1848 Knickerbocker Rules

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Rule Sets
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Official Rule Sets
Early New York Club Rules
1845 Knickerbocker Rules
1848 Knickerbocker Rules
1852 Eagle Rules
1854 Unified Knickerbocker-Eagle-Gotham Rules
1856 Putnam Rules
1857 Convention Rules
National Association of Base Ball Players Rules
1858 NABBP Rules
1859 NABBP Rules
1860 NABBP Rules
1861 NABBP Rules
1863 NABBP Rules
1865 NABBP Rules
1866 NABBP Rules
1867 NABBP Rules
1868 NABBP Rules
1869 NABBP Rules
1870 NABBP Rules
Chadwick's Summary of Rules Changes, 1871
Massachusetts Rules
1858 Dedham Rules
1863 New Marlboro Rules

Published Descriptive Rule Sets
Gutsmuths' Englische Base-ball 1796
La balle empoisonnée (Poisoned Ball) 1815
Rounders 1828
Base, or Goal-ball 1834
Base Ball 1835
Feeder and Rounders, 1841
Rounders ca. 1860

Informal descriptions
Base Ball, upstate New York (1820s)
Town Ball, Georgia (1830s)
Gotham Club Rules (1837)
Baseball, Ontario (1838)
Round Ball, Massachusetts (1840s)
“A Game of Ball”, Massachusetts (1853)
Townball, Cincinnati (1860s)
Round Town, Virginia (1890s)

Related games
Cricket
The Laws of Cricket (1774)
Longball
Gutsmuths' Deutsche Ballspiel
German Schlagball
Polish Palant (Pilka Palantowa)
Danish Longball (Langbold)
Russian Lapta
Roundball
Swedish Brännboll (Burn-ball)
German Brennball (Burn-ball)
Norwegian Dødball (Dead-ball)
Finnish Pesäpallo
Irish Rounders
British Baseball

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The Knickerbockers first published their Rules in 1848 (By-laws and Rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. New York: W. H. B. Smith Book and Fancy Job Printer) They were very largely unchanged from 1845, but with one signal difference, reported by Peverelly:

“The rule was adopted, that the player running to the first base was out, if the ball was held by an adversary on that base before the runner reached it. The previous rule applied to all the bases.”

Under the original 1845 rules, an out occurred if the ball was thrown to any base a runner was attempting to reach, whether he was “forced” by a runner behind him or not; now the automatic out only applied at first, as it does today. The modern force-out at other bases still lay in the future (cf. Rule 8 of the 1854 Unified Rules).

Oddly, the 1848 edition omitted the language “it being understood, however, that in no instance is a ball to be thrown at him.”