Three-Cornered Cat

Glossary of Games

Curated by Larry McCray and Jeffrey Kittel
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Game	Three-Cornered Cat
Game Family	Baseball Baseball
Location
Regions	US
Eras	1800s, Predecessor
Invented	Yes
Tags
Description	"Three-Corner Cat" is the name of a game recalled decades later by base ball founder William R. Wheaton, as having been played at a Brooklyn school in his youth.  See http://protoball.org/1849c.4 for a chronology entry on this game.  "Three-cornered cat was a boys' game, and did well enough for slight youngsters, but it was a dangerous game for powerful men, because the ball was thrown to put out a man between bases, and it had to hit the runner to put him out." As is indicated in the 1849c.4 entry, the rules of this game, as recalled in 1905, were something of a hybrid between three old cat and modern baseball.  Wheaton, who later had the job of writing new rules for the Gotham club, which were apparently a primary basis for the famous Knickerbocker rules of 1845.  The Examiner article states: "Baseball to-day is not by any means the game from which it sprang. Old men can recollect the time when the only characteristic American ball sport was three-cornered cat, played with a yarn ball and flat paddles."
Sources	"How Baseball Began: A Member of the Gotham Club of Fifty Years Ago Tells About It," San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 27, 1887.  Wheaton's role in early base ball is related in John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden (Simon and Schuster, 2011), pp. 36-42.  See also Randall Brown, "How Baseball Began," National Pastime, volume 24 (2004), pages 51-54.  See also Kuykendall reminiscences of Umpqua Academy, c. 1857, in Pre-pro. William Dean Howells, "A Boys Town" (1890) p. 83; Popular Science Monthly v. 37 (1890) p. 652-555; New Orleans Times-Democrat, Oct. 23, 1900; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 10, 1907 (Rems of Elbert Hubbard, of Hudson, IL in 1867); John M. Ward in Boston Globe, Sept. 30, 1888. http://protoball.org/1849c.4
Source Image	[[Image:|left|thumb]]
Comment	John Thorne says three-cornered-cat was just a variant name for three old cat. Cf Baseball in the Garden of Eden. Edit with form to add a comment
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