Last Updated December 1, 2008
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Chronologies
Odd and
Obscure Games
A Working Chronology
Note: This list was derived from version 10 of
the full Protoball Chronology, which was uploaded in December 2008. It includes odd games that may or may
not be safe-haven games – maybe you could help us find out. Additional relevant entries may have
been added to any later versions of the full Chronology; not all entries on
this subchronology are necessarily identical to those on the most recently
updated full Chronology. Readers
are encouraged to suggest or perform updates. Please send notes about omissions,
mistakes, typos, etc, to lmccray@mit.edu.
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1832.9 Norwich CT Sets $2 Fine for Playing
Ball, including “Sky Ball”
“Be it ordained by the Mayor, Aldermen
and Common Council of the city of Norwich . . . That if any person or persons
should play at ball, cat ball, or sky ball, or at ball generally . . . in any
of the public streets of said city, the person or persons so offending shall
forfeit and pay . . . the sum of two dollars; and when any minor or apprentice
shall be guilty of a violation of this by-law, the penalty may be recovered
from the parent or guardian.”
The fine also applied to bowling, kite-flying, and hoops. Norwich Courier, Volume 11, Issue
8 (May 16, 1832), page 1. Provided by John Thorn, email of
1/14/2008. Note: “Sky
ball?”
1836.7 – Scots Still Play
“Ball Paces,” a Type of Trap Ball with Running
“’The
Ball Paces’ was formerly much played, but is now almost extinct. In this game a square was formed; and
each angle was a station where one of the party having the innings was
posted. A hole was dug in the
ground, sufficient to hold the ball, which was placed on a bit of wood, rising
about six inches above the ball.
The person at the hole struck the point of this with his bat, when the
ball rose; and in its descent [p116/p117] was struck with the bat to as great a
distance as possible. Before the
ball was caught and thrown into the batman’s station, each man at the
four angles ran from one point to another, and every point counted one in the
game.” George Penny, Traditions
of Perth (Dewar & Co., Perth, 1836), pp 116/17... Provided by David Block, email of
5/17/2005.
David’s accompanying comment: “From the description it appears
to be a remarkable hybrid of trap-ball and the multiple goal version of
stool-ball described by Strutt. . . .
This is the first trap-ball type game I’ve ever come across that
features baserunning.”
Penny also mentions cricket: “Cricket
was never much practiced in Scotland,
though much esteemed by the English.
It was lately introduced here; several cricket clubs established; and is
now becoming popular.” Ibid, page
117.
1840s.36 – VA Lad Plays
Chermany at Recess
“Our recess games were chiefly chermany
and bandy (“hockey”).
Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography:
Memories and Experiences (Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1905), page 35.
Accessed via Google Books 12/16/2008, search “conway autobiography.” The recesses
were enjoyed at a school in Fredericksburg VA, which Conway
attended from about 1842 to 1847, ages 10 to 15. Chermany has been described as a
“variety of baseball” played in Virginia and perhaps elsewhere in the South:
Frederic Gomes Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, Dictionary of American
Regional English (Harvard University Press, 1985),
page 604. Fredericksburg
is about 55 miles north of Richmond
and about 55 miles SW of Washington DC.
Thanks to Tom Altherr for the lead to “chermany” [email of
12/10/2008].
1840c.33 -- Future University
Head Plays Two Types of Ball in NC, Including “Old Hundred”
Kemp Battle, who moved to Raleigh
NC at age 8, and who would stay to become
President of the University
of North Carolina, wrote
later of two forms of local ballplaying.
The first involved high and low pitching to the batter’s taste,
leading and stealing, plugging – the ball was loosely wrapped—the
bound rule, a three-strike rule, and one-out-side-out innings. [The absence of foul ground, team size,
and nature/spacing of bases are not mentioned.] The second form, “known as old
hundred or town ball” used all-out-side-out innings, with the last batter
able to revive vanquished team members with certain feats.
W. Battle, ed., Memories of an Old–Time Tar
Heel (U of NC Press, Chapel Hill NC, 1945),
pages 36 and 57. 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 31. The
text of the Battle
book is unavailable via Google Books as of 11/15/2008.
1847.11 – Alabaman Mentions
“Bass Ball,” Goal, “Hook-em-Snivy
In an article from the Alabama Reporter, an unidentified
writer attempts to describe curling to Southerners like this: “What is ‘Curling,’ eh? Why, did you ever play
‘bass ball,’ or ‘goal,’ or ‘hook-em-snivy,’
on the ice? Well, curling is not
like either. In curling, sides are
chosen; each player has a bat, one end of which is turned up, somewhat like a
plough-handle, with which to knock a ball on ice without picking it up as in
the game of foot-ball, which curling resembles.” Reprinted in The
Spirit of the Times, January 16, 1847, page 559. Provided by David Block, email of
2/27/2008. David explains,
“Clearly, the Alabama
writer had curling confused with ice hockey, which was itself an embryonic
sport that the time.” Or
maybe he confused it with ice-hurling, which actually employs a ball. Note:
Could gentle readers from AL
please enlighten Protoball on the nature and fate of
“hook-em-snivy?” I
asked Mister Google about the word, and he rather less helpfully and rather
more cryptically than usual, said this:
“My Quaker grandmother, born in Maryland in 1823, used [the word] in my
hearing when she was about seventy years old. She said that it was a barbarism in use
among common people and that we must forget it.”
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