Langball

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Glossary of Games
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Game Langball
Game Family Kickball Kickball
Location Brooklyn NY
Regions US
Eras 1800s
Invented No
Description

 

 

[A]  "Langball for the Girls.

            After the handball contests the girls turned their attention to the unique game of langball.  There are two teams.  The team that are out are stationed around the floor where bases are located.  The batter hangs by the hands from flying rings. A football is pitched in at a distance of about five paces.  The batter kicks it and then starts to run around the bases.  The girls bunt with their feet very scientifically.  Not all of them can bunt, but none want the bunt abolished.  Recently the Academics won by 9 to 0.  Miss Brooks of the victorious team made a home run, and Miss Houghton stole second in great shape.  Miss Flagler, the agile and efficient assistant to Dr. Pettit, made a three-base hit, but was put out on the way home by being hit by the ball — the way a put-out is effected.— Brooklyn Standard Union." 

[B]


"What is langball (also known as 'Lang ball' and 'Hang base ball'? Langball is a now-defunct game invented by C. G. Lang, a YMCA director in St. Louis, Missouri, sometime around 1892. It's something like baseball or kickball, except that the batter in langball dangles from a horizontal bar or flying rings, striking the pitched ball with the bottom of their feet." It goes on to describe the game pretty much as in the article found by George Thompson. The post links to an article in the Los Angeles Herald, August 19, 1896, 18

 



Sources

[A] Rockland County Times (Haverstraw, N. Y.), April 7, 1894, Found and posted on 19CBB by George Thompson 3/5/2021.  George adds: "This didn't catch on, somehow."

[B]  (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/curiv_lovelock_ver01/data/sn85042461/00280769666/1896041901/0598.pdf), which goes into greater detail. It says langball was invented by someone named Lang, and "is just the game for women, for, although it includes all the health giving features of baseball it does away with the roughness and danger."

Comment

 

[] Of all known baserunning games, langball may be the only one that uses strikers suspended above the ground.

[] "Volleyball was another YMCA innovation, making three sports (that I know of) with two of them still played today.  Not too shabby, and a fine illustration of the influence of Muscular Christianity on sport."
 
--Richard Hershberger, 3/5/2021

 

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Query

Can we conjecture why the game is called "langball?" [Now, "hangball" we could see.]

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