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According to Gomme [1894], Bandy-Wicket is Cricket played with a bandy (a curved club) instead of a cricket bat. This name was evidently once used in Norfolk and Suffolk.

"Bandy Wicket" was also used in the US.

A two-player game set against a wall or barn. The pitch is made from about ten feet away against the wall, and the batter tries to hit it on the rebound. If successful, he runs to the wall and back. If he misses the ball, and the pitcher catches the rebounding pitch on the fly or on one bound, the batter is out. Beard (1896) calls a similar game House Ball. It specifies a brick house, perhaps for the peace of mind of occupants.

Sometimes seen as a name for base ball. While some references to “base” most likely denote Prisoner’s Base (a team form of tag similar in nature to modern Capture the Flag and, perhaps,  today’s Laser Tag), others denote a ball game. David Block reports that the earliest clear appearance of “base” as a ball game is from New England in 1831, and that his source groups base with cricket and cat as young men’s ballgames.

The term “old fashioned base ball” appears to have been used in the decades after the 1850s to describe whatever game was played locally before the New York game arrived. The term was used extensively in upstate New York and New Jersey.  We are still uncertain as to whether OFBB had common rules.  In Western New York State, OFBB seems to align with the old form of the Massachusetts game, but prior to the codification of Mass Game rules in 1858.  It is possible that the term was used for diverse variations of local safe-haven games in other areas.

One might speculate that later still, such games would be thought of as “town ball.”

Elmore (1922) describes this game as a form of Square Ball (Corner Ball) for 7th graders through high schoolers in which a player can prevent being called out by catching a ball thrown at him. An “indoor baseball” is used. The game involves no batting or baserunning.

America’s national pastime since about 1860. Writing about rounders in 1898, Gomme mused that “An elaborate form of this game has become the national game of the United States.”  The term “baseball” actually arose in England as early as 1748, referring to a simple game like rounders, but usage in England died out, and was soon forgotten in most parts of the country.  The term first appeared in the United States in 1791.

[A] The first known game of base ball played on ice skates occurred on in January 1861 near Rochester NY.  Skating was very popular, and the hybrid game was played into the late 1800s.

A few special rules are known, a key one being that runners were not at risk when they overskated a base.  Deliveries were pitches, not throws; a dead ball was used and the bound rule was in effect.  A ten-player team deployed a left shortstop and a right shortstop.

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[B] Richard Hershberger posted the following on Facebook on 2/4/22 [See clip, below]:

 "150 years ago in baseball: baseball on ice. This was a thing. Look at the list of the "Capitoline Ten" and you will see some top ball players. This is not true of the Brooklyn Skating Club's players, raising the question, is baseball or skating skill more important here? Good question. I don't know. I also don't know if there is money involved here, or if everyone is doing this for fun.

Adapting sports for ice skates was a thing more broadly. In Britain they sometimes played cricket on ice, which takes real devotion. They also adapted the fine old summer game of hockey to play on ice. This will spread to Canada, where it will be discreetly forgotten that they hadn't come up with the idea themselves.

Baseball on ice required some rules adaptations. Ten players is the most obvious, the extra fielder playing at right short. Chadwick had been advocating this for the regular game for years. Spoiler alert: It won't happen. But it was standard for the ice version. Over-skating the bases also was standard, and this variant did influence regular baseball. The rule allowing the batter-runner to overrun first base was borrowed from the ice game. This was a safety measure, advocating by George Wright who had pulled a hammy. But while safety was the motivation, ice baseball provided the solution to the problem. There will be discussions for another twenty years about extending the right to overrun to the other bases, but nothing will come of it. New York Sunday Mercury February 4, 1872: 

Baste, or baste ball, may simply be a variant spelling of base ball. The most famous US usage is in a Princeton student’s diary entry for 1786 (5 years before the first known use of "base ball" in the US), which reveals only that the game involves catching and hitting.  Note: Princeton was known as the College of New Jersey until 1896.

As of February 2017, Protoball knows of only three US uses of the term Baste: the Princeton diary, in an account of President Benjamin Harrison's teen years around 1850, and in Tennessee in 1874.  Further input is welcome.

In early 2017,David Block summarized his English research findings:  "Regarding 'baste,' I have seen at least two dozen examples of the term 'baste-ball' used in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's clear from context that this was an alternate spelling of base-ball, along with bass-ball. I don't doubt the same was true for the few instances of baste-ball's use in America." 

A superficial Google search for <baste pastime game> in February 2017 throws no further light on ballplaying forms of baste.  A somewhat primitive tagging game for children -- Baste the Bear -- in Europe and England is known, but does not appear to be consistent with US finds reported to Protoball.

We have references to bat-ball from 1791 (when it was banned in both Pittsfield and Northampton MA), but the basic rules of this game as first played are unclear. Writers have diversely compared it to bandy, to schlagball, and to punchball. It is clear that a club was not always required for hitting, as the ball could instead be slapped into play by the hand.

All we know about Batton is that in 1851 boys played a game in the village of Norfolk, MA - about 20 miles SW of Boston.

Baseball for blind players. The balls emit beeps, and a base buzzes once a ball is hit. Runners are out if the ball is fielded before they reach base. Sighted players serve as pitcher and catcher for the batting team, but cannot field. There is a national association for the game, and annual World Series have been held since 1976.

per Fraser (1975) - A game played in Dundee, Scotland, in about 1900 and later understood as a “corruption of baseball.” Balls were hit with the hand instead of a bat, and the game evidently sometimes used plugging.

[A] in the 1670s, Francis Willughby listed hornebillets on his compilation of games, or "plaies."  Of all his games, this game description closest to base ball and cricket -- resembling the o'cat games with two or four or six players -- but it employs a section of animal horn, or a sort stick, and not a ball. 

[B] "Thomas Wright's 1857 Dict. of Obsolete and Provincial English(v. 1 p. 210) lists as the third meaning for "billet" the game of Tip-Cat and connects it to Derbyshire."

[C] Responding to John Thorn's Our Game blog on 2/26/2013, Clive Williams wrote that trap ball "is  a very similar game to one my brother encountered near Halifax, Yorkshire about 50 years ago. In Yorkshire the game was called I think 'Billets' and he was never able to make it clear whether the piece to be struck was a round wooden ball or just a small chunk of hardwood of no particular shape. What you had to do, as is mentioned in the article is to make sure that nobody can catch the wooden article so getting the direction and the height right with a sort of weapon like a walking stick (cane) must have been tricky."

A game called bittle battle is mentioned [[[as such?]]]  (but not described) in the famous 1086 Domesday Book in England. Some have claimed that this game resembled Stoolball:

[A] In fact, Gomme [1894, ] describes Bittle-Battle as “the Sussex game of ‘Stoolball.,’ but does not link it to the Domesday Book.

[B] Similarly, Andrew Lusted reports that an 1875 source lists bittle battle as "another word for stoolball," 

[C] Andrew Lusted also finds an 1864 newspaper account that makes a similar but weaker claim: "Among the many [Seaford] pastimes were bittle-battle, bell in the ring, . . . "

[D] From David Block: "the source of the Domesday myth appears to be in an article entitled “The Game of Stoolball” by Mary G. Campion from the January 1909 issue of “The Country Home.” She wrote: The game is an old one. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as Bittle Bat, and the present name of Stoolball is supposed to have originated from milkmaids playing it with their stools.” As you can see, she didn’t write 'bittle-battle', she wrote “battle-bat.” Grantham cited her but changed the name to 'bittle-battle.' Here is a link to the publication; the Campion article starts on p. 153: https://www.stoolball.org.uk/media/4h2brgma/stoolball-illustrated-and-how-to-play-it.pdf."

Maigaard (1941) notes they while most forms of rounders and longball are now lost, three - baseball, cricket, and bo-ball - remain vigorous. He places Bo-Ball in Finland. The only known source on this game, called Lahden Mailaveikot in Finnish, is a Finnish-language website, one that shows photographs of a vigorous game with aluminum bats, gloves, helmets, and much sliding and running but no solid hints for English-speakers about the nature of the game. Similarities to Pesapallo, including the gentle form of pitching, are apparent.

per Perrin (1902) – Apparently an indoor game derived from baseball. A member of the in-team throws the ball to an area guarded by the pitcher, and runs if and when the ball passes through. There is tagging but no plugging.

Bottle Caps is reportedly the name of a game similar to Corkball and Indian Ball in the St. Louis area.  This game, called a "minor variant," employs bottle caps in place of corks or balls.

The game of bowlywicket, played at least as late as 1980, resembled a poor man's cricket, and used a broomhandle, three empty soda cans piled one-on-two, and a common "pinky" drugstore ball.  Batters defend the teetering cans, and run to a second base to score runs.

It has been played in the city of Fall River MA, often by immigrants from France and Brazil, and may have evolved from a game played by workers from English cities in the late 1800s.

[A] per Bronner [1997]. Using three sidewalk squares, a “pitcher” throws the ball into the box closest to his opponent, who tries to slap the ball into the box closest to the pitcher. If he missed the box or the pitcher catches ball on the fly, it is an out. There is no baserunning. Also called “Boxball.”

[B] New York City streets are composed on concrete squares approximately [X?] feet square.  Players would be separated by three squares.  They would alternate pitcher/catcher and hitter depending on who was up.  The pitcher had to have the ball bounce in the box closest to the batter.  The pitcher would place the ball and fluke it in order to make it difficult to hit after the bounce.  The batter was required to slap the ball so that it landed in the box closest tot he pitcher.  If the pitcher caught the ball on a fly, it was an out.   One bounce was a single, two a double, etc,  The batter would try to hit the ball low and fast in order to get it past the pitcher.

A Swedish game, also played in Germany and Denmark. A batting and running game with four bases, this game involved fungo-style hitting to start a play. As in some forms of longball, a base can be occupied by more than one runner. A caught fly ball gives a point to the out team, but the runner is not thereby retired. Innings are timed. A home run is six points. A 90-degree fair territory is employed. This game may relate to Swedeball, a game reportedly played in the US upper midwest. It has been reported that that Brannboll is played in Minnesota, but no such references are known.

This adult game, sometimes referred to as Welsh Baseball (in Wales) and English Baseball (ii Liverpool England), has been played since the early 1900s, reportedly reaching a high point in the late 1930s.  Something of a blend of modern baseball with some cricket features, it is known in Liverpool England and in Cardiff and Newport in Wales.

Owing to cricket, presumably, the game has no foul ground, comprises two (all-out-side-out) innings, teams of 11 players, and flat bats.  42-inch posts are used instead of bases.  Underarm pitching is required.  Runs are counted for each base attained by a batter (one run for a single, two for a double, etc.).  Batters are required to keep a foot in contact with a peg in the batting area.

An annual "international game" has been played between a Liverpool team and one from Wales. In the 1920s crowds of over 10,000 were reported to attend the international context. 

Martin Johnes writes that both the Liverpool game and the Welsh game likely evolved from rounders, with some local variation.  In 1927 they agreed to common rules for their international game; Liverpool had restricted the placement of batters' feet and used one-handed batting, while Wales saw two-handed batting and less restricted batter placement.  

Liverpool had been very active in rounders in the 19th century, they and the Welsh but switched to use the term "baseball" in 1892, possibly to distinguish the adult game from juvenile rounders play. A common set of rules was agreed to between the two governing groups in 1927.

Adult play in Liverpool is not thriving:  from the website of the English Baseball Association, accessed 4/1/2016:  "Sadly the game in Liverpool is in a very poor state and we have very few senior teams remaining.The junior game is where our game needs to grow and we still need to get a bit more interest as we try to generate interest with the youth in the Liverpool area. 

"Through the help of schools, youth clubs, junior football teams or any other individuals willing to play the game we hope the game can survive for another 100 years."

Tom Altherr has found a reference to buff-ball in Baltimore in 1773.

A visitor wrote in his journal for 10/28/1773: "In Baltimore for some Buff-Ball."  Tom notes that the nature of the game is not known, but that OED lists "to hit something" as one meaning of "buff."

Bruce Allardice has reviewed contemporary literature and found that the term "buff-ball" seems to refer not to a game, but rather to a cleaning brush or agent. Cf. The Middlebury (VT) Mercury, Sep. 13, 1809; Hartford Courant, Nov. 20, 1797. The Fithian Journal is big on recording his shopping trips.

per Brewster [1953]. “Basemen” stand at each corner of a bounded field of play, and try to plug other players inside the bounds. Each player has three “eyes” [lives]. A player loses an “eye” if plugged or if a target player catches a ball thrown at him. There is no batting or baserunning in this game.

Bunt is downsized baseball. One reported Massachusetts version was a one-on-one game in which any hit ball that reached the not-distant field perimeter was an out. The batter ran out hit balls, and the pitcher fielded them, but thereafter base advancement was done by ghost [imaginary] runners. Terrie Dopp Aamodt reports playing a similar game as an adolescent girl.

According to Gomme, a Lincolnshire glossary specifies that Bunting is a name for Tip-Cat.

per Appel [1999]. Appel reports that the young Mike Kelly, growing up on Washington DC in the late 1860’s, first played Burn Ball, a form of base ball that included "plugging" or "burning" of baserunners by thrown balls.

"The game in California has some curious features, it seems. A game played in Woodbridge, May 26, had ten men on a side, the extra played being a "2d c.," or sort of backstop put behind the regular to nip fouls and prevent passed balls. The game was ten innings, though there was no tie on the ninth, the score was 24 to 20, and the winners, the Eagles of San Francisco, won $50 and a silver cake-basket. The latter implement would seem to be rather useless to a ball club."

Richard Hershberger noted, October 2015: "This is immediately recognizable as Chadwick's beloved ten-men ten-inning rule, though Chadwick placed the tenth man at right short rather than second catcher.  We know that Cuban baseball adopted the rule, apparently taking at face value Chadwick's assurances that it was inevitable and not noticing for some time that it had not in fact been enacted.  Did this happen in California too?  Or is this an isolated instance?  I don't know much about California ball at this time, but the Eagles of San Francisco were a major club, weren't they?  Or is that no longer true by 1877?"

A game in which a ball is tossed up among players and one player’s name is then called out. That player must obtain the ball and try to hit fleeing compatriots with it. Newell [1883] notes that this game was played in Austria.

The New York Clipper reported two 1860 games in southernmost Ontario as "the Canadian game" between the Ingersoll and Woodstock clubs [add locations?].

The playing rules for this game are not given [is there anything beside the 11 player sides that signals that it's unusual?]. 

In May 2015, William Humber re-examined other accounts of Canadian ballplaying, and suggests/hypothesizes/concludes that seven playing conventions/rules/practices may have distinguished it from other North American predecessor games:

[1] Eleven players.

[2] All-out-side out innings.

[3] Two innings to be played.

(Note that these three rules are familiar cricket rules)

[4] Use of four bases, in addition to home base

[5] The plugging of baserunners when away from bases

[6] Throwing, not pitching to batsmen

[7] 40-foot bases [sic?], with first base [how?] close to home

In drawing up this list, Humber drew on the Clipper articles, recollections of Adam Ford that may have come from his own playing days from 1848 to 1855, and a Clipper account of a 1859 game played by [a London Ontario club? Woodstock itself?  other?].

By [date/year], it appears that all Ontario clubs had adopted the NY rules. 

per Jamieson (1825). A game known in County Fife. Two teams, armed with clubs, try to drive a ball into a hole defended by their opponents. This game may have resembled field hockey more than a safe-haven game.

For a recent description of Cat/Old-Cat, see Supplemental Text below. 

Per Culin. A batting game played with a six-inch, pointed wooden “cat.” The cat is pitched to a batter standing near a four-foot circle. The batter is out if he hits a caught fly or if the ball falls, unhit, into the circle. If put out, the batter goes to the end of the sequence of fielders, and the pitcher becomes the new batter. A batter can accrue points based on the distance from the circle to the where the hit ball lands. A version described by Newell[39] allows the batter to elevate and hit any cat that is pitched outside the circle.

Note: A Dutch book printed in 1845 also describes "Kat:" See http://protoball.org/1845.29.

"The Kat is a piece of wood about 6 inches long, 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide at the midpoint and comes to a point at both ends making the form of a double cone. The Kat is placed on the ground in the middle of a big circle and a player uses a "ball stick" to hit one end of it to launch it into the air. As it comes down he tries to hit it out of the circle. If he fails to hit it or doesn't hit it out of the circle he steps off and the next player takes his turn.  If he's successful he's assigned a certain number of points depending on how far he hit it." 

per Brand and Jamieson. All but one player stands by a hole, holding a stick [called a “cat.”] The last player, holding a ball, gives a signal, and the others run to place their stick in the next adjacent hole before a ball enters it, or he will become the thrower.

Gomme specifies that when before thrower tosses the ball, he gives a sign and all the (boy) players must scramble to a neighbor's hole to obstruct the ball from entering it. Her c. 1894 description:

"A game well known in Fife (a county northeast of Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth), and perhaps in other countries.  If seven boys are to play, six holes are made a certain distances.  Each of the six stands at a hole, with a short stick in his hand; the seventh stands at a certain distance holding a ball.  When he gives the word, or makes the sign agreed upon, all the six change holes, each running to his neighbour's hole, and putting his stick in the hole which he has newly seized.  In making this change, the boy who has the ball, tries to put in into an empty hole.  If he succeeds in this, the boy who had not his stick (for the cat is the Cat) in the hole to which he had run is put out, and must take the ball.  There is often a very keen contest whether one will get his stick, and the other the ball, or Cat, first put into the hole.  When the Cat is in the hole, it is against the laws of the game to put the ball into it -- Jamieson

Kelly, in his Scottish Proverbs p. 325, says" 'Tine cat, tine game:' an allusion to a play called 'Cat i' the Hole', and the English 'Kit-cat.' Spoken when man at law have lost their principal evidence."  [Originally published in 1721.]

Court records from 1583 [Elizabeth I was in her 25th year as queen] show a dim view of this game. “Whereas there is great abuse in a game or games used in the town called ‘Gidigadie or the Cat’s Pallet . . . ‘ no manner persion shall play at the same games, being above the age of seven years, either in the churchyard or in any streets of the this town, upon pain of . . . being imprisoned in the Doungeon for the space of two hours . . . . Thus, Gidigadie may be another name for Cat’s Pallet. The rules of this game are as yet unknown.

per Burnett. Burnett identifies Cat-and-Bat as a form of cricket that was played in Scottish streets in about 1860.

A game for three players. Two defend foot-wide holes set about 26 feet apart with a club, or “dog.” A third player throws a four-inch cat toward the hole, and the defender hits it away. If the cat enters the hole, defender and thrower switch places. Gomme, who uses the name Cat and Dog Hole, describes a game using a ball in which a stone replaces the hole where the batter stands, and adds that if the third player catches a hit ball in the air, that player can try to hit the stone, which sends the batter out.

On US play, 1866: "Cat and Dog -- An interesting trial of skill at this old time game was played at Pittsburgh Pa., on the 5th inst., between the Athletics, of South Pittsburgh, and the Enterprise of Mt. Washington.  The game was witnessed by a large crowd of ladies and gentlemen.

[The printed box score shows three players on each side, a pitcher-catcher and two fielders.  The result was the Athletics, 180 "measures" and the Enterprise 120 measures.  There is no indication of the use of innings, a side-out rule, or fly rule]

[This spare account leaves the impression of a one-time throwback demonstration.]

For other references to cat-and-dog, see these Chronology items;

http://protoball.org/1706.2 [Scotland]

http://protoball.org/1833.3 [Cat-and-dog as the ancestor of cricket]

http://protoball.org/1841.11 [Scottish dictionary account]

http://protoball.org/1856.30 [Nyack, NY, 1856]

http://protoball.org/1866.10 [Pittsburgh PA throwback game]

A fungo game played in Manhattan in the 1950s. A fungo hitter is replaced by a fielder who catches a ball (or sometimes three balls) on the fly. Played when fewer than six kids were at the ballyard and a team game wasn’t possible.

per “Boys’ Own Book” (1881). A game similar to Nineholes, but without the holes. A ball is thrown up, and a player named. If that player cannot catch it before it bounces twice, he must plug another player or lose a point.

According to Maigaard, Cerkelspelen was “rounders without batting” as played in Flanders. The game evidently had five bases, with fielders near each one, but the infield area was occupied only by the in-team.

An October 2017 article on the Dominican game of vitilla notes, "In other baseball-loving countries ,vitilla exists in other forms.  Chapita is a similar game from  Venezuela, and major league players from there said they grew up playing it."

In an email of 12/10/2008, Tom Altherr tells of the game of chermany, defined in a 1985 dictionary as “a variety of baseball.” Early usage of the term dates to the 1840s-1860s. Two sources relate the game to baseball, and one, a 1912 book of Virginia folk language, defines it as “a boys’ game with a ball and bats.” We know of but eight references to chermany [churmany, chumny, chuminy] as of October 2009. Its rules of play are sketchy. A Confederate soldier described it as using five or six foot-high sticks as bases and using “crossing out” instead of tagging or plugging runners to retire them.

per Strutt. Strutt speculates that Club-ball was the ancient ancestor of many ball games. Its rules of play are not known. Hone book has 2 illustrations.

Collins, "Popular Sports" (1935) says (without citing a source) that club ball was similar to Single wicket cricket.

According to Morrison (1908) this game is “practically identical with the game of “Rounders.” He goes on to describe a game with three bases set 50 yards apart, with plugging and crossing as ways to retire batters. Games are played to 50 or 100 counts. The game is depicted as “practically dead” in Uist (In the Outer Hebrides off Scotland) but formerly was very popular.