Last Updated December 1, 2008
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Ballplaying References in
A Working Chronology
Note:
This list was derived from version 10 of the full Protoball Chronology,
which was uploaded in December 2008.
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1690.1 -- Literary Simile: “Catch it Like a Stool-Ball”
Anon., The Pagan Prince: or a Comical
History of the Heroik Atchievements of the Palatine of Eboracum [
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1706.2 -- Book About a Scotsman Mentions “Cat and Doug” and
Other Diversions
[Author?] The Scotch rogue; or, The life
and actions of Donald MacDonald, a Highland Scot [
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1798.1 – Jane Austen Mentions Cricket and “Baseball”
in Northanger Abbey manuscript.
Jane Austen mentions “baseball”
in her novel Northanger Abbey, written in about 1798 but published in
1818, after her death. “Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and
wished to see her children everything they ought to be; but her time was so
much occupied in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder
daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very
wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer
cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the
age of fourteen, to books . . . . But from fifteen to seventeen she was in
training for a heroine; so read all such works as heroines must read. . .
“
Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey
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1799.1 -- Novel Refers to Cricket, Base-ball
Cooke, Cassandra, Battleridge: an
Historical tale, Founded on facts [
“Ah! no more cricket, no more
base-ball, they are sending me to
Block notes that Cooke was in correspondence
with Jane Austen in 1798, when both were evidently writing novels containing
references to base-ball. Also submitted 8/19/06 by Ian Maun.
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1819.2 – Scott’s Ivanhoe Mentions Stool-ball
[The Jester speaks] “I came to save my master, and if
he will not consent, basta! I can
but go away home again. Kind
service can not be checked from hand to hand like a shuttle-cock or
stool-ball. I’ll hang for no
man . . . .”
Scott, Walter, Ivanhoe; A Romance
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1824.3 -- English Novel Cites Base-ball as Girls’ Pastime, Limns
Cricket Match
Mitford, Mary Russell, Our Village [
Bateman also states that “Our
Village, which was initially serialised in The Lady’s Magazine between 1824 and 1832, contains the first
comprehensive prose description of a cricket match.” See Bateman, Anthony, “’More
Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘ Culture,, Hegemony, and the
Literaturisaton of Cricket,” Sport
in History, v. 23, 1
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1828.9 --
“Then comes a sun burnt gipsy of six .
. . . her longing eyes fixed on a game of baseball at the corner of the green
till she reaches the cottage door . . . . So the world wags until ten; then the
little damsel gets admission to the charity school, her thoughts now fixed on
button-holes and spelling-books -- those ensigns of promotion; despising dirt
and baseball, and all their joys.”
From “Jack Hatch,” taken from
the Village Sketches of Mary Russell Mitford, The
Submitted by Bill Wagner 6/4/2006 and by
David Ball 6/4/2006. David explains further: “The title character
is first introduced as a cricketer, ‘Jack Hatch -- the best cricketer in
the parish, in the county, in the country!’ The narrator hears tell of
this wonder, who turns out to be a paragon of all the skills but is never able
to meet him in person, finally hearing that he has died. Mitford treats
cricket
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1830s.13 -- “Baseball” Found in Several Works by Mary
Russell Mitford
Submitted by Hugh MacDougall,
“Everyone knows of Jane Austen’s
use of the term baseball in her novel Northanger Abbey [see item #1798.1
above]. I recently came across, online, an 1841 anthology of works by the
English essayist Mary Russell Mitford
“Mary Mitford seems to have a pretty
good idea of what the girls are playing, when they play at
“baseball” -- but it seems to have little or nothing to do with the
sport we now call by that name. Does anyone know what it was?
The “baseball” usages:
[] “The Tenants of Beechgrove:”
-- “But better than playing with her doll, better even than
baseball, or sliding and romping, does she like to creep of an evening to her
father’s knee:
[] “Jack Hatch” -- see item
#1828.9 above for two references.
[] “Our Village [introduction]”:
“ . . . Master Andrew’s four fair-haired girls who are scrambling
and squabbling at baseball on the other.”
[] Belford Regis: “What
can be prettier than this, unless it be the fellow-group of girls . . . who are
laughing and screaming round the great oak; then darting to and fro, in a game
compounded of hide-and-seek and baseball. Now tossing the ball high, high
amidst the branches; now flinging it low along the common, bowling as it were,
almost within reach of the cricketers; now pursuing, now retreating, jumping
shouting, bawling -- almost shrieking with ecstasy; whilst one sunburnt
black-eyed gipsy throws forth her laughing face from behind the trunk of an old
oak, and then flings a newer and gayer ball -- fortunate purchase of some
hoarded sixpence -- among her happy playmates.
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1837.2 – Ball Game Described in Fictional Account of Western
Indians
Captured by Native Americans, a youth see
them playing a game of ball. The “ball” was part of a
sturgeon’s head covered with deerskin strips, the club was of hickory,
some number of safe-haven bases were formed by small piles of stones, and there
was plugging. “Their principal object seemed to be, to send the
ball as far as possible, in order for the striker of it, to run around the
great space of ground, which was comprised within the area formed by the piles
of stones.” There is no mention of a pitcher, and if a
batter-runner was put out, he would replace the fielder who made the
putout. Some games would last for days.
Female Robinson Crusoe, A Tale of the
American Wilderness [J.
For Text: David Block carries three paragraphs of text
from this story in Appendix 7, page 283, of Baseball Before We Knew It.
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1838.3 – Cooper Novel Home as Found Mentions Ballplaying in
“’Do you refer to the young men
on the lawn, Mr. Effington? . . . Why, sir, I believe they have always played
ball in that precise locality.’
He called out in a wheedling tone to their
ringleader, a notorious street brawler. ‘A fine time for sport, Dickey;
don’t you think there would be more room in the broad street than on this
crowded lawn, where you lose our ball so often in the shrubbery?’
‘This place will do, on a
pinch,’ bawled Dickey, ‘though it might be better. If it
weren’t for the plagued house, we couldn’t ask for a better
ball-ground. . . ‘
‘Well, Dickey . . . , there is no
accounting for tastes, but in my opinion, the street would be a much better
place to play ball in than this lawn . . . There are so many fences hereabouts
. . . It’s true the village trustees say there shall be no ball-playing
in the street [see item #1816.1 above -- LM], but I conclude you don’t
much mind what they say or threaten.’”
Thus James Fenimore Cooper, in his novel Home
As Found, describes the return of the Effingham family to Templeton
and their ancestral home in
http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/cooperstown/baseball.html.. Caveat: In a 1/24/2008
posting to 19BCC, Richard Hershberger writes: I believe the consensus on the Cooper
reference is that it likely was something more hockey-like than
baseball-like.”
James Fenimore Cooper, Home as Found [W.A.
Townsend and Co.,
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1840s.31 –Lem: Juvenile Fiction’s Boy Who Loved Round-ball
Noah Brookes, Lem:
A New England Village Boy: His Adventures and his Mishaps
On pages 93-97,
the novel lays out the game that was played by Lem [born 1830] and his
playmates, which seems to follow the customs of the
On spring, pp 92-93: “Ball-playing began early in the spring; [p92/93] it was the first of the summer games to come out.
On Fast Day, p. 93: “I am afraid that Lem’s
only notion of Fast Day was that that was the long-expected day when, for the first time that year, a game of ball was played on the Common.”
On the pleasant
effects of a change in the path of the
On making teams for simulating Revolutionary War tussles, p. 107: “We can’t all be Americans; and we have agreed to choose sides, as we do in round ball.”
Note: we welcome comment on the authenticity of Brooks’ depiction of ballplaying in the 1840s,
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1844.6 – Novel Cites “the Game of Bass in the Fields”
“And you boys let out racin’, yelpin,’ hollerin,’ and whoopin’ like mad with pleasure, and the playground, and the game of bass in the fields, or hurly on the long pond on the ice, . . . “
Thomas C.
Haliburton, The Attache: or Sam Slick in England [Bentley, London, 1844]
no page cited, per William Humber, “Baseball and Canadian
Identity,” College Quarterly volume 8 Number 3 [Spring 2005] no
page cited. Humber notes that this reference has been used to refute
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1849.11 – Character in Fictional Autobiography Played Cricket, Base-Ball
“On
fourths of July, training days and other occasions, young men from the country
around, at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, would come for the purpose of
competing for the championship of these contests, in which, in which, as the
leader of the school, I soon became conspicuous. Was there a game at cricket or base-ball
to be played, my name headed the list of the athletae.” W.S. Mayo, Kaloolah, or Journeying to
the Djebel Kumri. An Autobiography
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1850.23 -- English Novel Briefly Mentions Base-Ball
“Emma, drawing little Charles toward her,
began a confidential conversation with him on the subject of his garden and
companions at school, and the comparative merits of cricket and
base-ball.” Catherine Anne Hubback, The Younger Sister, Volume I
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1852.10 – Fictional “Up-Country” Location Cites Bass-Ball and Wicket
“Both houses were close by the road, and the road was narrow; but on either side was a strip of grass, and in process of time, I appeared and began ball-playing upon the green strip, on the west side of the road. At these times, on summer mornings, when we were getting well warm at bass-ball or wicket, my grandfather would be seen coming out of his little swing-gate, with a big hat aforesaid, and a cane. He enjoyed the game as much as the youngest of us, but came mainly to see fair play, and decide mooted points.”
L.W. Mansfield,
writing under the pseudonym “Z. P.,“ or Zachary Pundison, Up-country
Letters
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1853.7 – Didactic Novel Pairs “Bass-Ball” and Rounders at Youths’ Outing
“The rest
of the party strolled about the field, or joined merrily in a game of bass-ball
or rounders, or sat in the bower, listening to the song of birds.” A Year of Country Life: or, the
Chronicle of the Young Naturalists
As a way of teaching nature [each chapter introduces several birds, insects, and “wild plants”] this book follows a group of boys and girls of unspecified age [seriously pre-pubescent, we think] through a calendar year. The bass-ball/rounders reference above is one of the few times we run across both terms in a contemporary writing. So, now: are there two distinct games or just two distinct names for the same game? Well, Murphy’s Law, meet origins research: the syntax here leaves that muddy, as it could be the former answer if the children played bass-ball and rounders separately that [June] day.
Richard’s take: “It is possible that there were two games the party played . . . but the likelier interpretation is that this was one game, with both names given to ensure clarity.” David Block [email of 2/27/2008] agrees with Richard. Richard also says “It is possible that as the English dialect moved from “base ball” to “rounders,” English society concurrently moved from the game being played primarily played by boys and only sometimes being played by girls. I am not qualified to say. [Note: Protoball will review its evidence on that in version 11 of the Chronology.]
Trap-ball receives one uninformative mention in the book [Ibid, page 211], and, perhaps being seen as a more central tenet of Christian knowledge, cricket receives three references [Ibid, pages 75, 110, and 211]. The first of these, unlike the bass-ball account, separates English boys from English girls after a May tea party: ”Some of the gentlemen offered prizes of bats and balls, and skipping-ropes, for feats of activity or skill in running, leaping, playing cricket, &c. with the boys; and skipping, and battledore and shuttlecock with the girls.” [Note: If you insist on using the number of references as a yardstick of approved knowledge, you will want to know that “tea” receives 12 mentions.]
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1855.17 – In Novel, a Girl is Chided for Preferring Playing Bass-Ball To Chores
A very strict
school mistress scolds the title character: “You can’t say three times
three without missing; you’d rather play at bass-ball, or hunt the hedges
for wild flowers, than mend your stockings.” A.M.H. [only initials are given],
“The Gipsy Girl,” in The Cabinet Annual: A Christmas and New
Year’s Gift for 1855
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1858.37 – In English Novel, Base-Ball Doesn’t Occupy Boys Very Long
The boys were
still restless – “. . . they were rather at a loss for a game. They had played at base-ball and
leap-frog; and rival coaches, with six horses at full speed, have been driven
several times around the garden, to the imminent risk of box-edgings, and the
corner of flower beds: what were they to do?” Anon., “Robert Wilmot,” in The
Parents’ Cabinet of Amusement and Instruction
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1860.15
– Novel for Adolescents Describes Base Ball Game
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