Lang Ball

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Game	Lang Ball
Game Family	Baseball Baseball
Location
Regions	US
Eras	1800s, Derivative
Invented	Yes
Tags
Description	Lang Ball appears to have been credited to Charles Gregory Lang, director of the YMCA gym at St. Joseph, MO, late in the 19th Century. Base ball rules generally govern baserunning, but an 1894 describes a quite different way to put the (soccer) ball in play. The ball "is batted will the soles of the feet, the batter at the time hanging from a bar . . . . When the ball is served by the pitcher, he [the kicker] shoots out his legs and kicks it with both feet." Plugging runners, 'tho used in some forms of kickball, is not mentioned in this account. According to an earlier 1892 description, games could be played by teams or the scrub version of rotation among fielding and striking roles. Lang Ball was last cited in a 1930 publication. Some estimate that it led to the game of kickball.
Sources	Chad Moody, Lang Ball; Forgotten Nineteenth-Century Baseball Derivative and Peculiar Kickball Ancestor, Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2021, pp. 105-110.
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