1755.6

NYS Traveler Notes Dutch Boys Playing "Bat and Ball"

Salience	Prominent
Tags
Location	New York StateNew York State
City/State/Country:	[[{{{Country}}}]]
Modern Address
Game	Xenoball, Bat and BallXenoball, Bat and Ball
Immediacy of Report
Age of Players	JuvenileJuvenile
Holiday
Notables
Text	Gideon Hawley (1727-1807), traveling through the area where Binghamton now is, wrote: "even at the celebration of the Lord's supper [the Dutch boys] have been playing bat and ball the whole term around the house of God." Hawley, Gideon, Rev. Gideon Hawley's Journal [Broome County, NY 1753], page 1041. Collection of Tom Heitz. Per Patricia Millen, From Pastime to Passion [2001], page 2.
Sources
Warning
Comment	Writing in 2011, Brian Turner discerns that "bat and ball" maybe the name of a defined game, and not just a generic term. See Brian Turner, "Bat and Ball: A Distinct Game or a Generic Term?", Base Ball Journal (Special Issue on Origins), Volume 5, number 1 (Spring 2011), pages 37-40. He finds several uses of the phrase in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, most of them north and east of Boston. Edit with form to add a comment
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