1820s.20

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Horace Greeley Lacks the Knack, Fears Getting Whacked

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"Ball was a common diversion in Vermont while I lived there; yet I never became proficient at it, probably for want of time and practice. To catch a flying ball, propelled by a muscular arm straight at my nose, and coming so swiftly that I could scarcely see it, was a feat requiring a celerity of action, an electric sympathy of eye and brain and hand . . . . Call it a knack, if you will; it was quite beyond my powers of acquisition.

Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (J. B. Ford, New York, 1869), page 117. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), page 30. Tom places the time as the early 1820s. Greeley, born in New Hampshire in 1811, was apprenticed a Poultney VT printer in about 1825. His book was accessed 11/15/2008 via Google Books search "greeley recollections owen." Poultney VT is on the New York border, about 70 miles NNW of Albany NY. Greeley does not mention the game of wicket or round ball.

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