Semantic search

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.

"A CAVALRY GAME

The October number of one of the Comic Monthlies, contains an illustration of a Cavalry game of base ball, which it says is patented.  On a large field is placed a picked nine, 'operating' on horse-back; the left field, centre field, and right field occupy appropriate positions.  The pitcher has a cannon that looks like one of the Fort Pitt twenty-inch guns (this exceeds Pratt, the lightening pitcher), and is pitching a ball by means of it at one of the cavalrymen, whose bat  is raised to stop it; home-runs, short-stops, and the other points of the game are well illustrated.  The umpire occupies a block house, from which protrude two telescopes, and the picture generally has a military aspect.  One of the chief advantages of the horse-back game is to be found in the ease with which the home-runs ae accomplished." 

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 1893 book published in Ottawa, Canada, "Changers Rules," lay out the rules and fields of a fungo-style game using bat and ball, advertised as a non-running game less fatiguing that baseball, cricket or rounders. It is to be played by no more than 4 players.

The batter initially tosses the ball up and hits it, but after the first hit a "feeder" (pitcher) lobs the ball (underhand) in to the batter, who hits the ball with the intent of either driving it through a ring, or having the ball lodge inside a marked out court (similar to a tennis court). 

The book author is said to live in Wales, so the game might be a British invention.

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.

Coed softball is basically just softball using female as well as male players.

It is, however, evolving a bit independently.  Local coed leagues have formed for after-work play in US cities.  It seems to have become necessary to add some rules to ensure that women are not put at a disadvantage (and so continue to participate) among all those males with more ballplaying experience and more upper-body strength.

Examples include use of a smaller ball, requiring outfields to play deep enough to allow balls to drop in the outfield, requiring alternating genders in the batting order, etc. 

[The game we played] "had only one batsman at a time, running to a point about 10 yards off to the right and back again after each hit . . . we called it Continuous Cricket.  The blurring of the concepts of "bowled" and "run out" makes the game a bunch of fun to play."

This game, encountered in Upper Egypt in the 1850s, is briefly described: it is “played likewise with a ball; one tosses it, and another strikes it with his hand, and runs to certain limits, if he can, without being hit by a ‘fag’ who picks up the ball and throws in.”

Evidently primarily a St. Louis pastime, Corkball is presumably derived from baseball, involving down-sized bats and balls. The ball is pitched overhand from a distance of 55 feet. There is no running, but imaginary runners advance on hits by succeeding batters. Hit balls are defined as singles, and sometimes as longer hits, depending on where they land. Caught flies are outs. The game is said to have originated over a century ago among brewery workers using broomsticks and the bungs [corks] used to seal beer barrels. Team sizes vary from two to five players.  Annual tournaments have been held at least through 2012.  Dedicated corkball fields are reportedly found in St. Louis.

When played with tennis balls, the game is sometimes called Fuzz-Ball.

Some additional 2013 data from Corkball fan Jeff Kopp in St. Louis:

[] The game was reportedly first played in about 1890.

[] There are four active clubs in St.L, and pickup games appear on many Sundays at the Don Young Corkball Fields at Jefferson Barracks Park.

[] Special balls and bats are supplied by the Markwort Sporting Goods Company.

[] Isolated reports of corkball play are found in other US locations.  Drummer Butch Trucks, a nephew of Tiger pitcher Virgil Trucks and founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, reportedly played corkball in Jacksonville FL and taught his band-mates the game. Another account places the game in an area from St. Louis "only" north to Springfield IL.  A Chicago Corkball Club was reportedly active around 2010.

[] Another form of the game, played with bottle caps in place of balls/corks, is called Bottle Caps. 

A plugging game that is closer to dodge ball than to safe-haven games. Some players, standing at designated corners or the perimeter of the playing area, pass the ball teammate to teammate in order to make it easier for one of them to plug anyone among group of players swarming around inside the field. If plugged, a player is out of the game.

A reference to “crekettes” in a 1533 poem has been construed as evidence that the game of cricket originated in a pastime brought to England by Flemish weavers , who arrived in the 14th Century. A German scholar thinks that this earlier game originated in the Franco-Flemish border area as early as 1150. We have no faint notion of how this earlier game might have been played.

Cricket is not generally seen as a source of base ball.  However, it shares many of base ball's key characteristics: base-running, batting, pitching (bowling), innings, etc.  And the physical dimensions of the ball are close to that of base ball.

The game is (arguably) recorded in 1300 in England, and for sure in 1598. See Altham, "A History of Cricket" p. 18-19, and Green, "A History of Cricket" p. 12-13.

A game played in the United States, called wicket, bears some resemblance to cricket as it was played in the 1800s.  Wicket is reported in many U.S. states, led by Connecticut and Massachusetts.  It seems to have crested in the post Civil War era, and town vs. town matches, some using teams of as many as 30 players.  See wicket

The English exported cricket to many of its colonies.  To see how the game later evolved in a section of New Guinea, see the well-presented 53-minute clip at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYZFNRc9mKk.

Cricket remained the game of choice for some Americans, particularly in the Philadelphia area.

In addition, we note that a County Cricket League was in operation in western MA in 1905:

[A] "At a joint meeting of the secretaries of the Cricket clubs of Berkshire county (sic) held yesterday in Adams [MA} the schedule for the league games was arranged. There will be teams representing Pittsfield, North Adams, Adams and Lenox.  Five games with each team will be played with the exception of Lenox."

The schedule extends from June 3 to September 9, with a championship game set for September 16, 1905.  

[B] "PENNANT ON EXHIBITION.  The pennant offered the winner in the Berkshire county cricket league and which went to the Pittsfield team is on exhibition at Enright's shoe store.  The pennant is made of blue silk, on which the names of the teams in the order they finished in the league are printed in gold leaf"

is defined in the OED as “a kind of rounders.” Gomme equates Cuck-Ball with Pize Ball and Tut-Ball.

per Gomme. Two holes are made about ten feet apart. A player on the out-team pitches a cat toward a hole, and its defender tries to hit it with his stick. He and his in-team mate then run between the holes. When more than four boys play the extra out-team players field as in cricket.

"Curb ball - no baserunning - played with 1 -3 players per team on a side street directly under my (Bronx) bedroom window [which allowed me to participate whenever i wished because i could always hear the game organizing] - a 1 1/2 lane street separated the hitting curb from a 3 1/2 foot chain link fence beyond which was a 2 lane street beyond which was a small grassy rise - spaldeen was thrown against the curb - balls that missed the point of the curb and bounced off the building wall [~10 feet away] were foul balls but if caught on the fly were outs - balls that were thrown below the curb point were in play [but usually weakly hit]; balls hitting the point often went very far[or fast]  - caught fly balls or caught grounders were outs, unfielded ground balls were singles - balls off the first fence were singles - balls over the first fence [where 2nd and 3rd players could be positioned] were doubles if not caught on the fly - balls on the rise were triples, balls over the walls were homers - major hazards were moving cars and mothers yelling out their windows for us to quiet down."

(Email from Raphael Kasper, February 3, 2020.)

Gregory Christiano describes curb ball as a game he played in the Bronx in the mid-1950s:

CURB BALL: Hit the 'spaldeen' against the sharp edge of the curb causing it to fly up as high as possible. The fielder must catch it on the fly to get an out...otherwise the number of bounces determines if it was a single, double, triple. Four bounces is a homer. There were no actual bases to run. The players would take turns when the inning was over. A regular nine-inning game was played.

Yet another name for norr-and-spell or trapball.

This game resembles other northern European safe-haven games like lapta.  Batters bat, then run to a single distant base, trying to return as later batters have their turns.

Some unique aspects of this game are that only one (good) pitch is allowed, and the batter runs whether the ball is hit or not; multiple runners can occupy the single base if they don't think they can reach home safely; once a runner leaves the runing base, he/she cannot return; fielders cannot run with the ball; a three-out-side-out rule obtains, except for the case of a caught fly, which immediately retires the in team; runners are out if tagged, or plugged below the knee.

This game is apparently played today in Canada and Australia.  The paper does not discuss the origins or history of the game.

For its origins, see David Block, Baseball Before we Knew It pp. 260-274.

David Block describes the Dutch game of Da Kat as a form of [[tip-cat]].

A game played from 1916 to 1926, when it transformed into Softball.  Diamond ball was also known as women's baseball.  Particularly popular in Sarasota FL, this game was played in the 1920s on sandy beaches (sometimes at night under lights) , and uses a 14-inch ball like used in indoor baseball.  Games were played in less than an hour, affording lunch-hour play. 

A base-running game without balls or bats, this game was evidently invented by Russ Lopez in Nevada as a blend of baseball and frisbee.  Two teams of six are suggested.  It is to be played on a field that resembles a baseball diamond.  A "flinger" tosses the disc into fair territory, and if uncaught by the fielding team, he/she advances base to base.

As of September 2013, this game had been invented, but not yet played.

Dodgeball is a basic youth game with no batting or safe-haven bases. Two teams form. A player can be put out by being hit with a throw rubber ball, unless he catches it, in which case the thrower is out.  The game ends when the last player on a team is put out.

A discussion of several dodgeball variants is found at http://www.funandgames.org/games/GameDodgeball.htm.  None mentions base-running or batting, but plugging is a central feature. 

Some trace the history of dodgeball to the ancient Egyptions, and the Romans played a version of the game. (citation?)

There is a National College Dodgeball Association at http://www.ncdadodgeball.com/index.html

In its 1934 manifestation, donkey baseball let the donkeys run, and the players ride.  "[A]ll participants, excepting the catcher, pitcher and the batsman are astride donkeys.  After hitting the ball it is necessary for the hitter to get on the back of a donkey and make his way to first base before the fielders, also on donkeys, retrieve the ball."

The earliest version of donkey base ball was named for "donkey races," which Peter Morris sees as "a silly type of contest."  The team that scored the fewest runs was the winner.  Maybe you had to be there to agree with the Brooklyn Eagle that the game was "very amusing , and perhaps the most novel match ever played."

According to an 1860 text, players sit on stools placed in a circle, and one player tosses or strikes a ball into the air. If he retrieves the ball and hits another player before that player reaches the next stool, the two players switch roles.

[1] Drive ball:  An 1835 book published in New Haven describes drive ball.  David Block's summary:  "In this activity, two boys with bats face each other, taking turns fungoing the ball.  When one boy hits the ball, the other has to retrieve it as quickly as he can, then fungo it back from the spot he picked it up."

From the 1835 text: "'Drive Ball’ is a game for two players only, who are placed each with a bat, at some distance from, and facing each other. The ball is then knocked back and forth, from one to the other, each endeavoring to drive it as far as possible, where it must be picked up and knocked back to the other player, who is at liberty to advance as near as he pleases. If he advance too near, however, his opponent will be likely, with a vigorous stroke, to force him to retreat again. The space of ground passed over will readily show which is the victor."

A 1849 chapbook from Babcock also mentions drive ball as the last mentioned of six common games played with a ball, naming "base-ball, trap ball, cricket, up-ball, catch-ball and drive ball."

--

[2] Drive: A ball game, listed along with the Old Cat games and Baseball, is mentioned in the memoirs of a New Hampshire man born in 1831. The rules of this game are not given. It may not have been a baserunning game.

Drive Ball’ is a game for two players only, who are placed each with a bat, at some distance from, and facing each other. The ball is then knocked back and forth, from one to the other, each endeavoring to drive it as far as possible, where it must be picked up and knocked back to the other player, who is at liberty to advance as near as he pleases. If he advance too near, however, his opponent will be likely, with a vigorous stroke, to force him to retreat again. The space of ground passed over will readily show which is the victor.