Throw Ball

Glossary of Games

Curated by Larry McCray and Jeffrey Kittel
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Game	Throw Ball
Game Family	Hook-em-snivy Hook-em-snivy
Location
Regions	US
Eras	Predecessor
Invented	No
Tags
Description	Origins researcher Tom Altherr reports in September 2022 that in a 1935 book, Every Day Life in the Massachusetts  Bay Colony, author George Francis Dow, observed that Puritan strictures discouraged the joys of "throw ball, football . . . .  Tom explains that "The way Dow just dropped it casually in the sentence made me take notice.  Did Dow assume there was a game called throw ball that was still so familiar to 1935 readers that he didn't have to gloss it?" As of 2022, Protoball has no evidence of Throw Ball as an early pastime.  Tom's subsequent research turned up game called Throw Ball as a game said to have started in the 1940s and played by women in Asia. A game called Throw Ball also appears online at https://www.rulesof sport.com/throwball.html, which gives rules for a lively game closely resembling volleyball, but where players catch-and-throw the ball over the net, rather than volleying it.  We cannot say this game is a baserunning game, but further searches may turn up more on it as a potential predecessor to base ball
Sources	Every Day Life in the Massachusetts  Bay Colony, by George Francis Dow, 1935. Reported to Protoball in a letter of September 1 2022 from Thomas Altherr.
Source Image	[[Image:|left|thumb]]
Comment	Sounds a bit like Hoover ball, a game invented by Pres. Hoover's physician. It was a throw the ball over the volleyball net type game, but it used a heavier medicine ball for greater exercise. Edit with form to add a comment
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