Last updated 12/1/2008
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Xenoball:
Baseball-Like Games Played Outside English-Speaking Cultures
A Working Chronology
Note: This list was derived from
version 10 of the full Protoball Chronology, which was uploaded in December
2008. (Search
terms: Negro, black, colored, slaves) 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. The numbered items on this
sub-chronology are taken from the full Protoball Chronology at http://retrosheet.org/Protoball/chron.
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BC2500C.1 – “Tip
cats” Found in Egyptian Ruins
Writing in 1891, Stewart Culin reported “the
discorvery by Mr. Flinders-Petrie of wooden ‘tip cats’ among the
remainsof Rahun, in the Fayoom, Egypt
(circa 2500 B.C).” Culin infers that these short wooden
objects, pointed on each end, were used in an ancient form of the game Cat.
Culin, Stewart, “Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y.,”
Journal of American Folklore, Volume
4, number 14 (July-September 1891), page
233, note 1. Note: Do contemporary
archeologists agree that such items were evidence of play? Have they since found older artifacts
that may be associated with cat-like games?
370C.1 – Saint Augustine Recalls Punishment for
Youthful Ball Games
In his Confessions,
Augustine of Hippo – later St. Augustine
– recalls recalls his youth in Northern Africa,
where his father served as a Roman official. “I was disobedient, not because I
chose something better than [my parents and elders] chose for me, but simply
from the love of games. For I liked
to score a fine win at sport or to have my ears tickled by the make-believe of
the stage.” [Book One, chapter 10].
In Book One, chapter 9, Augustine had explained that “we enjoyed
playing games and were punished for them by men who played games
themselves. However, grown up games
are known as ‘business. . . .
Was the master who beat me himself very different from me? If he were worsted by a colleague in
some petty argument, he would be convulsed in anger and envy, much more so that
I was when a playmate beat me at a game of ball.”
Saint
Augustine’s Confessions, Book
One, text supplied by Dick McBane, February 2008. Note:
Can historians identify the “game of ball” that Augustine might
have played in the fourth Century?
Are the translations to “game of ball,” “games,”
and “sport” still deemed accurate?
1310.1 – Documents Said to
Describe Baseball-like Romanian Game of Oina
According to an otherwise unidentified clip in the
Origins file at the Giamatti Center, an AP article datelined Bucharest Romania
[and which appeared in the Oneonta Times on
March 29, 1990], the still popular Romanian game of oina can be traced back to
a [unspecified] document dating to the year 1310. The game itself “was invented by
shepherds in the first century.”
The article is evidently based on an interview with
Cristian Costescu, who sees baseball as “the American pastime derived
from the ancient game of oina.”
Oina reportedly has eleven players per side, an all-out-side-out rule,
tossed pitches, nine bases describing a total basepath of 120 yards, plugging
of baserunners, the opportunity for the fielding side to score points, and a
bat described as similar to a cricket bat.
Costescu is reported to have served as head of the Romanian Oina
Federation in the years when baseball was banned in Romania as “a capitalist
sport.”
The Oneonta
Times headline is “Play Oina!
Romanians Say Their Game Inspired Creation of Baseball.” Note: Can we find additional documentation of
oina’s rules and history? Is
the 1310 documentation available in English translation? Have others followed the recent fate of
oina and the work of Costescu?
1600c.1 -- Austrian Physician
Reports on Batting/Running Game in Prague;
One of Two Accounts Cites Plugging, Bases in the Game “Gyula Hajdu”
[A] Guarinoni, Hippolytis, Greuel der Verwustung
der menschlichen Gesschlechts [The horrors of the devastation of the human
race], [Ingolstadt,
Austrian Empire], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page
167. Guarinoni describes a game he
saw in Prague in 1600 involving a large field of play, the hitting of a small
thrown ball [“the size of a quince”] with a four-foot tapered club,
the changing of sides if a hit ball was caught, and, while not mentioning the
presence of bases, advises that the game “is good for tender youth which
never has enough of running back and forth.”
[B] “German Schlagball [“hit the
ball”] is also similar to rounders.
The native claim that these games ‘have remained the games of the
Germanic peoples, and have won no popularity beyond their countries’
quite obviously does not accord with facts. It is enough to quote the conclusion of
a description of “hit the ball” by H. Guarnoni, who had a medical
practice in Innsbruck about 1600:
‘We enjoyed this game in Prague
very much and played it a lot. The cleverest at it were the Poles and the
Silesians, so the game obviously comes from there.’ Incidentally, he was one of the first
who described the way in which the game was played. It was played with a
leather ball and a club four-foot long. The ball was tossed by a bowler
who threw it to the striker, who struck it with a club rounded at the end as
far into the field as possible, and attempted to make a circuit of the bases
without being hit by the ball. If ‘one of the opposing players
catches the ball in the air, a change of positions follows.’”
Source: from page 111 of an unidentified photocopy in
the “Origins of Baseball” file at the Giamatti Center
of the Baseball Hall of Fame. The quoted material is found in a section
termed “Rounders and Other Ball Games with Sticks and Bats,” pp.
110-111. This section also reports: “Gyula Hajdu sees the
origin of round games as follows: ‘Round games conserve the memory
of ancient castle warfare. A member of the besieged garrison sets out for
help, slipping through the camp of the enemy. . . . ‘”
“In Hungary
several variants of rounders exist in the countryside.”
1609.1 – Polish Origins of
Baseball Perceived in Jamestown
VA Settlement
“Soon after the new year [1609], [we] initiated
a ball game played with a bat . . . . Most often we played this game on
Sundays. We rolled up rags to make
balls . . . Our game attracted the savages who sat around the field, delighted
with this Polish sport.”
The source is Zbigniew Stefanski, Memorial
Commercatoris [A Merchant’s Memoirs], (Amsterdam, 1625), as cited in Block’s Baseball
Before We Knew It, page 101.
Stefanski was a skilled Polish workingman who wrote a memoir of
his time in the Jamestown
colony: an entry for 1609 related
the Polish game of pilka palantowa (bat ball). Another account by a scholar reported
adds that “the playfield consisted of eight bases not four, as in our
present day game of baseball.”
If true, this would imply that the game involved running as well as
batting.
“For your information and records, I am pleased
to inform you that after much research I have discovered that baseball was
introduced to America by the
Poles who arrived in Jamestown
in 1609. . . . Records of the University
of Krakow, the oldest school of higher
learning in Poland
show that baseball or batball was played by the students in the 14th
century and was part of the official physical culture program.”
Letter from Matthew Baranski to the Baseball Hall of
Fame, March 23, 1975. [Found in the
Origins file at the Giamatti
Center.] Matthew
Baranski himself cites First Poles in America
1608-1958, published by the Polish Falcons of America, Pittsburgh and unavailable online as of
7/28/09. We have not confirmed that sighting. Note: Per Maigaard’s
1941 survey of “battingball games” includes a Polish variant of long
ball, but does not mention pilka palantowa. Query:
The next Protoball reader finding himself/herself in Krakow
might drop by the University and find out more? And could a Polish speaker try some
online searches for pilka palantowa and its history?
1632.1 -- In Germany, “Playing Ball”
Associated With Scabies, Other Diseases
“The [preceding] reference to Fuchsius should be
to Institutiones 2.3.4: . . . ‘Whereby the habit of our German schoolboys
is most worthy of reprehension, who never take exercise except immediately
after food, either jumping or running or playing ball or quoits or taking part
in other exercises of a like nature; so that it is no surprise, seeing they
thus accumulate a great mass of crude humours, that they suffer from perpetual
scabies, and other diseases caused by vicious humours’:p. 337)”
Burton,
Robert E., The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 4 [Clarenden Press, Oxford, 1989], page
285. [Note: We need to confirm date of the Fuschius quote;
we’re not sure why it is assigned to 1632.]. Submitted by John
Thorn, 10/12/2004.
1656.1
– Dutch Prohibit “Playing Ball,” on Sundays in New Netherlands.
Channing, Edward, A History of the United States
[New York,
1905], volume 1, p. 536. Per Rhea, note #26, p. 394. Note: we
need to cross-check the language against the recent James Zug citation; it may
be a different source. Dean Sullivan, 7/24/2004, provides an additional
citation: Ester Singleton, Dutch New
York (1909),
page 290. It would be useful to
ascertain, with a knowledgeable source what Dutch phrase was translated as
“playing ball,” and whether the phrase denotes a certain type of
ballplay. The population of Manhattan
at this time was about 800, and the area was largely a fur trading post. Is it possible that the burghers
imported this text from the Dutch homeland?
1753.1
– NYS Traveler Notes Dutch boys “Playing Bat and Ball”
Gideon Hawley (1727-1807),
traveling through the area where Binghamton now is, wrote: “even at the
celebration of the Lord’s supper [the Dutch boys] have been playing bat
and ball the whole term around the house of God.”
Hawley, Gideon, Rev. Gideon Hawley’s Journal [Broome County, NY
1753], page 1041. Collection of Tom Heitz. Per Patricia Millen, From Pastime
to Passion [2001], page 2.
1760.2 – Bat and Ball . . .
in Paris?
A description of Parisian sights: “The grand Walk forms a most
beautiful Visto, which terminates in a Wood called Elysian Fields, or more
commonly known by the name “La Cours de la Rein (Queen’s
Course). This is
the usual place where the Citizens celebrate their Festivals with the Bat and
Ball, a Diversion which is much used here.” Prpvided by David Block, 2/27/2008. Note:
Is this the same location as what we now know as the Champs Elysee? Can we learn what bat/ball games
were so popular the mid 1700s – Soule? Some form of street tennis? A form
of field hockey? Not croquet,
presumably.
1790s.6 – Cricket as Played in Hamburg Resembled the U.S. Game of Wicket?
“[D]escriptions of the game [cricket] from
Hamburg in the 1790s show significant variations often quite similar to
outdated provisions of American “Wicket,” which may well not be due
to error on the part of the author, but rather to acute observation. For example, the ball was bowled
alternatively from each end (i.e. not in
‘overs’).
Moreover, the ball has to be ‘rolled’ and not
‘thrown’ (i.e., bowled in the true sense,
not the pitched ball).
And the striker is out if stops the ball from hitting the wicket with
his foot or his body generally.
There is no more reason to believe that there was uniformity in the Laws
coverning cricket in England,
the British Isles, or in Europe than there was
in weights and measures.”
Rowland Bowen, Cricket: A History of its Grown and Development
Throughout the World (Eyre and Spottiswoode,
London, 1970), page 72.
Note: Bowen does not give a source for this
observation.
1810c.1 – “Poisoned
Ball” Appears in French Book of Games
The rules for “Poisoned Ball” are
described in a French book of boy’s games: “In a court, or in a
large square space, four points are marked: one for the home base, the others
for bases which must be touched by the runners in succession, etc.”
Les Jeux des Jeunes Garcons [Paris,
c.1810]. Per Henderson,
note XXXXX Note: David
Block, at page 186-187, dates this book at 1815 -- some of the doubt perhaps
arising from the fact that the earliest [undated?] extant copy is a fourth
edition. He notes that the French text does not say directly that a bat
is used in this game; the palm may have been used to “repel” the
ball.
To See the Text: David Block carries a three-paragraph translation of text in
Appendix 7, page 279, of Baseball Before We Knew It.
1827.4 --
Poisoned Ball Listed in French Manual of Games
Celnart, Elizabeth,
Manuel complet des jeux de societe (Complete manual of social
games) [Paris, Roret], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It,
page 192. The material on “la balle empoisonee” is reported
as “virtually identical” to that of the 1810 Les Jeux des juenes
garcons, above at 1810. Note: Are any other safe-haven games
listed? Other batting games?
1845.10 -- German Book of Games
Lists das Giftball, a Bat-and-Ball Game
Jugendspiele zur Ehhjolung und Erheiterung (boys’ games for
recreation and amusement) [Tilsit, Germany,
W. Simmerfeld], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page
207. Included among the games is das Giftball (the
venomball, roughly). Block observes that this game
“is identical to the early French game of la balle empoisonee (poison ball, roughly) and that an illustration of two
boys playing it “shows it to be a bat-and-ball game.” For the
French game, see the 1810 entry above. Note: does Block link the
two descriptions, or does the German text cite the French game?
1846.14 – Baltic Rounders
Game Traced to English Visitors
“In 1846 a three-master . . . from London stranded on the
island. . . . The captain spent the
winter with the local minister, and the sailors with the peasants. According to information given by a man
named Matts Bisa, the visitors taught the men of Runö a new batting
game. As the cry
“runders” shows, his game was the English rounders, a predecessor
of baseball. It was made part of
the old cult game.”
Mehl [first name?], “A Batting Game on the Island of Runö,” Western Folklore
vol 8, number 3, (1949?), page 268. This game was conserved on the island,
at least until 1949. Note: wish we hadn’t dropped part
of this citation.
1850c.8 -- Poisoned-Ball Text
Recycled in France
Jeux et exercises des Jeunes garcons (Games and Exercises of Young
Boys) [Paris, A. Courcier], per David Block, Baseball Before
We Knew It, page 213. The material on la balle empoisonee (poisoned ball) is repeated from Les jeux des
jeunes garcons. See item #1810s.1 above.
1853.2 -- Dutch Handbook for
Young Boys Covers “Engelsch Balspel,” Trap-ball, Tip-cat
Dongens! Wat zal er gespeld worden? (Boys! What Shall We Play?)
[Leeuwarden, G.
T. N. Suringar], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page
215. A 163-page book of games and exercises for young boys, which Block
finds is “loaded with hand-colored engravings.” The
book’s section on ball games includes a translation of the 1828 rounders
rules from The Boy’s Own Book (see 1828
entry, above), under the heading Engelsch balspel (English ball). A second game is De wip (the whip), a kind of trap ball. Also De kat,
which Block identifies as English tip-cat.
1856.10 -- French Work Describes
Poisoned Ball and La Balle au Baton
Beleze, Par G., Jeux des adolescents [Paris, L.
Hachette et Cie], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page
217. This author’s portrayal of balle empoisonee is seen as
similar to its earlier coverage up to 40 years before; its major variant
involves two teams who exchange places regularly, outs are recorded by means of
caught flies and runners plugged between bases, and four or five bases comprise
the infield. Hitters, however, used their bare hands as bats. Block
sees the second game, la balle au baton, as a scrub game played without
teams. The ball was put in play by fungo hits with a bat, and was
reported to be most often seen in Normandie, where it was known as teque or
theque. Note: what are the “other sources” for
playing theque? Is it significant that this book features games
for adolescents, not younger children?
Other Games That Need to Be Assessed,
Confirmed, Dated
[1]
Om El Mahag – The Berber Tribes of Africa. Corrado Gini says that this game is
analogous to rounders and baseball.
“Ritual Games in Libya,”
Rural Sociology, 1939, pp. 283 ff.
[2]
Tabeh – Tabeh is said to be similar to “base ball and drop
ball.” H. H. Jessup, “The Women of the Arabs,” (Dodd Mead, 1873), pages 89-90.
[3]
“Ballplaying” by Cherokees and Choctaws -- Notes taken by Harold
Seymour refer to “ball play” by both tribes. One guesses that they played a form of
lacrosse, but we need to verify this.
[4]
Kopfspeel – It is said that “among the several types of Dutch
+kopfspeel+ is one like rounders.”
W. Endrei and L. Kolnay, “Fun and Games in Old Europe,” (Budapest,
1986) pages 110-111.
[5]
Schlagball – It is said that “German +Schlagball+ (‘hit the ball’) is also similar to
rounders.” W. Endrei and L.
Kolnay, “Fun and Games in Old Europe,” (Budapest, 1986)
pages 110-111. See also item #1600c.1,
above.
[6]
King ball -- Finnish baseball [“pesapallo”] is known to derive
partly from American baseball in 1921, but accounts also say it owes some
features to the Finnish game king ball, and we have no description of that
earlier folk game.
[7]
Lapta -- The Russian game of lapta, said to date from the 14th
century, involves batting and running so as to avoid plugging. Origins Committee member Kim Juhase is
now gathering background information on this game.
Note: SABR member César Gomez reports that there is no known
baseball-like game in Spanish history.
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