1830s.20

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

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags
Location	US SouthUS South
City/State/Country:	GA, United States
Modern Address
Game	Town BallTown Ball
Immediacy of Report
Age of Players	Youth, AdultYouth, Adult
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 'battery' at least fifty feet wide. The school boys played 'base,' 'bull-pen,' 'town ball' and 'shinny' too."
Sources	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.
Warning
Comment	Long-bullets involved distance throwing, often along roadsides. Fives is a team game resembling one-wall hand-ball. Curry's school was in Lincoln County GA, about 30 miles NE of Augusta. Edit with form to add a comment
Query	Team hand-ball? Really? Wasn't it usually a one-on-one game? Edit with form to add a query
Source Image	[[Image:\|left\|thumb]]
External Number
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Has Supplemental Text

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