround the square." 

[3] February 6, 1851. "Base-Ball --This is becoming quite popular among our sporting gentry, who have an exercise upon the plaza nearly every day. This is certainly better amusement than 'bucking' . . .  ."

[4] March 1, 1851. "Our plaza . . . has gone through a variety of stages -- store-house, cattle market, auction stand, depository of rubbish, and lately, playground.  Numbers of boys and young men daily amuse themselves by playing ball upon it -- this is certainly an innocent recreation, but occasionally the ball strikes a horse passing, to the great annoyance of he driver."

[5] March 25, 1851. "There [at the Plaza] the boys play at ball, some of them using expressions towards their companions, expressions neither flattering, innocent nor commendable. Men, too, children of a larger growth, do the same things."

[6] January 14, 1852.  "Public Play Ground -- For the last two or three evenings the Plaza has been filled with full grown persons engaged very industrially in the game known as 'town ball.'  The amusement is very innocent and healthful, and the place peculiarly adapted for that purpose."

[1] Alta California, Feb, 4, 1851

[2] "Sports on the Plaza," Daily California Courier, February 4, 1851.

[3] "Base-Ball," Alta California, February 6, 1851.

[4] "The Plaza," San Francisco Herald, March 1, 1851.

[5]  "The Corral," Alta California, March 25, 1851.

[6] "Public Playground," Alta California, January 14, 1852.

See Angus Macfarlane, The [SF] Knickerbockers -- San Francisco's First Baseball Team?," Base Ball, volume 1, number 1 (Spring 2007), pp. 7-20.

Angus Macfarlane's research shows that many New Yorkers were in San Francisco in early 1851, and in fact several formed a "Knickerbocker Association."  Furthermore he discovered that several key members of the eastern Knickerbocker Base Ball Club -- including de Witt, Turk, Cartwright,  Wheaton, Ebbetts, and Tucker -- were in town.  "[I]n various manners and at various times they crossed each other's paths."  Angus suggests that they may have been involved in the 1851 games, so it is possible that they were played by Knickerbocker rules . . .  at a time when in New York most games were still intramural affairs within the one or two base ball clubs playing here.

What do we know about "the Plaza" in those days, and its habitués and reputation? 

Massachusetts

Wicket

Youth

"In a recent case which occurred at Great Barrington, an action was brought against some 12 or 15 young men, by an old man, to recover damages for a spinal injury received by him and occasioned by a wicket ball, which frightened his horse and threw him from his wagon. The boys were playing in the street. . . . . If this were fully understood, there would be less of the dangerous and annoying practice so common in our streets."

"Caution to Ball Players n the Street," The Pittsfield Sun, volume 51, issue 2647 (June 12, 1851), page 2.

Illinois

Adult

"There were well established teams throughout the state of Illinois as early as those of Chicago, if not earlier.  The Lockport Telegraph of August 6, 1851, tells of a game between the Hunkidoris of Joliet and the Sleepers of Lockport [IL]."

Federal Writers' Project -- Illinois, Baseball in Old Chicago, (McClurg, 1939). page 1.  [From GBooks search for <"Joliet and the Sleepers">, 3/28/2013].

This entry appears to be in error caused by a mistake in binding local newspapers, and the cited Telegraph article may have appears as late as 1880.

From a 5/24/2013 email to Protoball from Bruce Allardice: 

I've found proof that the 1939 WPA report on an 1851 game between Lockport and Joliet is incorrect. Below is what I've added to the Lockport entry in protoball:

 "The book "19th Century Baseball in Chicago" (Rucker and Fryer) p. 13 asserts that the Lockport Telegraph of Aug. 6, 1851 reported on a game between the Hunkidoris of Joliet and the Sleepers of Lockport. The book credits a 1939 WPA report on early Chicago area baseball for this.

The authors are correct in what the 1939 report said. However, the 1939 report was incorrect. I talked to the librarian at the Lockport Public Library who told me that the 8-6-51 issue of the Telegraph was mistakenly bound with a newspaper from many years later, and that the Hunkidoris game article is from a newspaper 30 years later."

I also looked at a microfilm copy of the 8-6-51 issue of the Lockport newspaper, and found no mention of baseball.

Too bad, If it had been true, it would have been the first verified baseball game outside the New York area.

The librarian (now retired, and volunteering at the Will County Historical Society) is familiar with the issue, but can't remember what newspaper or date the Hunkidori game was mentioned in.

Famous

Wicket

Noah Webster

"Wicket, n. A small gate; a gate by which the chamber of canal locks is emptied; a bar or rod, used in playing wicket."

Noah Webster, A Dictionary of the English Language, Abridged from the American Dictionary (Huntington and Savage, New York, 1851), page 399.Accessed 2/10/10 via Google Books search ("used in playing wicket"). 

No other ballgames are carried in this dictionary. Webster was from Connecticut.

Holidays

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

"On Christmas day, the drivers, agents, and other employees of the various Express Companies in the City, had a turnout entirely in character. . . . There were between seventy-five and eighty men in the company . . . . They then went to the residence of A. M. C. Smith, in Franklin st., and thence to the Red House in Harlem, where the whole party has a good old fashioned game of base ball, and then a capital dinner at which A. M. C. Smith presided."

New York Daily Tribune, December 29, 1851. 

Richard added: "Finally this is a very rare contemporary cite of baseball for this period. Between the baseball fad of the mid-1840s and its revival in the mid-1850s, baseball is rarely seen outside the pages of the Knickerbocker club books." John Thorn contributed a facsimile of the Tribune article.

Can we surmise that by using the term "old fashioned game," the newspaper is distinguishing it from the Knickerbocker game?

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

"Some baseball games are historic even thought few details of the contest survive. A case in point is the June 3, 1851 Knickerbocker-Washington game.  Although the only surviving information is the line score, the match is remembered because it marked the beginning of ongoing match play."

John Zinn, "Match Play: Knickerbockers of New York vs. Washington of New York," in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pages 8-9.  

This is game #4 of the SABR 19th Century Committee's top 100 games of the 1800s.The Knickerbockers won the June 3 game, 21-11,  in 8 innings. 

Two weeks later, the two clubs met again and the Knickerbockers prevailed again, 22-20, in 10 innings.

The era of repetitive match play among organized base ball clubs had begun.

Fiction

Bass Ball

Juvenile

"A little way from the school-house . . .  was a pleasant beech grove, where the boys played bass ball, and where the girls carried disused benches and see-sawed over fallen logs."

Alice Carey, Clovernook: or, Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West (Redfield, Clinton Hall NY, 1852), page 280.  G-Book search: <"beech grove" "alice carey">.

The state or locality of this scene is not obvious.

Is this a recollection or a work of fiction?

Pre-modern Rules

Wicket

Unknown

"That Game of Wicket,

Between the two Branches of Bantam Players (the Factory and Up-Town Branches,) came off on the Public Green in this Village, on Saturday last, with the following result"

[In three innings, the score was Factory Branch 141, Up Town Branch 111.]

Litchfield Republican, July 8, 1852, page 2.

What were "bantam players?"  Does the term suggest the ages of the players?

Bat-Ball, Base Ball

Juvenile

The fifth stanza of the poem "Morning Musings on an Old School-Stile" reads: "How they poured the soul of gay and joyous boyhood/ Into roaring games of marbles, bat and base-ball!/ Thinking that the world was only made to play in, -/ Made for jolly boys, tossing, throwing balls! 

Southern Literary Messenger, volume 18, number 2, February 1852, page 96, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 214.

John Thorn interprets this phrase to denote two games, bat-ball and base-ball. Others just see it as a local variant of the term base-ball. Is the truth findable here?  Note that Brian Turner, in "The Bat and Ball": A Distinct Game or a Generic Term?, Base Ball, volume 5, number 1, p. 37 ff, suggests that 'bat and ball" may have been a distinct game played in easternmost New England.

College, Harvard College

Base Ball, Cricket, Old-Cat Games

Youth

Reflecting back nearly sixty years later, the secretary of the class of 1855 wrote: "In those days, substantially all the students played football and baseball [MA round ball, probably], while some played cricket and four-old-cat."

"News from the Classes," Harvard Graduates Magazine Volume 18 (1909-1910). Accessed 2/11/10 via Google Books search ("e.h.abbot, sec.").  From an death notice of Alexander Agassis, b. 1835

College

New York State

Youth

"Baseball in Geneva began, at least on an organized basis, in 1860. Informal games had taken place at Hobart College as early as 1854, and at the nearby Walnut Hill School . . . .  The boys were organized into teams in 1856 or 1857."

Minor Myers, Jr., and Dorothy Ebersole, Baseball in Geneva: Notes to Accompany An Exhibition at the Prout Chew Museum, May 20 to September 17, 1988 [Geneva Historical Society, Geneva, 1988], page 1.

Note: This brochure seems to imply that New York rules governed this game, but does not say so.

Geneva NY is about 45 miles east of Rochester NY and about 55 miles west of Syracuse, at the northern end of Seneca Lake. "The Public Schools of Geneva, NY before 1839", an article in History of Ontario County, New York (G. Conover, ed.), 1893, describes Walnut Hill School as follows:

"The Walnut Hill School, an institution designed for the especial work of educating boys, was established in 1852 and was located at the south end of Main street, on the site now in part occupied by the residence of Wm. J. King. Of the history of this once popular school, but little reliable data is obtainable, though it is known that the course pf study was thorough and the discipline excellent. During most of its career its principal was Rev. Dr. T. C. Reed, who was assisted by three competent teachers. The school was discontinued in 1875." 

College, Harvard College

American Cricket, Wicket

Youth

"It was in the spring of 1854 . . . that I stepped into the Harvard College yard close to the park. There I saw several stalwart looking fellows playing with a ball about the size of a small bowling ball, which they aimed at a couple of low sticks surmounted by a long stick. They called it wicket. It was the ancient game of cricket and they were playing it as it was played in the reign of Charles the First [1625-1649 - LMc]. The bat was a heavy oak thing and they trundled the ball along the ground, the ball being so large it could not get under the sticks.

"They politely invited me to take the bat. Any cricketer could have stayed there all day and not been bowled out. After I had played awhile I said, "You must play the modern game cricket." I had a ball and they made six stumps. Then we went to Delta, the field where the Harvard Memorial Hall now stands. We played and they took to cricket like a duck to water. . . .I think that was the first game of cricket at Harvard."

"The Boyhood of Rev. Samuel Robert Calthrop." Compiled by His daughter, Edith Calthrop Bump. No date given. Accessed 10/31/2008 at http://www-distance.syr.edu/SamCalthropBoyhoodStory.html.

Actually, Mr. Calthrop may have come along about 95 years too late to make that claim: see #1760s.1 above.

California

OFBB

Adult

"A Game of Ball - People will have recreation occasionally, whether it be considered exactly dignified or not. Yesterday afternoon there was a game of ball played on J street which created no little amusement for several hundred persons. The sport lasted a full hour, until finally some unlucky hombre sent the ball through the window of a drug store, penetrating and fracturing a large glass jar, much to the chagrin of the gentlemanly apothecary, who had not anticipated such unceremonious a carronade."

Daily Democratic State Journal (Sacramento CA), March 24, 1854. 

Richard adds: "Of course this raises the usual questions of what "a game of ball" means. Clearly it is a bat-and-ball game, and given the documented earlier games of baseball (in some form or other) in California and the absence of documented references of the other usual suspects such as wicket in California, it is a reasonable guess that this was [a form of] baseball. I am less willing to make the leap to its being the New York game."

Fiction

Bass Ball

Juvenile

"Tucked away in the 1854 Youth's Casket was a . . . moralistic tale centered on lying . . . ." 

Three lads play "game of bass" with a new bat and ball, and one of them hits the ball so hard it breaks a school window. . . .  One of them is punished for lying to cover up his mate's act.

"Hiding One's Faults," in The Youth's Casket; An Illustrated Magazine for the Young (E. F. Beadle, Buffalo, 1854), pages 151-152.

Cited in Tom Altherr, "Another Base Ball Reference," Originals, volume 4, number 12 (December 2011), page 2.

Bass Ball

Youth

"WARREN BUEL, as he came, bright and early, into the play-ground in the rear of the old school-house; 'hoighho! See what a nice new bat I bought at the cabinet-shop this morning. And father gave me money enough to buy a new India-rubber ball, so that I have both a new bat and a new ball.'

"'Hurrah! for a game now,' shouted HARRY WILLIAMS, taking the ball from the hands of Warren, and bounding it high over his head. 'Let it be a game of bass. Come, Warren, and select some one to choose sides with you.'

"Warren peleeted [selected?] some favorite playmate, and the choosing went on amid loud words, and still louder laughter. 'Now throw up for the "'first ins,"' said the boy whom Warren had selected to choose with him. Up went the bat; and as it descended, Warren grasped it about midway of the smaller part. 'Whole hand or none!' shouted BRUCE RAWLEY, the largest boy of the school, and a noisy, troublesome fellow. Accordingly the whole hand was declared in favor of Harry's party, and the others drew back, leaving two of their number to 'throw and catch.'

"When it came Bruce's turn to knock, he kept his bat motionless by his side until the ball came fair. Then drawing back his arms at full length, he dealt the elastic ball such a blow that it went bounding and skipping up the ascending lawn, a distance of twenty yards or more, and crash through the school-room window.

"'O, Bruce' exclaimed Warren, with the tears gathering in his eyes, 'you have lost my new ball, and father will not buy me another before the next quarter.'

"'What is one ball?' replied Bruce, with a sneer. 'I have lost a dozen already, and the term is not half out yet.'"

R. C. Knowles, Hiding One's Faults, Youth's Casket -- An Illustrated Magazine for the Young (Volume III, 1854), page 151. G-books search <"warren buel"> on 4/3/2013.

The illustration accompanying this short story shows two boys looking down at a ball and cricket bat on the ground.

New England

Round Ball

Adult

"The first regularly organized team in New England was the Boston Olympics of 1854. The Elm Trees followed in 1855 and the Green Mountains two years later."

Seymour, Harold, Baseball: the Early Years [Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 27. [No ref given.]

It seems plausible, given similarity of phrasing, that this finding comes from George Wright's November 1904 review of baseball history. See#1854.3 below.

There is also similar treatment in Lovett, Old Boston Boys, (Riverside Press, 1907),  page 129.

Is there any detailed indication, or educated guess, as to what rules the Olympics uses in 1854?

New England

Massachusetts Game, Round Ball

Adult

"'Base Ball in New England.' The game of ball for years a favorite sport with the youth of the country, and long before the present style of playing was in vogue, round ball was indulged in to a great extent all over the land. The first regularly organized Ball Club in this section was doubtless the Olympic Club, of Boston, which was formed in 1854, and for a year or more this club had the field entirely to themselves.

"In 1855 the Elm Trees organized, existing but a short time, however. In 1856 a new club arose, the 'Green Mountains,' and some exciting games were played between this Club and the Olympics. Up to this point the game as played by these clubs was known as the Massachusetts game; but it was governed by no regular code or rules and regulations . . .  ."

Wright, George, Account of November 15, 1904, for the Mills Commission: catalogued by the Mills Commission as Exhibit 36-19; accessed at the Giamatti Center in Cooperstown.

Note: We have other no evidence that the term "Massachusetts Game" was actually in use as early as 1854.  The earliest it is found is 1858.

There is a newspaper account of the Olympic Club from 1853, when it played the "Aurora Ball Club." See item 1853.17  As of 10/2014, this is the only known reference to the Aurora Club.

Baseball Professionalism

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

"For years, [Al] Reach had been the player identified as the first to receive a salary and/or other inducements, as his move from the Eckfords of Brooklyn to the Athletics could not otherwise be explained. Over the last twenty years, though, the "mantle" has more generally been accorded to Creighton and his teammate Flanley, who were simultaneously "persuaded" to leave the Star Club and join the Excelsiors. Your mention of Pearce - especially at this very early date of 1856 - is the first I have heard.

"In the very early days of match play, before the advent of widely observed anti-revolver provisions (with a requirement that a man belong to a club for thirty days before playing a game on their behalf) it is possible that a team may have paid a player, or provided other "emoluments" (such as a deadhead job), for purposes of muscling up for a single game. The earliest player movement that wrinkles my nose in the regard are that of Lewis Wadsworth 1854 (Gothams to Knickerbockers) and third basemen Pinckney in 1856 (Union to Gothams). The Knicks responded to the Pinckney move by offering membership to Harry Wright, already a professional player in another sport -- cricket."

John Thorn posting to 19CBB listserve group, July 5, 2004, 1:39 PM.

Newspaper Coverage

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

"Base Ball -- The interest in the game if Base Ball appears to be on the increase, and it bids fair to become our most popular game.  There are now four clubs in constant practice, vis, Gotham, Knickerbocker, Eagle, and Empire . . . . "

 The practice and match schedules for the Knickerbockers, Eagles, Empires, Gothams and [Brooklyn] Excelsior appeared in June.

"Base Ball," Spirit of the Times June 2, 1855.

Full text is reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 [University of Nebraska Press, 1995], pp. 20-21.

Greater New York City

Cricket

Adult

"A Game that few Yankees Understand

"The scene at the Cricket Ground at Hoboken, for the last three days, has been worth a long ride to see . . . .

"[A] most pleasing picture. It had a sort of old Grecian aspect - yet it was an English one essentially. Nine-tenths of the immense number of visitors, we guess from the universal dropping of their h's were English. But it is a game that a Yankee may be proud to play well. It speaks much for the moral effect of the game, though we were on the ground some three hours, and not less than 2,000 were there, we heard not a rough or profane word, nor saw an action that a lady might not see with propriety. It costs three cents to get to Hoboken and for thousands of New-Yorker there can be no greater novelty that to watch a game of cricket."

New York Daily Times, vol. 4 number 1168 (June 15, 1855), page 1, column 6. Posted to 19CBB on 9/11/2007.

US

American Cricket

Adult

"By 1855, Cricket was clearly the leading ball game . . . .  Clearly, there was no opposition to cricket because it was English . . . .  However, the growth of cricket between 1855 and 1861 was minor compared to the advances made in baseball.  The Spirit summarized the general attitude of the press in 1859 when it wrote  that 'cricket  has its admirers, but it is evident that it will never have the universality that baseball will.' [page 107]

"In essence, cricket failed because it was too advanced and too institutionalized for a society that lacked a manly ball-playing tradition.  Americans drew from the only heritage they had -- that of a child's game." [page 110] 

Melvin Adelman, "Chapter 5 --The Failure of Cricket as an American Sport," A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820-1870 (U Illinois Press, 1986) 97 - 120.

Adelman cites the Spirit source as December 3, 1859, issue 29, page 505. 

Adelman bases his analysis on the premise that base ball's predecessor games were played mainly be juveniles.  This premise can be questioned.  Even discounting play by university youths up to 1845, adult play in the military and elsewhere was hardly rare before the Gothams and Knickerbockers formed in New York around 1840, as many entries in this chronology indicate.  

Newspaper Coverage

Greater New York City

Base Ball

In March 1855, the editor of the Clipper listed five teams that were "in good condition" and the locations of their twice-a-week practices - Gothams at Red House, Harlem; Knickerbockers, Eagle, and Empire at Elysian Fields at Hoboken , and the Excelsiors in Brooklyn. 

New York Clipper, March 3, 1855; from the Mears Collection.

Articles published later in the New York Clipper, the Spirit of the Times, the New-York Daily Times, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle announced the first appearance in print of 18 new clubs in the Greater NYC region during 1855.

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

[A] Having more energy, apparently,  than what it takes to score 21 runs, the [NJ] Pioneer Club's intramural game in September 1855 took 3 and a quarter hours, and eight innings. Final score: single men, 52, marrieds 38.

[B] In December, the Putnams undertook to play a game [intramurally]to 62 runs, and started at 9AM to give themselves ample time. But "they found it impossible to get through; they played twelve innings and made 31 and 36." 

[C] "At East Brooklyn a new club, the Continentals, of which H. C. Law is president, played from 9 till 5 o'clock."

[A] Spirit of the Times, Volume 25, number 31 (Saturday, September 15, 1855), page 367, column 3.

[B and C] Spirit of the Times, (Saturday, December 8, 1855), page 511, column 3.

Note: these results seems like deliberates exceptions to the 21-run rule; are there others?  Was the 21-run rule proving too short for practice games?

Newspaper Coverage, Post-Knickerbocker Rule Changes

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

[A] The current 17 rules of base ball are printed in the Sunday Mercury  and in the Spirit of the Times early in the 1855 playing season -- 12 years after the Knickerbocker Club's initial 13 playing rules were formulated. 

[B] Without accompanying comment, the 17 rules for playing the New York style of base ball also appear in the Syracuse Standard.

The 1854 rules include the original 13 playing rules in the Knickerbocker game plus four rules added in in New York after 1845.  The Knickerbocker, Gotham, and Eagle clubs agreed to the revision in 1854.

[A] Sunday Mercury, April 29, 1855; Spirit, May 12, 1855.  Bill Ryczek writes that these news accounts marked the first printing of the rules; see Ryczek, Baseball's First Inning (McFarland, 2009), page 163.  Earlier, the initial printing had been reported in December of 1856 [Peter Morris, A Game of Inches (Ivan Dee, 2006), page 22].  The Sunday Mercury and Spirit accounts were accompanied by a field diagram and a list of practice locations and times for the Eagle, Empire, Excelsior, Gotham, and Knickerbocker clubs.

[B] Syracuse Standard, May 16, 1855.

For a succinct account of the evolution of the 1854 rules, see John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden (Simon and Schuster, 2011), pages 82-83.

One might speculate that someone in the still-small base ball fraternity decided to publicize the young game's official rules, perhaps to attract more players.

As of mid-2013, we know of 30 clubs playing base ball in 1855, all in downstate New York and New Jersey. 

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

On July 31, 1855, according to Craig Waff's Protoball Games Tabulation, the first games were played by new clubs in Brooklyn. Both were intramural games, and both seem to have complied with the Knickerbockers' 21-run rule for deciding a game.

The Putnams appear to be the first Brooklyn club to see action, with their June 28 contest in NYC against the Astoria Club. The Putnams played their first match game in Brooklyn on August 4, when they defeated the Knickerbockers at their home grounds.

Here is the Daily Eagle's [8/4/1855] inartful account of the Washington Club's second practice outing on August 3. "The Washington Base Ball Club of this city E.D. [Eastern District of Brooklyn] , met on the old Cricket ground near Wyckoff's Wood's for Ball practice yesterday afternoon. The following is a list of the plays:" There follows a simple box score showing two 7-member teams and a final score of 31-19. 

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 8/4/1855.

Holidays

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

[A] "[Thanksgiving] day was unpleasantly raw and cold; but various out of door amusements were greatly in vogue. Target companies looking blue and miserable were every where. Every vacant field in the out skirts was filled with Base Ball Clubs; a wonderfully popular institution the past season, but vastly inferior to the noble game of Cricket in all respects."

[B]Responding to Dennis' find, Craig Waff, posting to the 19CBB listserve, cited two accounts that confirm the holiday hubbub. The Clipper wrote, "There seemed to be a general turn-out of the Base Ball Clubs in this city and vicinity, on Thursday, 29^th Nov. Among those playing were the Continental, Columbia, Putnam, Empire, Eagle, Knickerbocker, Gotham, Baltic, Pioneer, and Excelsior Clubs."The Spirit of the Times  caught the same, er, spirit, noting that the Continentals played from 9am to 5pm, and that the Putnams "commenced at 9 o'clock with the intention of playing 63 aces, but found it impossible to get through; they played twelve innings, and made 31 and 36 . . . ."

[A] "Viola," "Men and Things in Gotham," Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, December 10, 1855, page 2. Facsimile contributed August 29, 2009 by Dennis Pajot. This traveler's report preceded the advent of Association base ball in Milwaukee by years.

[B] Clipper: [Undated clip in the Mears Collection]. The Spirit of the Times (December 8, 1855, page 511).

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

In what appears to be only the second game of the 1855 season [http://protoball.org/images/3/35/GT.NYC.pdf ], "a grand match of this national game" took place on 6/5/1855 at Elysian Fields, pitting the Knicks against the Eagles.

A nine run 4th inning put the Knicks into the [imaginary] win column after leading only 12-11 after two. Player positions aren't listed, but DeBost [Knicks] and Place [Eagles] are noted as "behind men."

The reporter added: "Wadsworth [Knicks] makes too many foul balls; he must alter his play."  Adams led off for the Knickerbockers and DeBost scored five runs.

"Base Ball. Knickerbocker vs. Eagle Club," New York Herald, June 6, 1855.

Ohio

Wicket

Adult

"This evening members of the "Excelsior Wicket Club" contest for the prize of a boquet [sic], to be awarded the player who makes the most innings. 

The ladies are to be on the club ground--the Huron Park--and award the prize to the winner.  Happy fellow, he!  May there be steady hands and cool heads that some nice young man shall win very sweet smiles as well as the sweet flowers."

Sandusky Register,  5/12/1855.

Richard Hershberger, who dug up this notice, notes that this club was an early case of an organized wicket club. 

New England generally was a late comer to organized clubs as the medium for team sports.  Cricket is the exception, with some clubs in imitation of the English model and, from the 1840s on, clubs largely composed of English immigrants. 

"Wicket followed a model of village teams, with no obvious sign of formal club structures of constitutions and officers and the like.  We don't see that until the mid-1850s, and then more with baseball than with wicket.  Even with what where nominally baseball clubs, I suspect that many were actually closer to the village team model, with a bit of repackaging."

Sandusky OH (1855 pop. probably around 7000) is in northernmost OH, about 50 miles SE of Toledo and about 50 miles W of Cleveland.

Do we know what  "makes the most innings" means in the newspaper account?

Newspaper Coverage

Greater New York City

Adult

"There was little baseball reported in Spirit [of the Times] until 1855, and what did appear was limited to terse accounts of games (with box scores) submitted by members of the competing clubs.  The primary [sports-page] emphasis was on four-legged sport and  cricket, which often received multiple columns of coverage.  Apparently, editor William Porter felt that baseball was less interesting than articles such as "The World's Ugliest Man."  As interest in baseball grew, The Spirit's coverage of the sport expanded.  On May 12, 1855, the journal printed the rules of baseball for the first time and soon began to report more frequently on games that took place in New York and its vicinity."

William Ryczek, Baseball's First Inning (McFarland, 2009), page 163.

In its issue of November 11, 1854, Spirit of the Times complained that base ball game reports were not being received.

[A] Was this turn to base ball more conspicuous in other papers earlier?

[B] Has anyone tried to measure the relative coverage of base ball and cricket over time in these crossover years?

Pre-modern Rules

New England

Base Ball, Round Ball

Adult

"August 11, 1855 -- Barre.  The Gazette says the Barre boys will challenge their neighbors in he towns surrounding, to play a [at?] round ball.

"The Barre boys  either have or are about to extend a challenge to one of the other of the adjoining towns for a grand game of round, of [or?] base ball, the victors to throw the glove to one of the other towns, and so on, till it is settled, which one of the seven shall be victor over the other six.  A grand prize of one hundred dollars, more or less, to be raised, by general contributions and awarded to the party which shall be finally successful.  The six surrounding and adjoining towns are Hardwick, Dana, Petersham, Hubbardstown, Oakham, and New Braintree.  The seventh is Barre, which is in the centre, and equidistant from them all."

Milford Journal.

Barre MA (1855 pop. about 3000) is about 60 miles W of Boston.  Hardwick, Hubbardstown, Oakham, New Braintree and Petersham are 8-10 miles from Barre. Poor Dana MA was disincorporated in 1938.

Do we know if this plan was carried out?  How was the victor decided among participating towns?

Newspaper Coverage

Greater New York City

Base Ball

"BASE BALL. Our readers are perfectly aware that the good old fashioned game of base ball is at present receiving much attention among the lovers of sport and manly exercise. Five clubs are organized and in operation in this city and Brooklyn, composed of some thirty or forty members each, and are in continual practice. Three of them play at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, one on every afternoon during the week the Knickerbocker Club on Monday and Thursday, the Eagle Club on Tuesday and Friday, and the Empire Club on Wednesday and Saturday. One other, the Gotham Club, plays at the Red House, Harlem, on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. The Excelsior Club of Brooklyn, we understand, have not as yet arranged their days of practice. We would recommend such of our readers who have sufficient leisure, to join one of these clubs. The benefit to be derived, especially to the man of sedentary habits, is incalculable, and the blessing of health and a diminished doctor's bill may reasonably be expected to flow from a punctual attendance. On Friday, the first of June, the Knickerbocker and Gotham Clubs will play a match at the Red House, Harlem, and the Eagle and Empire Clubs will also play a match at the Elysian Fields on Friday, the 15th of June. Matches between the Knickerbocker and Eagle and the Gotham and Eagle Clubs are also expected to come off during the month of June. The play takes place during the afternoon, commencing at about three o'clock"

New York Herald, May 26, 1855, page 1, column. 1. Submitted by George Thompson, June 2005.

Pre-modern Rules

Massachusetts Game, Bat and Ball

Adult

"BAT AND BALL -- The Olympic was challenged by the Elm Tree Club, at a game of ball to be played on the Common, which was accepted and played this morning, on the grounds of the Elm Tree Club.  The game was fixed at 75, and was promptly won by the Olympics, the opposite side getting only 46 tallies.  Each club had 25 rounds."

Boston Traveler, May 31, 1855.

The item title of "Bat and Ball" is interesting.  This term is believed to be the name of a distinct baserunning game in the area in earlier times.  Note also the use of "rounds" instead of "innings."

As of 10/21/2014, this is the only known contemporary ref to the Elm Tree club of Boston.

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

"1855 -- seven clubs organized.  In 1856 four more."

Per Seymour, Harold - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. 

He cites Robert Weaver, Amusements and Sports (Greenwood, 1939), page 98 ff.

 Note: Seymour did not name the seven listed clubs; drat.

As of mid-2013, Protoball lists a total of 30 clubs operating in the NYC area New York State:  nine were in Brooklyn (Atlantic, Bedford, Columbia, Continental, Eckford, Excelsior, Harmony, Putnam, and Washington), five in Manhattan (Baltic, Eagle, Empire, Gotham, and Knickerbocker -- all but the Baltic playing one or more games at Hoboken), two (Atlantic of Jamaica, Astoria) in Queens, and two (Union, Young America) in Morrisania [Bronx].  See [[http://protoball.org/Clubs_in_NY]]  In addition, twelve clubs are listed in New Jersey (Empire, Excelsior, Fear Not, Newark Senior, Newark Junior, Oriental-cum-Olympic, Pavonia, Palisades, Pioneer, St. John, and Washington). See[[http://protoball.org/Clubs_in_NJ]]. 

These clubs played in about 35 reported match games; over fifteen reports of intramural play are also known.  There are reports of only one junior club (in NJ) and match play by one "second nine" (a Knickerbocker match game).

Corrections and additions are welcome. 

Club Constitutions/Bylaws

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

Jersey City BBC forms.

Constitution and By-Laws of the Pioneer Base Ball Club of Jersey City [New York, W. and C. T. Barton], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 223.

Greater New York City

Cricket

Adult

[A] "Cricket is becoming the fashionable game - the national game, it might be said."

[B] Things looked rosy for cricket in New York, too. In a report of the results of a June match between St. George's second eleven and the New York clubs first string [which won by 74 runs], this upbeat assessment was included: "We shall look for stirring times amongst the cricketers this season. Last week St. George's best Philadelphia. Next Wednesday the 1^st Elevens contend for mastery between St. George and New-York. The "Patterson," "Newark," "Harlem," "Washington," Williamsburgh," "Albany," "Utica," and last, though not least the Free Academy Cricket Clubs, have matches on the tapis [sic?]. Even the Deaf and Dumb Institution are likely to have a cricket ground, as the pupils have had it introduced, and are playing the game . . . . This healthful game seems to be making considerable progress amongst us."

[A] "New York Correspondence," Washington Evening Star, June 18, 1855, page 2. This statement is expressed in the context of the influence of John Bull [that is, England] in the US.

[B] "Cricket," New York Daily Times, Thursday, June 21, 1855. 

Famous

Base Ball

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass [Brooklyn, Rome Bros], p. 95. In a review of good American experiences, including those "approaching Manhattan" and "under Niagara", Walt Whitman puts this line:

"Upon the race-course, or enjoying pic-nics or jigs or a good game of base-ball . . . "

David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 216.

South Carolina

Town Ball

Juvenile

A woman in South Carolina remembers: "The first school I attended with other pupils was in 1855. Our teacher was a kind man, Mr. John Chisholm. The schoolhouse was the old Covenanter brick church. We had a long school day. We commenced early in the morning and ended just before sundown. We had an hour's intermission for dinner and recreation. The boys played town ball and shot marbles, and the few girls in school looked on, enjoyed, and applauded the fine plays."

Remarks of Mrs. Cynthia Miller Coleman [born 1/17/1847], Ridgeway, SC, at loc.gov oral history website:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/wpa/30081905.html, accessed 2/11/10. 

Ridgeway SC is in central SC, about 25 miles north of Columbia.

Greater New York City

Wicket

Adult

In 1880 the Brooklyn Eagle and New York Times carried long articles that include a description of the game of wicket, described as a Connecticut game not seen in Brooklyn for about 25 years:

[A] "Instead of eleven on a side, as in cricket, there are thirty, and instead of wickets used by cricketers their wickets consist of two pieces of white wood about an inch square and six feet long, placed upon two blocks three inches from the ground. The ball also differs from that used in cricket or base ball, it being almost twice the size, although it only weighs nine ounces. The bat also differs from that used in cricket and base ball, it being more on the order of a lacrosse bat, although of an entirely different shape, and made of hard, white wood. The space between the wickets is called the alley, and is seventy-five feet in length and ten feet in width. Wicket also differs from cricket in the bowling, which can be done from either wicket, at the option of the bowlers, and there is a centre line, on the order of the ace line in racket and hand ball, which is called the bowler's mark, and if a ball is bowled which fails to strike the ground before it reaches this line it is considered a dead ball, or no bowl, and no play can be made from it, even if the ball does not suit the batsman. The alley is something on the order of the space cut out for and occupied by the pitcher and catcher of a base ball club, the turf being removed and the ground rolled very hard for the accommodation of the bowlers."

[B] "The game of wicket, a popular out-door sport in Connecticut, where it originated half a century ago, was played for the first time in this vicinity yesterday.  Wicket resembles cricket in some respect, but it lacks the characteristics which mark the latter as a particularly scientific pastime.  In wicket each full team numbers 30 players instead of 111, as in cricket.  The wickets of the Connecticut game are also different, , being about 5 feet wide and only 3 inches above the ground, and having a bar of white wood resting on two little blocks.  The space between wickets measures 75 feet by 10 feet, and is termed the 'alley'. . . .  [No scorebook is use to record batting or fielding.]  The bat sued is 38 inches long, and bears a strong resemblance to a Fiji war-club, the material being well-seasoned willow.  The Ball, although much larger than a cricket ball, is just as light and no quite so hard. . . . If a delivered ball fails to hit the ground before the [midway] mark it is called a 'no ball' and no runs for it are counted.  The game was originated in the neighborhood of Bristol.

"Yesterday's match was played between the Bristol Wicket Club, the champions of Connecticut, and the Ansonia Company, of Brooklyn, on he grounds of the Brooklyn Athletic Club."

Bristol won the two-inning match 162-127.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, vol. 41 number 239 (August 28, 1880), page 1, column 8. 

"A Queer Game Called Wicket," New York Times, 8/28/1880.

There are inconsistencies in these accounts to be resolved.

Newspaper Coverage

Greater New York City

Base Ball

Adult

"The game of Base Ball is one, when well played, that requires strong bones, tough muscle, and sound mind; and no athletic game is better calculated to strengthen the frame and develop a full, broad chest, testing a man's powers of endurance most severely . . ." I have no doubt that some twenty-five Clubs . . . could be reckoned up within a mile or two of New-York, that stronghold of 'enervated' young men."

"Base Ball [letter to the editor], New York Times, September 27, 1856. 

Full text is reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 [University of Nebraska Press, 1995], pp. 21-22.

New Jersey

Base Ball

Adult

"BASE BALL CLUB. - A number of gentlemen of this city have formed themselves into a club for the practice of the invigorating amusement of Base Ball. Their practicing ground is on the common east of the canal. We hope that this will be succeeded by a Cricket Club."

"Base Ball Club," Trenton (NJ) State Gazette (May 26, 1856) no page provided.

Is this the first known NJ club well outside the NY metropolitan area?

Newspaper Coverage

Greater New York City

Base Ball

The Harmony Club beat the Continentals, 21-15, in the "intense heat" of Brooklyn, but the scathing of the players didn't end there. "The play was miserably poor, neither party being entitled to be called good players. Bad, however, as was the play of the Harmony Club, that of the Continentals was infinitely worse. - Mr. Brown, the catcher, being the only good player amongst the whole. They all require a good deal of practice before again attempting to play a match."

"Base Ball. - Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 16, 1856, page 2