Welcome to Protoball
Supporting Researchers and Writers on Baseball’s Origins.
Current Resources
The Protoball Chronologies will cover the evolution of ballgames from Ancient Times to 1870, just before the first professional baseball league began. At present, data are entered through 1862.
The Games Tabulation (version 1.0) is a record of over 1600 ballgames in various parts of the US from 1845 to 1860 compiled by the late Craig Waff᾿s extensive research.
1859 Base Ball Players’ Pocket Companion
The Glossary of Games provides a short description of 329 baseball-like games. The Glossary includes baseball's likely predecessor games and later games that derive from baseball.
The Bibliography is a list of publications you can use to explore the origins of ball games and baseball in depth. Some of these publications are available online. For sources that are in Protoball's Buzz McCray Collection, we can, via email and phone, help you determine what their content is.
A listing of fellow origins enthusiasts and contributors can be found in our Diggers section. You can read news about them and their work in the Next Destin'd Post. Some Diggers have contributed informal Essays relating to baseball's origins.
We offer an Enhanced Search for complex full-text searches on much of the information on the site. You can save your searches, pick out important articles, and share them with other researchers.
Articles
Here are 3 of our latest articles:
- Protoball Interview With Richard Hershberger
- Early Women's Baseball
- Notes on the History and Evolution of Stoolball
Here are 3 randomly selected articles:
- Origins Newsletter -- September 2021
- Peanuts, But No Cracker Jack
- Interview With Author Tom Gilbert
- Towards A Definition Of Baseball
- "A Plague Is Upon Us"
- Number of Known BB Clubs in 40 Largest US Cities, 1870 5.0
- Old Team Nicknames
- Origins Newsletter -- May 2021
- Rounders: A Game That "Gets No Respect"
- When The Game Was Not The Thing
- Playing "Ball" In Canada In 1803
- McKinstry vs. Brooklyn Daily Times
- Such Tumbles, Such Collisions
- Rounders: Baseball's True Origin?
- The First Baseball Game In Mexico
- Origins Newsletter -- February 2021
- Lost for 200 Years: John Thorn Detects Base Ball in New York in 1821
- Number of Known BB Clubs in 40 Largest US Cities, 1870 3.0
- Ethnicity in 19C Base Ball -- A General Introduction
- The Early Sporting Press in New England 1.0
- Base Ball on the Field, 1858-1865
- Old old games
- Search Terms
- NER Project Overview
- Wicket Ball
- The Massachusetts Game
- Research Bibliography for Early Base Ball
- Emperics
- Length of Games, 1860-1865 1.0
- Sons of Liberty
- Ballplaying by Civil War Soldiers 1.0
- Very Early (pre-1857) Rules on Base Advancement After Caught Fly Balls
- Baseball Making Notes
- Ten-Position Base Ball
- Feeder and Rounders, 1841
- 1854 Unified Kinickerbocker-Eagle-Gotham Rules
- 1860 NABBP Rules
- The 20 Rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club
- La balle empoisonnée
- Rules of the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players
- Englische Base-ball
- Early Evidence on Base Stealing
- The Play-Testing of Early Base Ball Rule Modifications, version 1.0
- Cricket and the Rise of Baseball
- Beachville Deconstruction (The New York Game Comes to Canada)
- Uniforms
- The Big Tours
- Media Effects
- Predecessor Pastimes
- Club Makeup
- Competing Pastimes
- The Grounds
- Patterns of Spread
- Gambling's Role
- Accounts
- Playing to Win
- Base Ball Fever
- The Beneficiaries
- The Spread of Early Base Ball in Illinois to 1870
- The Backstop
- Pitchers Covering First
- Called Pitches
- Judgment!
- Protoball Search Aid
- Spirit Letters From X, 1857-8
- Stoolball Today -- The Rejuvenation of an Ancient Pastime
- Richard Hershberger Interview, October 2013
- Internet Search Tips
- Bruce Allardice Find Stories, October 2013
- 19CBB Highlights, August September 2013
- For Fun and Health -- That's Why She Played
- Sliding
- The Spread of Base Ball, 1859 - 1870
- Interview with 2013 SABR-Origins Chair Bill Johnson
- Next Destin'd Post, August 2013
- 1857 Rules
- Sam Marchiano and the 1755 Bray Diary Find
- Interview with Bill Ryczek
- Performing Logic Searches on Protoball
- Don't Forget the Girls
- The Next Destin'd Post, June 2013
- 19CBB Digest, April-May 2013
- 1845 Knickerbocker Rules
- Multi-word Searches on Protoball
- New England Woman Observes Ball Play in Norfolk, Virginia in 1802
- Interview with Peter Morris
- 19CBB Digest, March 2013
- Randall Brown's Find of the Wheaton Account -- Before the Knickerbockers
- Next Destin'd Post, April 2013
- New Englander Confronts Impious Sunday Ball-playing in Virginia
- Irish Rounders (Burman's Report)
- Linking Clubs to Ballgames
- Tom Altherr Contemplates His Favorite Finds
- Dave's Tip No. 1 -- Using "Site Search" and "Enhanced Search"
- An Interview with David Block
- Postings to 19CBB, Jan. - Feb. 2013
- A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball
- The Next Destin'd Post, January 2013
- The Story of George Thompson’s 1823 Find --- Base Ball in New York City
- A New Find on Early Wicket and Old Fashioned Base Ball
Some Features in Development
Our planned "Pre-pro Baseball" feature will be a working database of clubs, games, fields, and players before 1871. We plan to include have interactive maps to help you visualize the spread of baseball over time.
We are now arranging to feature a data base on the Spread of Base Ball that will show when modern base ball came to hundreds of communities in North America and other countries across the globe.
We are evaluating a user Forum for site-user commentary, our listings of "Most Wanted" data, etc.
Conditions of Use
Users are encouraged to freely use information on this web site. When that information is found to be useful in drafting published work, we ask that they acknowledge the Protoball Project in their writing, and supply the site's URL -- http://protoball.org -- when possible, in their citations.
Further Information
For more information about the evolution of Protoball Project, its policies, and resources, see our About page.
Contact Larry McCray of the Protoball Project at with any questions or contributions.