1830s.20

In GA, Men Played Fives, Schoolboys Played Base and Town Ball

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags
Location	US SouthUS South
City/State/Country:	[[{{{Country}}}]]
Modern Address
Game	Town BallTown Ball
Immediacy of Report
Age of Players
Holiday
Notables
Text	"Men as well as boys played the competitive games of 'Long Bullets' and 'Fives,' the latter played against a battery built by nailing planks to twenty-foot poles set to make the [p31/32] 'battery' at least fifty feet wide. The school boys played 'base,' 'bull-pen,' 'town ball' and 'shinny' too." Jessie Pearl Rice, J. L. M. Curry: Southerner, Statesman, and Educator (King's Crown Press, New York, 1949), pages 6-7. 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), pages 31-32. The full text of the Rice biography is unavailable via Google Books as of 11/15/2008. Long-bullets involved distance throwing. Fives is a team game resembling one-wall hand-ball. Curry's school was in Lincoln County GA, about 30 miles NE of Augusta.
Sources
Warning
Comment	Edit with form to add a comment
Query	Edit with form to add a query
Source Image	[[Image:\|left\|thumb]]
External Number
Submitted by
Submission Note
Has Supplemental Text

Comments