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Subtopic Files: This page shows the full Protoball 950-item working chronology.  There are selective chronologies available on African-American play [8 items],  Ballplaying Outside English-Speaking Areas [New: 17 items], Central/Western New York Ballplaying [New: 34 items], Famous People Having Links to Ballplaying [New: 63 items], Female play [27 items], Holiday Ballplaying [New: 23 items], Local bans of ballplaying [42 items], Ballplay as Reflected in Narrative Fiction [19 items], Ballplaying in the New England States [New: 92 items], NYC Ballplaying Before the Knickerbockers [New: 50 items], Oddball Games [New: 5 items], Rounders [38 items], Stoolball [57 items], Town Ball [32 items], Ballplaying on Campus [New: 64 items], and Wicket [41 items].   New Entries Only :  To browse the 195 newest [December 2008] entries, go here.   Re-ordered Version: For a version that puts entries within chronological order within the later calendar years, go here.

 

 

 

 

Version 10, updated December 2008

 

 

The Protoball Working Chronology of Early Ball Play --

2500BC through 1861AD

 

 

Project History:  This chronology originated with an initial listing by John Thorn and Tom Heitz, one that included about 70 entries.  We took that popular set and had added another 200 entries by 2004, always adding formal citations where we could.  Then, in 2005, David Block’s impressive Baseball Before We Knew It was published, furnishing so far (we have at this point drawn only from its appended bibliography) nearly 150 new entries for subsequent versions of the Protoball chronology.  Researchers, many of them subscribers to the “19CBB” listserve, have since added hundreds more.  Version 10 added about 195 new items, raising the total to about 950 entries.

 

Scope:  The Protoball list includes entries for what are taken to be “safe haven” ball games (i.e., ball games that use bases), including base ball, town ball, cricket, wicket, and the old-cat games, but not the many other stick-and-ball games such as golf, the racket sports, croquet, field hockey, and hurling.  The earliest entries range worldwide, the middle years focus mainly on games in the English-speaking nations, and the latter portion focuses mainly on games played in North America. The objective is to trace baseball’s early roots, and the roots of most of its essential rules.

 

It’s a Work in Progress:  This chronology is a work in progress. Your contributions are welcome in completing and emending it.  As a future step, Project Protoball will examine twelve shelf-feet of secondary sources -- there are over 350 relevant baseball and other sort histories to look at -- to find additional entries and enrich information on current.  Our hope is to ultimately create a searchable file of useful primary information on the evolution of safe-haven ballgames.  For more information, to make suggestions, or to add to the chronology, contact Larry McCray at Lmccray@mit.edu.  Note:  Serial numbers for the entries comprise the year of the reported event [for example, “1820s” means “in the 1820’s,” and “1823c” means “circa 1823”] and an identifying numerical suffix.  The reader should note the unavoidable imprecision in some dates; for example, if a memoirist who was born in 1813 reports that he played ball as a youth, the date is probably recorded as “1823c,” but could obviously be a few years off either way.  Entries for any one year are not listed in chronological sequence.

 

Please Contribute Comments, Data, and Corrections:  Reader comments are especially welcome to fill information needs for open queries that follow the term “Note:” within an entry.

 

Important Caveat on the Authenticity of Entries:  The Protoball Project includes published claims for historical events associated with the evolution of baseball.  Some of these claims have been questioned – and some ridiculed -- within today’s research community.  Instead of withholding such claims [which lay forever unchallenged in published sources] , we include most of them, noting any current doubts as to their reliability in “Caution” and “Caveat” notations.  The reader should not take the appearance of an item in the Chronology to imply our endorsement of the authenticity of that item.

 

More Caveats Concerning the Protoball Chronology

 

How the Chronology Grew From 70 Entries to its Current Size

 

 

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The Protoball Chronology

 

BC2500C.1 – “Tip cats” Found in Egyptian Ruins

 

Writing in 1891, Stewart Culin reported “the discovery by Mr. Flinders-Petrie of wooden ‘tip cats’ among the remains of 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?   

 

BC2400C.1 – Egyptian Text Has Bat-and-Ball Reference

 

“The earliest known references to seker-hemat (translation: batting the ball) as a fertility rite and ritual of renewal are inscribed in pyramids dating to 2400 BC.”  An Egyptologist reads Pyramid Texts Spell 254 as commanding a pharaoh to cross the heavens and “strike the ball” in the meadow of the sacred Apis bull.

 

Piccione, Peter, “Pharaoh at the Bat,” College of Charlestown Magazine (Spring/Summer 2003), p.36.  From a clipping in the Giamatti Center’s origins file  Note:  It would be good to confirm details in an academic source and to see whether other Egyptologists have other interpretations of this text.

 

BC2000.1 -- 2000 BC to 0 BC – The Ball in Ancient Play

 

Ancient cultures—Lydians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians—play primitive stick and ball games for recreation, fertility rites and religious rituals.

 

Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], pp. 8-21. 

 

BC1500C.1 – 1500 to 700 BC -- Mexican Game Believed to Use Rubber Ball, Bat

 

According to SABR member César González, “There are remains of rubber balls found since the time of the Olmeca culture between 1500 and 700 BC.”  He reports that it is believed that one of the earliest Mesoamerican games was played with a stick.

 

Email from César González, 12/6/2008 Note: Can we add sources for these points?

 

BC1460.1 – Egyptian Tomb Inscriptions Show Bats, Balls

 

Wall inscriptions in Egyptian royal tombs depict games using bats and balls.

 

According to Egyptologist Peter Piccione, “A wall relief at the temple of Deir et-Bahari showing Thutmose III playing under the watchful eye of the goddess Hathor dates to 1460 BC.  Priests are depicted catching the balls . . .  this was really a game.”

 

Per Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], p. 20.  Note: Henderson’s source may be his ref 127, Naville, E., “The Temple of Deir el Bahari (sic),” Egyptian Exploration Fund. Memoirs, Volume 19, part IV, plate C [London, 1901]. ]. Also, Batting the Ball, by Peter A. Piccione, “Pharaoh at the Bat,” College of Charlestown Magazine (Spring/Summer 2003), p.36.  See also http://www.cofc.edu/~piccione/sekerhemat.html, as accessed 12/17/08.

 

BC750.1 -- 750 BC to 150 AD -- Ballplay in Ancient Greece

 

The Greeks, famous for their athletics, played several ball games.  In fact the Greek gymnasium ["palaistra”] was often known to include a special room [“sphairiteria”] for ballplaying . . . a “sphaira” being a ball.  Pollux [ca 180 AD] lists a number of children’s ball games, including games that loosely resemble very physical forms of keepaway and rugby, and the playing of a complicated form of catch, one that involved feints to deceive other players.

 

The great physician Galen wrote [ca. 180 AD] especially fondly of ballplaying and its merits, and seems to have seen it as an adult activity.  He advised that “the most strenuous form of ball playing is in no way inferior to other exercises.”  Turning to milder forms of ball play, he said “I believe that in this form ball playing is also superior to all the other exercises.”  His partiality to ballplaying stemmed in part from its benefit for the whole body, not just the legs or arms, as was the case for running and wrestling.

 

As far as we are aware, Greek ball games did not include any that involved running among bases or safe havens, or any that involved hitting a ball with a club or stick (or hands).

 

Source:  Stephen G. Miller, Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources, [University of California Press, 2004]: See especially Chapter 9, “Ball Playing.”  The Pollox quote is from pp 124-125, and the Galen quote is from pp. 121-124.  Special thanks to Dr. Miller for his assistance.

 

BC 100.1 – Historian Dates Early Cricket to 100BC – Others Disagree

 

In his 1912 article “The History of Cricket” [in Pelham and Warner, Imperial Cricket (London, 1912), p. 54] Andrew Lang “argued that cricket was played as far back as 100 BC, basing this on evidence supposedly provided by the ancient Irish epics and romances.”  According to Lang, “cricket was played by the ancestors of Cuchulain, by the Dalraid Scots from northern Ireland who invaded and annexed Argyll in about 500 AD.”  Modern writers do not accept this view.

 

Bateman, Anthony,” ‘More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ; ‘Culture, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), pp 27 - 44.  Note: It would be interesting to know what particular features of Irish lore gave Lang the feeling that cricket stemmed from ancient Irish sources.

 

370C.1 – Saint Augustine Recalls Punishment for Youthful Ball Games

 

In his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo – later St. Augustine – 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?        

 

640s.1 – Medieval Writer:  Saint Cuthbert [b. 634c] “Pleyde atte balle”

 

Mulling on whether the ball came to England in Anglo-Saxon days, Strutt reports “the author of a manuscript in Trinity College, Oxford, written in the fourteenth century and containing the life of Saint Cuthbert, says of him, that when young, ‘he pleyde atte balle with the children that his felawes [fellows] were.’  On what authority this information is established I cannot tell.”  Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, (Chatto and Windus, London, 1898 edition), page 158.

 

Note: The claim of this unidentified manuscript seems weak.  As Strutt notes, the venerable Bede wrote poetic and prose accounts of the life of Cuthbert around 715-720 A.D., and made no mention of ballplaying.  That a scholar would find evidence seven centuries later would be surprising. Warton later cites the poem as from Oxford MSS number Ivii, and he also places its unidentified author in the fourteenth century, but he doesn’t the veracity of the story line.  The poem describes an angel sent from heaven to dissuade Cuthbert from playing such an “ydell” [idle] pastime.  Warton, Thomas, The History of English Poetry from the Close of the Eleventh Century to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century (Thomas Tegg, London, 1840, from the 1824 edition), volume 1, page 14.

 

824.1 -- 15-Year-Old Chinese Emperor Criticized for Excessive Ball-playing

 

Ching Tsung, was the new Chinese emperor at the age of 15.  “As soon as he could escape from the morning levee, the young Emperor rushed off to play ball.  His habits were well known in the city, and in the summer of 824 someone suggested to a master-dyer named Chang Shao that, as a prank, he should slip into the Palace, lie on the Emperor’s couch and eat his dinner, ‘for nowadays he is always away, playing ball or hunting.’”  The prank was carried out, but those prankish dyers . . . well, they died as a result.

 

Waaey, Arthur, The Life and Times of Po Chu-I, 772-846 [Allen and Unwin, London, 1949], page 157.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

 

900.1 – Mayan Games Played at Chichen Itza, Mexico

 

Mayan Indians play stick and ball games in ceremonial courts in Chichen Itza, Mexico

 

Note: This source may be Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], p. 201.  And Henderson’s source may be his ref 53, Effler, L. R., The Ruins of Chichen Itza [Toledo, Ohio], pp 19 – 21.  However, Henderson’s Effler ref. shows no publisher, and Henderson’s account of the game played at Chichen Itza is not dated to 900 AD, or connected with a stick, so another source may be preferable.

 

1086.1 – Form of Stool Ball Possibly Found in Domesday Book in Norman England

Stool ball, a stick and ball game and a forerunner of rounders and cricket, is apparently mentioned in the Domesday Book as “bittle-battle.”

Note: This source is Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], p. 75.  However, Henderson doesn’t exactly endorse the idea that the cited game, “bittle-battle,” is a ball game, [or if it is, could it be a form of soule?]  He says that one [unnamed] author claims that bittle-battle is a form of stoolball.  I saw only two RH refs to stoolball, ref 72 [Grantham] and ref 149 [London Magazine].  One of them may be Henderson’s source for the 1086 stoolball claim.  I don’t see an RH ref to the Domesday text itself, but then, it probably isn’t found at local lending libraries.  The Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect [1875] reportedly gives “bittle-battle” as another name for stoolball.  It is believed that “bittle” meant a wooden milk bowl and some have speculated that a bowl may have been used as a paddle to deflect a thrown ball from the target stool, while others speculate that the bowl may have been the target itself.

Note:  We need to confirm whether the Domesday Book actually uses the term “bittle-battle,” “stool ball,” or what.  We also should try to ascertain views of professional scholars on the interpretations of the Book.  Martin Hoerchner advises that the British Public Records Office may, at some point, make parts of the Domesday Book available online.

1100s.1 – “Pagan” Ball Rites Observed in France in 1100s and 1200s

 

Henderson:  “The testimony of Beleth and Durandus, both eminently qualified witnesses, clearly indicates that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the ball had found a place for itself in the Easter celebrations of the Church.”  In fact, Beleth and Durandus had both opposed the practice, seeing it as the intrusion of pagan rites into church rites.  “There are some Churches in which it is customary for the Bishops and Archbishops to play in the monasteries with those under them, even to stoop to the game of ball” [Beleth, 1165].  “In certain places in our country, prelates play games with their own clerics on Easter in the cloisters, or in the Episcopal Palaces, even so far as to descend to the game of ball”  [Durandus, 1286].

 

Note: This source appears to be Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], p. 37-38.  Page 37 refers to an 1165 prohibition and page 38 mentions 12^th and 13^th Century Easter rites.  Henderson identifies two sources for the page 38 statement:  Beleth, J., “Rationale Divinorum Officiorum,” in Migne, J. P., Patrologiae Curius Completus, Ser 2, Vol. 106, pp. 575-591 [Paris, 1855], and Durandus, G., “Rationale Divinorum Officiorum,” Book VI, Ch 86, Sect. 9 [Rome, 1473]...Henderson does not say that these rites involved the use of sticks.

1189.1 – “Unconfirmed” Report of a Stoolball Reference by Iscanus

There is “an unconfirmed report which was published in the beginning of the Century quoting one Joseph Iscanus, of Exeter, as having referred to stoolball in 1189, but no satisfactory evidence that this quotation was genuine.” 

National Stoolball Association, “A Brief History of Stoolball,” page 2.  This mimeo, available in NSA files, has no date or author, but has one internal reference to an 1989 source, so it must be fairly recent.  It contains no hint on the source of the 1189 claim or how it has been assessed. Note:  Is it now possible to further pursue this claim using online resources?  The 1189 claim appears nowhere else in available writings about stoolball.

1200s.1 – Bat and Ball Game Illustration Appears in English Genealogical Roll

 

“The [1301 -- see below] illustration is a very early depiction of the game we know as baseball, but it’s probably not the first.  In 1964, a writer named Harry Simmons cited an English bat and ball picture from a genealogical roll of the Kings of England up to Henry III, who died in 1269.”

 

Baltimore Sun article on the Ghistelle Calendar [see entry for 1301] April 6, 1999, page 1E.

 

1205.1 -- “Ball” Rolls into the English Language

 

Scholars report that the Chronicle of Britain [1205] contained the words “Summe heo driuen balles wide . . .” which they see as “the first known use of the word ball in the sense of a globular body that is played with.”  The source? Old Norse, by way of Middle English.  [Old High German had used ballo and pallo, but the English didn’t use “ball” in those days.]  The source does not say whether people in England used some other term for their rolling playthings prior to 1205.

 

Source: Wikipedia entry on “ball,” accessed 5/31/2006.

 

1255.1 – Spanish Painting Seen as Earliest Depiction of Ballplaying

 

The book Spain: A History in Art [Date? Publisher?] includes a plate that appears to show “several representations of baseball figures and some narrative.”  The work is dated to 1255, the period of King Alfonso.

 

Email from Ron Gabriel, July 10, 2007.  Ron also has supplied a quality color photocopy of this plate, which was the subject of his presentation at the 1974 SABR convention.  Note: can we specify the painting and its creator?  Can we learn how baseball historians and others interpret this artwork?

 

1299.1 – Prince of Wales Plays “Creag,” Seen By Some as a Cricket Precursor

 

Cashman, Richard, “Cricket,” in David Levinson and Karen Christopher, Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present [Oxford University Press, 1996], page 87.

 

1300s.1 – Trapball Played in the British Isles

 

Trevithick, Alan, “Trapball,” in David Levinson and Karen Christopher, Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present [Oxford University Press, 1996], page 421.

 

1300s.2 – Edward III Prohibits Playing of Club-Ball.

 

“The recreations prohibited by proclamation in the reign of Edward III, exclusive of the games of chance, are thus specified; the throwing of stones, wood, or iron; playing at hand-ball, foot-ball, club-ball, and camucam, which I take to have been a species of goff . . . .” Edward III reigned from 1327 to 1377.  The actual term for “club-ball” in the proclamation was, evidently, “bacculoream.”

 

This appears to be one of only two direct references to “club-ball” in the literature.  See #1794.2, below.

 

Caveat:  David Block argues that, contrary to Strutt’s contention [see #1801.1, below], club ball may not be the common ancestor of cricket and other ballgames.  See David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, pages 105-107 and 183-184.  Block says that “pilam bacculoream” translates as “ball play with a stick or staff.”  Note: We seem not to really know what “camucam” was.  Nor, of course, how club ball was played, since the term could have denoted a form of tennis or field hockey or and early form of stoolball or cricket.  It’s odd that no specific year is assigned to this proclamation, and that Strutt cites no reference for it.

 

1300s.3 -- Stoolball Said to Originate Among Sussex Milkmaids

“Stoolball is a ball game that dates back to the 14^th century, originating in Sussex [in southern England]   It may be an ancestor of cricket (a game it resembles), baseball, and rounders. Traditionally it was played be milkmaids who used their milking stools as ‘wickets.’ . . . “Later forms of the game involved running between two wickets, but “[o]riginally the batsman simply had to defend his stool from each ball with his hand and would score a point for each delivery until the stool was hit.  The game later evolved to include runs and bats.”

Source: Wikipedia entry on “Stoolball,” accessed 1/25/2007.  Note: this source does not credit bittle-battle [see entry 1086.1] as an earlier form of stoolball.  It gives no citations for the evidence of the founding date. The Wikipedia entry is compatible with entry #1330.1, below, but evidently does not credit 1330 as the likely time of stoolball’s appearance.

1301.1 – Ghistelles Calendar Depicts Vigorous-Looking Bat/Ball Game

 

A manuscript obtained in 1999 by the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore appears to show a batted-ball game played by two young persons.  The manuscript, called the Calendar of the Ghistelles Hours, dates from 1301. It is a small monthly calendar of saints’ days from a monastery in the town of Ghistelles, in southwestern Flanders.  The illustration is for the month of September.

 

Schoettler, Carl, “The Old, Old, Old Ball Game,” Baltimore Sun, April 6 1999, page 1E.

 

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?

 

 

1310c.2 – A Drawing of “A Game of Ball,” with a Player in a Batting Pose

 

A 1915 book on ancient British schools includes a drawing dated circa 1310.  It shows two players, one clad in a garment with broad horizontal stripes.  Both players hold clubs, and the player in stripes appears ready to swing at a melon-sized ball.  The other player appears to be preparing to fungo the ball . . . or, conceivably, toss it with his left hand, to the striped player.  The illustration’s caption is “A Game of Ball, Stripes vs. Plain, c. 1310.”  The British Museum’s documentation: MS Royal 10 E. iv, f. 94 b. 

 

Posted by Mark Aubrey to the 19CBB listserve on 1/10/2008.  The 1915 source, available in full text on Google Books, is A. F. Leach, The Schools of Medieval England (Macmillan, New York, 1915), on the unnumbered page following p. 140.

 

1330.1 – Vicar of Winkfield Advises Against Bat/Ball Games in Churchyards; First Stoolball Reference?

 

“Stoolball was played in England as early as 1330, when William Pagula, Vicar of Winkfield, near Windsor, wrote in Latin a poem of instructions to parish priests, advising them to forbid the playing of all games of ball in churchyards: “Bats and bares and suche play/Out of chyrche-yorde put away.”

 

Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], p. 74.  Note: The Vicar’s caution was translated in 1450 by a Canon, John Myrc.  Henderson’s ref 120 is Mirk [sic], J., “Instructions to Parish Priests,” Early English Text Society, Old Series 31, p. 11 [London, 1868].  A contemporary of Myrc in 1450 evidently identified the Vicar’s targets as including stoolball.  Block [p. 165] identifies the original author as William de Pagula.  Writing in 1886, T. L. Kington Oliphant identifies “bares” as prisoner’s base:  “There is the term “bace pleye,” whence must come the “prisoner’s base;” this in Myrc had appeared as the game of “bares.”  Kington Oliphant does not elaborate on this claim, and does not comment on the accompanying term “bats” in the original.  The 1886 reference was provided by John Thorn, 2/24/2008

 

1344.1 -- Manuscript Shows a Club-and-Ball Game with Stool-like Object

 

“A manuscript of 1344 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (No. 264) shows a game of club and ball.  One player throws that ball to another who holds a vicious-looking club.  He defends a round object which resembles a stool but with a base instead of legs. . . ”  “In the course of time a second stool was added, which obviously made a primitive form of cricket.  Now a stool was also called a “cricket” and it is possible that the name cricket came from the three-legged stool . . . “ “We may summarize: The game and name of cricket stem back to ancient games played with a curved stick and ball, starting with la soule, and evolving in England through stoolball . . .”

 

Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], pp. 130-131.  Henderson's ref 17 is Bodleian Library, Douce MSS 264, ff 22, 44, 63.  Cox’s 1903 edition of Strutt includes this drawing and its reference.  Note: do other observers agree with Henderson on whether and how stoolball evolved into cricket?

 

1363.1 -- Englishmen Forbidden to Play Ball; Archery Much Preferred

 

Edward III wrote to the Sheriff of Kent, and evidently sheriffs throughout England.  Noting a relative neglect of the useful art of archery, the King said he was thereby, on festival days, “forbidding, all and single, on our orders, to toy in any way with these games of throwing stones, wood, or iron, playing handball, football, “stickball,” or hockey, . . . which are worthless, under pain of imprisonment.”  The translator uses “stickball” as a translation of the Latin ”pila cacularis,” and asks it that might have been an early form of cricket.  We might also ask whether it was referring to early stoolball.

 

A. R. Myers, English Historical Documents (Routledge, 1996), page 1203.  [Viewed online 10/16/08].  Provided in email from John Thorn, 2/27/2008.  Myers’ citation is “Rymer, Foedera, III, ii, from Close Roll, 37 Edward III [Latin].”

 

Caveat:  The content of this entry resembles that of #1300s.2 above, and both refer to a restriction imposed by Edward III. However that entry, stemming from Strutt, refers to “club-ball” instead of “stick-ball,” and identifies the Latin as “pilam bacculoream,” not “pila cacularis.”  It is possible that both refer to the same source.  Also: the letter to Kent is elsewhere dated 1365, which could be consistent with Edward III’s 37^th year under the crown, but Myers uses 1363.

 

Note: this entry replaces the former entry #1365.1: “In 1365 the sheriffs had to forbid able-bodied men playing ball games as, instead, they were to practice archery on Sundays and holidays.”  Source: Hassall, W. O., [compiler], “How They Lived: An Anthology of Original Accounts Written Before 1485” [Blackwell, Oxford University Press, 1962], page 285.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

 

1385.1 -- English Boys Play Ball “To the Grave Peril of Their Souls”

 

A letter written by Robert Braybroke laid out the palpable risks of ball-playing:  “Certain [boys], also, good for nothing in their insolence and idleness, instigated by evil minds and busying themselves rather in doing harm than good, throw and shoot stones, arrows, and different kinds of missiles at the rooks, pigeons, and other birds nesting in the walls and porches of the church and perching [there].  Also they play ball inside and outside the church and engage in other destructive games there, breaking and greatly damaging the glass windows and the stone images of the church . . . This they do not without great offense to God and our church and to the prejudice and  injury or us as well as to the grave peril of their souls.”  And the sanction for such play?  “We . . . proclaim solemnly that any malefactors whatever of this kind [including churchyard merchants as well as young ballplayers] whom it is possible to catch in the aforesaid actions after this our warning have been and are excommunicated . . . .”

 

Crow, Martin M., and Clair C. Olson, eds., “Chaucer’s World” [Columbia University Press, New York, 1948], pp 48-49.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

 

1393.1 – Disconfirmed Poetry Lines Said to Denote Stoolball in Sussex

 

According to a 2007 article in a Canadian magazine, there is poetry in which a milkmaid calls to another, “Oi, Rosie, coming out to Potter’s field for a whack at the old stool?”  The article continues:  “The year was 1393. The place was Sussex . . .  the game was called stoolball, which was probably a direct descendant of stump-ball”

 

The article, by  Ruth Tendulkar, is titled “The Great-Grandmother of Baseball and Cricket,” and appeared in the May/June 2007 issue of The Canadian Newcomers Magazine.  We have been unable to find addition source details from the author or the magazine. 

 

Sourcehttp://www.cnmag.ca, as accessed 9/6/2007. 

 

Caution: The editor of The Canadian Newcomers Magazine informed us on 1/10/2088 that the Tendulkar piece “was strictly an entertainment piece rather than an academic piece.”  We take this to say that the verse is not authentic.  Email from Dale Sproule, Publisher/Editor.

 

1450.1 -- John Myrc Repeats Warning Against Ball Play in the Churchyard, Including “Stoil Ball”

 

David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It [page 165], cites the Myrc work, “early poetic instruction of priests,” as “How thow schalt thy paresche preche,” London. It warns “Bal and bares and suche play/ Out of chyrcheyorde put a-way.”  A note reportedly inserted by another author included among the banned games “tenessyng handball, fott ball stoil ball and all manner other games out churchyard.”  Note: can we determine when the “other author” wrote in “stoil ball?  This may count as the first time “stool ball” [virtually] appeared.

 

1450.2 – Stoolball Dated by NSA to 1450 in “Don Quixote”

 

“[Stoolball] is mentioned in the classic book Don Quixote.”

 

Source: NSA website, accessed April 2007.  Note: we need a fuller citation and the key text.  It is possible that this entry confuses D’Urfey’s 1694 play about Don Quixote [see Entry #1694.1, below] with the Cervantes masterpiece.

 

1470c.1 –Editor Sees Stoolball in Verse on Bachelorhood

 

“In al this world nis a murier lyf/Thanne is a yong man wythouten a wyf,/For he may lyven wythouten strif/In every place wher-so he go.

 

“In every place he is loved over alle/Among maydens grete and smale-/In daunsyng, in pipyngs, and rennyng at the balle,/In every place wher-so he go.

 

“They leten lighte by housebonde-men/Whan they at the balle renne;/They casten ther love to yonge men/In every place wher-so they go.

 

“Then seyn maydens, "Farewel, Jakke,/Thy love is pressed al in thy pak;/Thou berest thy love bihynde thy back,/In every place wher-so thou go."

 

Robert Stevick, ed., One Hundred Middle English Lyrics (U of Illinois Press, 1994), page 141.    Posted to 19CBB on 11/14/2008 by Richard Hershberger.  Richard reports that Stevick dates this poem -- #81 of the 100 collected --to c. 1470. He interprets the lyric’s ‘running at the ball’ as ‘stool ball, probably,’ but stow ball [resembling field hockey] seems apter.  Richard also points out that “for the sake of precision, it should be noted that this volume is intended for student use and normalizes the spellings.”

 

1478.1 – Du Cange Mentions “Criquet” Game in his Glossary

 

While others see cricket as taking its name from the term for a staff, or stick, “[T]he famous New English Dictionary favors a word used as a [game’s] target: criquet,  Du Cange quotes this word in a manuscript of 1478: ‘The suppliant came to a place where a game of ball (jeu de boule) was played, near to a stick (attaché) or criquet,’  and defines criquet as ‘a stick which serves as a target in a ball game.’”

 

Du Cange, Glossarium Mediae ET Infimae Latinatis [Paris, 1846], Vol. 4: Mellat, Vol. 5” Pelotas.  Per Henderson ref 48.

 

1478.2 – Parliament Speaks:  Jail or Fine for Unlawful Gameplaying

 

An Act of Parliament forbade unlawful games as conducive to disorder and as discouraging the practice of archery.  The games that were forbidden, under penalty of two years’ imprisonment or a fine of ten pounds, were these: quoits, football, closh, kails, half-bowls, hand-in and hand-out, chequer-board.

 

This Act is cited as Rot. Parl. VI, 188.  Information provided by John Thorn, email of 2/27/2008.

 

Caveat: The list of proscribed games is similar to the Edward III’s prohibition [see #1363.1 above] adding “hand-in and hand-out” in place of agame translated as “club-ball” or “stick-ball.  We are uncertain as to whether hand-in and hand-out is the ancestor of a safe-haven game.

 

1494c.1 -- Christopher Columbus and the Coefficient of Restitution

 

“When Christopher Columbus revisited Haiti on his second voyage, he observed some natives playing with a ball.  The men who came with Columbus to conquer the Indies had brought their Castilian windballs to play with in idle hours.  But at once they found that the balls of Haiti were incomparably superior; they bounced better.  These high-bouncing balls were made, they learned, from a milky fluid of the consistency of honey which the natives procured by tapping certain trees and then cured over the smoke of palm nuts. A discovery which improved the delights of ball games was noteworthy.”  350 years later, after Goodyear discovered vulcanization [1839], “India rubber” balls were to be identified with the New York game of baseball. 

 

Holland Thompson, “Charles Goodyear and the History of Rubber,” at http://inventors.about.come/cs/inventorsalphabet/a/rubber_2.htm, accessed 1/24/2007.  Note: We need better sources for the Columbus story.  And: what were “Castilian windballs?”

 

 

1500s.1 -- Ballplaying Permitted at College of Tours in France, if Done ‘Cum Silentio’

 

“Parisian legislators were more sympathetic with regard to games than their English contemporaries.  Even the Founder of the Cisterian College of St Bernard contemplated that permission might be obtained for games, though not before dinner or after the bell rang for vespers.  A sixteenth century code of statutes for the College of Tours, while recording the complaints of the neighbors about the noise made by the scholars playing ball (‘de insolentiis, exclamationibus et ludis palmariis dictorum scholarium, qui ludent . . . pilis durissimis’) permitted the game under less noisy conditions (‘pilis seu scopes mollibus et manu, ac cum silentio et absque clamoribus tumultuosis.’)

 

Rait, Robert S., Life in the Medieval University [Cambridge University Press, 1912], page 83.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

 

1500s.2 – Queen Elizabeth’s Dudley Plays Stoolball at Wotton Hill?

 

According to a manuscript written in the 1600s, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and his “Trayne”  “came to Wotton, and thence to Michaelwood Lodge . . . and thence went to Wotton Hill, where hee paid a match at stobball.”

Note:  Is it possible to determine the approximate date of this event?  Queen Elizabeth I named her close associate [once rumored to be her choice as husband] Dudley to became Earl of Leicester in the 1564, and he died in 1588. The Wotton account was written by John Smyth of Nibley somewhere in his Berkeley Manuscripts.  He have no citation for that work.  Smyth’s association with Berkeley Castle began n 1589, and the Manuscripts were written in about 1618, so it it not a first-hand report.   Caveat: “Stobbal” is usually used to denote a field game resembling field hockey or golf; thus, this account may not relate to stoolball per se.

 

1523.1 – Baron’s Trespass Records Mention Stoball

“Item, quod petrus frankeleyne vid posuit iiiixx ovesin le stoball field contra ordinacionem.”

Source: National Stoolball Association, “A Brief History of Stoolball,” [mimeo, author and date unspecified], page 2.  This wording is reportedly found in “an extract from the rolls of the Court Baron of the Royal Manor of Kirklington, belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster (16^th Century), under the heading of trespass.”  Note: We need a citation here, and a reason for assigning the 1523 date.  The relation of stoball to stoolball remains under dispute, with many observers seeing stoball as an early golf-like game.  Can we obtain a good translation and interpretation of this quotation?

1538.1 -- Easter Ball Play at Churches Ends in France

 

“Certain types of ball games had a prominent place in heathen rituals and were believed to promote fertility.  Even after Christianity had gained the ascendancy over the older religion, ball continued to be played in the churchyard and even within the church at certain times.  In France, ball was played in churches at Easter, until the custom was abolished in 1538.  In England, the practice persisted up to a much later date.”

 

Brewster, Paul G., American Nonsinging Games [University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK, 1953] pp. 79-89.  Submitted by John Thorn, 6/6/04.  Brewster gives no source for the French dictum, nor for the “later date” when Easter play ceased in England.

 

1540.1 – A Pitcher, a Catcher and a Batter in a Golf History Book?

 

Cary Smith [ZinnBeck@aol.com] has noted an alluring illustration in a 1540 publication, and we seek additional input on it.  In a posting to the 19CBB listserve in March 2008, Cary wrote:

 

“On the British Library web site in the turning pages section there is a book called the Golf Book, but it is labeled as ‘Flemish Masters in Miniature.’  On page seven of the book there is a small grisalle border at the bottom.  It looks like what today would be considered a pitcher, catcher, and batter.  The book is from 1540.  To access the web site you will need to have Flash running.  If on a Macintosh that is intel based you will need to click the Rosetta button in the info window of your web browser.”  Note: can you help us interpret this artwork?

 

The URL is http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html.

 

 

1550.1 – No English Reference Claimed for the Word ”Cricket” Found Before 1550

 

“The medieval origin of the national game of the English is beyond doubt, but not so its Island roots.  There would have been ample opportunity for it to figure on the lists of banned games set out by their kings, but there is no written mention of it before 1550.  It is, of course, not impossible that its forerunner was one of the many ball games played with unidentifiable rules, as for instance club ball.”

 

From an unidentified photocopy in the “Origins of Baseball” file at the Giamatti Center at Cooperstown.  Note: the inconsistencies among the preceding cricket entries [see #1478.1,] need to be resolved . . . . or at least addressed.

 

 

1550c.2 – Cricket Play Recalled at Southern England School

 

[Cf #1598.3 below.]  A 1598 trial in the Surrey town of Guildford includes a statement by John Derrick, then aged 59.  According to a 1950 history of Guildford’s Royal Grammar School, “[H]e stated that he had known the [disputed] ground for fifty years or more and that ‘when he was a scholar in the free school of Guildford, he and several of his fellows did run and play there at cricket and other plays.’  This is believed to be the first recorded mention of cricket.”

 

Brown, J. F., The Story of the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, 1950, page 6.  Note: it would be interesting to see the original reference, and to know how 1550 was chosen as the reported year of play.

 

1555c.1 -- English Poet Condones Students’ Yens “To Tosse the Ball, To Rene Base, Like Men of War”

 

“To shote, to bowle, or caste the barre,

To play tenise, or tosse the ball,

Or to rene base, like men of war,

Shall hurt thy study naught at all.”

 

Crowley, Robert, “The Scholar’s Lesson,” circa 1555, in J. M. Cowper, The Select Works of Robert Crowley [N. Truber, London, 1872], page 73.  Submitted by John Bowman, 7/16/2004.  Citation from Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball,” reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, see pages 230 and 312.

 

1562.1 --  Cricket Forerunner an “Unlawful Game?”

 

“The Malden Corporation Court Book of 1562 contains a charge against John Porter alias Brown, and a servant, for ‘playing an unlawful game called “clycett.”’”

 

Brookes, Christopher, English Cricket: the Game and its Players Through the Ages (Newton Abbot, 1978), page 16, as cited in Bateman, Anthony,“’More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘  Culture, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 29.

1564.1 – Formal Complaint in Surrey: Stoolball is Played on Sunday

“1564 – complaints were made to the justices sitting at the midsummer session, at Malden, Surrey, that the constable (himself possibly an enthusiast with the stool and ball) suffered stoolball to be played on Sunday.”

M. S. Russell-Goggs, “Stoolball in Sussex,” The Sussex County Magazine, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 318.  Surrey is the adjoining county to Sussex.  Note: we need to locate the full citations for this and all other Russell-Goggs references. 

1565.1 -- Bruegel’s “Corn Harvest” Painting Shows Meadow Ballgame 

 

“We had paused right in front of [the Flemish artist] Bruegel the Elder’s “Corn Harvest” (1565), one of the world’s great paintings of everyday life . . .  .[M]y eye fell upon a tiny tableau at the left-center of the painting in which young men appeared to be playing a game of bat and ball in a meadow distant from the scything and stacking and dining and drinking that made up the foreground. . . . There appeared to be a man with a bat, a fielder at a base, a runner, and spectators as well as participants in waiting.  The strange device opposite the batsman’s position might have been a catapult.  As I was later to learn with hurried research, this detain is unnoted in the art-history studies.”

 

From John Thorn, "Play's the Thing," Woodstock Times, December 28, 2006.  See thornpricks.blogspot.com/2006/12/bruegel-and-me_27.html, accessed 1/30/07.

 

1567.1 -- English Translation of Horace Refers to “the Stoole Ball”

 

“The stoole ball, top, or camping ball/If suche one should assaye/As hath no mannour skill therein,/Amongste a mightye croude,/Theye all would screeke unto the frye/And laugh at hym aloude.”

 

Drant, Thomas, Horace His Arte of Poetrie, Pistles, and Satyrs Englished, and to the Earle of Ormounte, [London], per David Block, page 166.  There is no implication that Horace himself refers to a stool ball.

 

1570c.1 – Five Indicted for Stoolball Play on Sunday

 

“A few years later [than 1564], at the Easter Sessions in the same town [Malden, Surrey], one Edward Anderkyn and four others were indicted for playing stoolball on Sunday.”

 

M. S. Russell-Goggs, “Stoolball in Sussex,” The Sussex County Magazine, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 318.  Surrey is the adjoining county to Sussex.  Note: we need to locate the full citations for this and all other Russell-Goggs references. 

1575.1 -- Gascoigne’s Poem “The Fruits of War” Refers to Tut-ball

 

Gascoigne, George, The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire, Corrected, perfected, and augmented by the Authour [London, Richard Smith], per Block, Baseball Before We Knew It,  page 166.  The key lines:  “Yet have I shot at master Bellums butte/And throwen his ball although I toucht no tutte.”

 

1585c.1 -- Stoole-ball, Nine Holes Included Among Country Sports

 

In a 1600 publication attributed to Samuel Rowlands [died 1588], the fourth of six “Satires,” presents a catalog of about 30 pastimes, including “play at stoole-ball,” and “play at nine-holes.”  Other diversions include pitching the barre, foote-ball, play at base, and leap-frog.

 

Rowlands, Samuel, The Letting of Humour’s blood in the head-vein (W. White, London, 1600), as discussed in Brydges, Samuel E., Censura Literaria (Longman, London, 1808), p.279.  Virtually the same long verse – but one that carelessly lists stoole-ball twice -- is attributed to “Randal Holme of Chester” in an 1817 book:  Drake, Nathan, Shakspeare and His Times (Cadell and Davies, London, 1817), pages 246-247.  Drake does not suggest a date for this verse.  Caveat: Our choice of 1585 as the year of Rowlands’ composition is merely speculative.  Note:  This entry needs to be reconciled with #1630c.1 below.

 

1586.1 – Sydney Cites Stoolball

 

“A time there is for all, my mother often sayes/

When she with skirts tuckt very hie, with gyrles at stoolball playes”

 

[Sir Philip?] Sydney, Arcadia: Sonnets [1622], page 493.  Note: citation needs confirmation.

 

1586.2 – Possible Early Rounders Reference?

 

In his entry for Rounders, W. C. Hazlitt speculates: “It is possible that this is the game which, under the name of rownes (rounds) is mentioned in The English Courtier and the Countrey Gentleman: A Pleasant and Learned Disputation, 1586 [printed by Richard Jones, London].  One source attributes this work of Nicholas Breton.  Protoball has not located this book.

 

Hazlitt, W. C., Faiths and Folklore: A Dictionary of National Beliefs, Superstitions, and Popular Customs (Reeves and Turner, London, 1905), vol. 2, page 527.  Note:  Can we find this early text and evaluate whether rounders is in fact its subject?  Caveat:  It would startle most of us to encounter any species of rounders this early; the earliest appearance of the term may be as late as 1828 – see #1828.1 below.

 

1591.1 -- Early Spanish-English Dictionary Mentions the “Trapsticke”

 

Pericule [Percival], Richard, Bibliotheca hispanica: containing a graamar, with a dictionarie in Spanish, English, and Latine, gathered out of diuers good authors: very profitable for the studious of the Spanish toong [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 166.  The dictionary’s entries include “paleta -- a trapsticke” and paletilla -- a little trapsticke.”

1592c.1 – Moralist Lists Things for Scholars to Avoid, Including Playing “Stoole Ball Among Wenches”

“Time of recreation is necessary, I graunt, and think as necessary for schollers . . . as it is for any.  Yet in my opinion it were not fit for them to play at Stoole-ball among wenches, nor at Mumchance or Maw with idle loose companions; not at trunks in Guile-halls, nor to dance about Maypoles, nor to rufle in alehouses, nor to carowse in tauernes, nor to steale deere, nor to rob orchards.  Though who can deny that they may doe these things, yea worse.”

Attributed to Dr. Rainoldes in J. P. Collier, ed., The Political Decameron, or Ten Conversations on English Poets and Poetry [Constable and Co., Edinburgh, 1820], page 257.  This passage is from the “ninth conversation” and covers low practices during the reigns of Elizabeth and of James I.  Note: we need to ascertain the source, date, and context of the original Rainoldes material.  It appears that Rainoldes’ cited “conversation” with Gager took place in 1592.

1592.2   Canterbury Stoolballer Bloodies Pious Critic

“We present one Bottolph Wappoll, a continual gamester and one of the very lewd behaviour, who being on Mayday last at stoolball in time of Divine service one of our sidesmen came and admonished him to leave off playing and go to church, for which he fell on him and beat him that the blood ran about his ears.”

Source:  National Stoolball Association, “A Brief History of Stoolball,” [author and date unspecified], page 2.  The original source is not supplied but is reported to have been a presentation from the parish of St Paul in Canterbury to the Archdeacon of Canterbury.  Note: can we find this source?

1598.1 – Youth Ball Games Widespread at London Schools.

 

“After dinner all the youthes go into the fields to play at the bal…. The schollers of euery schoole haue their ball, or baston, in their hands: the auncient and wealthy men of the Citie come foorth on horsebacke to see the sport of young men.”

 

Stow, John, Survey of London [first published in 1598].  David Block [page 166] gives the full title as A Survey of London: Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Modern Estate, and Description of that Citie: written in the yeare 1598 [London].  Block adds that the term “baston” is described by the OED as a “cudgel, club, bat or truncheon.”

 

1598.2 -- Italian-English Dictionary Includes Cat, Trap

 

Florio, John, A world of wordes or Most copious, and exact dictionarie in Italian and English [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 167.  This dictionary defines lippa as “a cat or trap as children use to play with.”

 

1598.3-- First Known Appearance of the Term “Cricket”

 

[Cf #1550c.2 above.] A 1598 trial in the Surrey town of Guildford includes a statement by John Derrick, then aged 59.  According to a 1950 history of Guildford’s Royal Grammar School, “[H]e stated that he had known the [disputed] ground for fifty years or more and that ‘when he was a scholar in the free school of Guildford, he and several of his fellows did run and play there at cricket and other plays.’  This is believed to be the first recorded mention of cricket.”

 

Brown, J. F., The Story of the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, 1950, page 6.  Note: it would be interesting to see the original reference, and to know how 1550 was chosen as the reported year of play.

 

1598.4 – Italian Dictionary’s “Cricket-a-wicket” doubted as reference to the Game of Cricket

 

“People have often regarded Florio’s expression in his Italian Dictionary (1598) cricket-a-wicket as the first mention [cf #158.2 and #1598.3, above] of the noble game.  It were strange indeed if this great word first dropped from the pen of an Italian!  I have no doubt myself that this is a mere coincidence of sound. . . .  [C]ricket-a-wicket must pair off with ‘helter-skelter,’ higgledy-piggledy, and Tarabara to which Florio gives gives cricket-a-wicket as an equivalent.”

 

A.G. Steel and R. H. Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 6.  Note: do later writers agree that this was mere coincidence?

 

1600c.1 -- Austrian Physician Reports on Batting/Running Game in Prague; One of Two Accounts Cites Plugging, Bases

 

[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.”  Note:  Can we verify the Gyula Hajdu source?  Is it Magyar Nepraiz V. Folklor

 

1600c.2 -- Shakespeare Mentions Rounders?  Pretty Doubtful

 

“Shakespeare mentions games of “base” and “rounders.  Lovett, Old Boston Boys, page 126.”

 

Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.  Caveat: We have not yet confirmed that Lovett or Shakespeare used the term “rounders.”  Gomme [page 80], among others, identifies the Bard’s use of “base” in Cymbeline as a reference to prisoner’s base, which is not a ball game.  John Bowman, email of 5/21/2008, reports that his concordance of all of Shakespeare’s words shows has no listing for “rounders” . . . nor for “stoolball,” for that matter [see #1612c.1, below], ‘tho that may because Shakespeare’s authorship of Two Noble Kinsmen is not universally accepted by scholars..

 

1609.1 – Polish Origins of Baseball Perceived in Jamestown VA Settlement

 

“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 14^th century and was part of the official physical culture program.”

 

Letter from Matthew Baranski to the Baseball Hall of Fame, March 23, 1975.

 

Note:  Baranski himself cites First Poles in America 1608-1958, published by the Polish Falcons of America, Pittsburgh.  We have not confirmed that sighting.  The next Protoball reader finding himself/herself at Krakow might drop by the University?

 

David Block (page 169) identifies the source as Stefanski, Zbigniew, Memorial Commercatoris [A Merchant’s Memoirs], Amsterdam, 1625.  A skilled Polish workingman wrote a memoir of his time in the Jamestown colony, and in an entry for 1609 describes how the Polish game of pilak palantowa (bat ball) was played before an audience including Native Americans.

 

1611.1 -- French-English Dictionary Cites “Cat and Trap” and Cricket

 

Dictionary-maker R. Cotgrave translates “crosse” as “the crooked staff wherewith boies play at cricket.”

 

“Martinet” [a device for propelling large stones at castles] is defined as “the game called cat and trap.”

 

Cotgrave, Randle, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues [London, 1611], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 168.  “

 

Cricket historians Steel and Lyttelton:  “Thanks to Cotgrave, then, we know that in 1611 cricket was a boy’s game, played with a crooked bat.  The club, bat, or staff continued to be crooked or curved at the blade till the middle of the eighteenth century or later: and till nearly 1720 cricket was mainly a game for boys.”  A.G. Steel and R. H. Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 6. 

 

 

1612c.1 -- Play Attributed to Shakespeare Cites Stool-ball

A young maid asks her wooer to go with her.  “What shall we do there, wench?”  She replies, “Why, play at stool-ball; what else is there to do?” 

Fletcher and Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen [London], Act V, Scene 2, per W. W. Grantham, Stoolball Illustrated and How to Play It [W. Speaight, London, 1904], page 29.  David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 170, gives 1634 as the publication date of this play, which was reportedly performed in 1612, and mentions that doubts have been expressed as to authorship, so Shakespeare [1564-1616] may not have contributed.  Others surmise that The Bard wrote Acts One and Five, which would make him the author of the stoolball reference.  See also item #1600c.2 above.  Note: can we find further specifics?  Russell-Goggs, in “Stoolball in Sussex,” The Sussex County Magazine, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 320, notes that the speaker is the “daughter of the Jailer.”

 

1613.1 -- His and Her Stool-ball Banter: Play or Foreplay?

 

“Ward: Can you play at shuttlecock forsooth?

Isabella: Ay, and stool-ball too, sir; I have great luck at it.

Ward: Why, can you catch a ball well?

Isabella: I have catched two in my lap at one game

Ward:  What, have you, woman?  I must have you learn to play at trap too, then y’are full and whole.”

 

Dutton, Richard Thomas, Women Beware Women and Other Plays [Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999], page 135.  The play itself is generally dated 1613 or 1614.  Submitted by John Thorn, 7/9/2004

 

1614.1 -- Poet Yearns to “Goe to Stoole-Ball-Play”

 

Breton, Nicholas, I Would, and Would Not [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 168.  Stanza 79 reads “I would I were an honest Countrey Wench/ . . . / And for a Tanzey, goe to Stoole-Ball-Play.”  Tansy cakes were reportedly given as prizes for ball play.

 

1615.1 – Stoole Ball Goes North with Early Explorer

 

“And some dayes heare we stayed we shott at butts and bowe and arrows, at other tymes at stoole ball, and some tymes of foote ball

 

William Baffin, from “The Fourth Recorded Voyage of Baffin,” in C. M. Markham, ed., The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622, [Hakluyt Society, 1881], page 122.  This voyage started in March 1615, and the entry is dated June?? 19^th, 1615.  The voyage was taken in hope of finding a northwest passage to the East, but was thwarted by ice, and Baffin returned to England in the fall of 1615.  Note: Ascertain the month, which is obscured in the online copy.  Was location of play near what is now known as Baffin Island?

 

 

1616c.1 -- Translation of Homer Depicts Virgins Playing Stool-Ball, Disturbing Ulysses’ Snooze

 

Translator Chapman described a scene in which several virgins play stool-ball near a river while Ulysses sleeps nearby:  “The Queene now (for the upstroke) strooke the ball/Quite wide off th’ other maids; and made it fall/Amidst the whirlpools. 

 

Chapman, George, The whole works of Homer: prince of poets, in his Iliads, and Odysses [London, 1616], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 168.

 

Steel and Lyttelton indicate that Chapman’s translation may date “as early as 1614,” and say report that Chapman calls the fragment “a stoolball chance.” See A.G. Steel and R. H. Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 2.  Note:  The year of the translation needs to be confirmed;.  It would be interesting to see how other translators have treated this scene.

 

1617.1 -- King James’ Controversial “Book of Sports” Omits Mention of Ballplaying

 

Reacting to Puritans’ denunciations of Sabbath recreations, James I in 1617 listed a large number of permitted Sunday activities –including no ball games – and cited as unlawful only “beare and Bull beatinge enterludes & bowlinge. . . .”  Axon, Ernest, Notes of Proceedings. Volume 1 – 1616-1622-3 (Printed for the Record Society for the Publication of Original Documents, 1901), page xxvi.  There was adverse reaction to this proclamation, which is said to have surprised the King.

 

Another source lists the Sunday bans as “Bull-baiting, bear-baiting, interludes, and bowls:”  Keightley, Thomas, The History of England, volume II (Whittaker and Co., London, 1839), page 321.  One chruchman listed “bear-baiting, bull-baiting, common plays, and bowling:” Marsden, J. B., History of Christian Churches and Sects (Richard Bentley, London, 1856), page 269.  Thus, unless “enterludes” then connoted a range of games or “common plays” that included ballplay, contemporary ballgames like stoolball and cricket -- and cat games -- remained unconstrained.

 

 

1619.1 -- Bawdy Poem Has Wenches Playing “With Stoole and Ball”

 

“It was the day of all dayes in the yeare/That unto Bacchus hath its dedication,/ . . . / When country wenches play with stoole and ball,/And run at Barley-breake until they fall:/And country lads fall on them, in such sort/That after forty weekes the[sic] rew the sport.”

 

Anonymous, Pasquils Palinodia, and His Progress to the Taverne; Where, After the Survey of the Sellar, You Are Presented with a Pleasant Pynte of Poeticall Sherry [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 169, who credits Henderson, page 74.  Block notes that “Barley-Break” [not a ball game] was, like stoole ball, traditionally a spring courtship ritual in the English countryside.

 

1621.1 – Some Pilgrims “Openly” Play “Stoole Ball” on Christmas Morning in Massachusetts, So Bradford Clamps Down

 

Governor Bradford describes Christmas Day 1621 at Plymouth Plantation, MA, “most of this new-company excused them selves and said it wente against their consciences to work on ye day.  So ye Govr tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed.  So he led away ye rest and left them; but when they came home at noone from their worke, he found them in ye street at play, openly; some at pitching ye barr, and some at stoole-ball and shuch like sport. . . . Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly.”

 

Bradford, William, Of Plymouth Plantation, [Harvey Wish, ed., Capricorn Books, 1962], pp 82 – 83.  Henderson cites Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1856. See his ref 23.  Full text supplied by John Thorn, 6/25/2005.

 

1622.1 – Bad, Bad Batts!

A Chichester churchwarden indicted a group of men for ballplaying, reasoning thus: “first, for it is contrarie to the 7^th Article; second, for they are used to break the Church window with the balls; and thirdly, for that little children had like to have their braynes beaten out with the cricket batt.”

 

Brookes, Christopher, English Cricket: the game and its players through the ages (Newton Abbot, 1978), page 16, as cited in Bateman, Anthony,“’More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘  Culture, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 29.

 

1629.1 -- Play Refers to Weakling Who Was “Beat . . . With a Trap Stick”

 

Shirley, James, The Wedding. As it was lately acted by her Mauesties seruants at the Phenix at Drury Lane [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 170.  A servant in the play describes his master as so mild in manner that “the last time he was in the field a boy of seven year old beat him with a trap-stick.”

 

1629.2 – Curate Can’t Beat the Rap as Cricketer

 

“In 1629, having been censured for playing ‘at Cricketts,’ the curate of Ruckinge in Kent unsuccessfully defended himself on the grounds that it was a game played by men of quality.”

 

Bateman, Anthony,“’More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘  Culture, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 29.  Bateman does not provide his source for this anecdote.  Note:  Can we find and extend this story?

 

1630c.1 – “Ancient Cheshire Games” Include Stooleball, Nine Holes

 

“Any they dare challenge for to throw the sleudge,/To Jumpe or leape over dich or hedge,/ To wrastle, play at stooleball, or to Runne,/ To pitch the bar, or to shoote off a Gunne/ To play at Loggets, nine holes, or ten pins. . . .[list continues, mentioning stool ball once more at end.]”

 

This verse, titled “Ancient Cheshire Games: Auntient customes in games used by boys and girles merily sett out in verse,” is attributed to “Randle Holmes’s MSS Brit Mus.” Is in Medium of Inter-communications for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, Etc, July – December 1856, page 487.  Note:  Can we learn why is this account associated with 1630?  This entry needs to be reconciled with #1585.1 above.  Add online search detail?

 

1630c.2 – Stoolball Play Makes Maidstone a “Very Profane Town”

 

“About 1630 a Puritan records that ‘Maidstone was formerly a very profane town, where stoolball and other games were practiced on the Lord’s Day.”

 

M. S. Russell-Goggs, “Stoolball in Sussex,” The Sussex County Magazine, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 318.  Note: we need to locate the full citations for this and all other Russell-Goggs references.. We need to sort out how this claim relates to the very similar wording in the quote by Reverend Wilson in entry #1672.1 below.

 

1630c.3 – City Women’s Shrovetide Customs Include Stooleball

 

“In the early seventeenth century, an Oxford fellow, Thomas Crosfield, noted the customs of Shrovetide as ‘1. frittering.  2. throwing at cocks.  3. playing at stooleball in ye Citty by women & footeball by men.’”  Shrovetide was the Monday and Tuesday [That Tuesday being Mardi Gras in some quarter] preceding Ash Wednesday and the onset of Lent.

 

Griffin, Emma, “Popular Recreation and the Significance of Space,” (publication unknown), page 36.  The original source is shown as the Crosfield Diary for March 1, 1633, page 63.

Thanks to  John Thorn for supplementing a draft of this entry.  One citation for the diary is F. S. Boas, editor, The Diary of Thomas Crosfield (Oxford University Press, London, 1935).

 

 

1632.1 -- In Germany, Ballplaying 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.

 

1633c.1 – Ambiguous Reference to Stoole Ball Appears in a Drama

 

“At stoole ball I have a North-west stripling shall deale with ever a boy in the Strand.”

 

Cited in W. C. Hazlitt, Faiths and Folklore: A Dictionary of National Beliefs, Superstitions and Popular Customs [Reeves and Turner, London, 1905], page 569.  Hazlitt attributes this mysterious fragment to someone named Stickwell in Totenham Court, by T. Nabbes, appearing in 1638.  Note: Can we guess what Stickwell was trying to say, and why?  I find that Nabbes wrote this drama in 1633 or before, and surmise that “Stickwell” is the name of the fictional character who speaks the quoted line.  Can we straighten out, or interpret, the syntax of this line? [The Strand, presumably, refers to the London street of that name?]

 

1634.1 – That Archbishop Laud, He Certainly Doesn’t Laud Stoolball

 

“In his visitation and reference to churchyards, he [Archbishop Laud, in 1634] is troubled because ‘several spend their time in stoolball.’”

 

M. S. Russell-Goggs, “Stoolball in Sussex,” The Sussex County Magazine, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 318.  Note1: we need to locate the full citations for this and all other Russell-Goggs references.

 

Another source quotes Laud as saying “This whole churchyard is made a receptacle for all ydle persons to spend their time in stopball and such lyke recreacions.”  OED, Abp Laud’s Visit, in 4^th Rep Hist. MSS Comm. App 144/1, provided by John Thorn, email of 6/11/2007.  Note2: is this from the same source?

 

1637.1 -- Conservative Protestants Decry Sunday Play, See Grave Danger in it

 

Burton, Henry, and William Prynne, A Divine Tragedie Lately Acted [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 171.  In a denunciation of King Charles’ approval of after-church play on Sundays, the authors cite as one of the “memorable examples of Gods judgements” a case when youths “playing at Catt on the Lords day, two of them fell out, and the one hitting the other under the eare with his catt, he therwith fell downe for dead.”

 

1637.2 -- Play Mentions Trap

 

Shirley, James, Hide Park: A Comedie [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 171.  A beautiful young woman, to a servant who is fishing for a compliment:  “Indeed, I have heard you are a precious gentleman/ And in your younger days could play at trap well.”

 

1638.1 -- Bishop Sees Churchyard as Consecrated Ground: No Stool Ball, Drinkings, Merriments

 

Bishop Mantague admonishes Norwich Churchmen to consider the churchyard as consecrated ground, “not to be profaned by feeding and dunging cattle . . . .  Much less is it to be unhallowed with dancings, morrises, meetings at Easter, drinkings, Whitson ales, midsummer merriments or the like, stool ball, football, wrestlings, wasters or boy’s sports.”

 

Barrett, Jay Botsford, English Society in the Eighteenth Century as Influence from Oversea [Macmillan, New York, 1924], page 221.  Barrett cites this passage as Articles of Enquiry and Direction for the Diocese of Norwich, sigs. A3-A3v.

 

1638.2 – Archdeacon: Churchyards Are Not For Stoole-ball or “Other Profane Uses”

 

“Have any playes, feasts, banquets, suppers, churchales, drinkings, temporal courts or leets, lay juries, musters, exercise of dauncing, stoole-ball, foot-ball, or the like, or any other profane usage been suffered to be kept in your church, chappell, or churchyard?

 

Attributed to Mr. Dr. Pearson, Archdeacon of Suffolke, in Heino Pfannenschmid, Das Weihwasser [Hahn’sche Hofbuchhandlung, Hannover, 1869], page 74n.

 

1640.1 – Stoolball Attracts Gentry, Rascals, Boys

 

“J. Smythe, in his Hundred of Berkeley (1640) gave the following admonition: ‘Doe witness the inbred delight, that both gentry, yeomanry, rascallity, boyes, and children, doe take in a game called stoball. . .  And not a sonne of mine, but at 7 was furnished with his double stoball staves, and a gamester thereafter.’”

 

M. S. Russell-Goggs, “Stoolball in Sussex,” The Sussex County Magazine, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 320.  John Smyth’s three-volume Berkeley Manuscripts were published in 1883 by J. Bellows; Volume Three is titled “A description of the hundred of Berkeley in the County of Gloucester . . .  .“  Citation supplied by John Thorn, email of 1/30/2008.

 

 

1648.1 -- Short Herrick Poem Proposes a Wager on Stool-ball Game

 

“At Stool-ball, Lucia, let us play,” offers the poet, then proposing that if he wins, he would “have for all a kisse.”

 

Herrick, Robert, Hesperdes: or, the Works Both Human and Divine of Robert Herrick, Esq. [London], page 280, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 171. 

 

1652.1 -- Traveler in Wales Reports “Laudable” Sunday Games of “Trap, Cat, Stool-ball, Racket &c”

 

Taylor, John, A Short Relation of a Long Journey Made Round or Ovall [London], book 4, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 172.  A versifier recounts his journey to Wales, where he notes a lack of religious fervor, “so that people do exercise and edify in the churchyard at the lawful and laudable games of trap, cat, stool-ball, racket, &c., on Sundays.”

 

1653.1 -- Play Refers to Trapsticks

 

A character is asked how he might raise some needed money:  “If my woodes being cut down cannot fill this pocket, cut ‘em into trapsticks.”

 

Middleton, Thomas, and William Rowley, The Spanish Gipsie [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 172.  Block observes that this snippet suggests that “trapstick” was by then commonly understood as a trap-ball bat.

 

1653.2 – Early Use of “Cricket” Seen in Rabelais Translation

 

“So far as is known, the first mention [of the word “cricket”] occurs in Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation of the works of Rabelais, published in London in 1653, where it is found enumerated as one of the games of the Gargantua.”

 

Editorial, “The Pedigree of Cricket,” The Irish Times, 5/9/1931.  Reprinted in The Times, 5/9/2001.  From the MCC Library collection.

 

Caveat: We now have at least four pre-1653 claims to the use of “cricket” and similar terms: see #1598.3, #1598.4, #1611.1, #1622.1, and #1629.2 above.  Note: Rabelais’ “games of Gargantua” is a list of over 200 games supposedly played at one sitting by the fictional character Gargantua.  Urquhart’s translation includes several familiar pastimes, including cricket, nine-pins, billiards, “tip and hurl” [?], prison bars, barley-break, and the morris dance . . . along with many games that appear to be whimsy and word-play [“ramcod ball,” “nivinivinack,” and “the bush leap”].  Not included are: club ball, stick ball, stoolball, horne billets, nine holes, hat ball, rounders, feeder, or base ball.  Francis Rabelais – Completely Translated into English by Urquhard and Motteux (the Aldus Society, London, 1903), pp 68-71.  Text chased down by John Thorn, email of 1/30/2008.  

 

1656.1 – Dutch Prohibit “Playing Ball,” Cricket on Sundays in New Netherlands.

 

In October 1656 Director-General Peter Stuyvesant announced a stricter Sabbath Law in New Netherlands, including fine of a one pound Flemish for “playing ball,” cricket, tennis, ninepins, dancing, drinking, etc.  Source: 13: Doc Hist., Volume Iv, pp.13-15, and Father Jogues’ papers in NY Hist. Soc. Coll., 1857, pp. 161-229, as cited in Manual of the Reformed Church in America (Formerly Ref. Prot. Dutch Church), 1628-1902, E. T. Corwin, D.D.,  Fourth Edition (Reformed Church in America, New York, 1902.)  Provided by John Thorn, email of 2/1/2008.

 

Note: It would be useful to ascertain 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 [were there enough resident Englishmen to sustain cricket?], and the area was largely a fur trading post. Is it possible that the burghers imported this text from the Dutch homeland?

 

1656.2 – Two English Counties Agree: Stoolball Gets “Too Much Attention.”

 

“The game [Stoolball] cropped up in 1656 in a pronouncement by the Counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland which said that “too much attention was being paid to ‘shooting, playing at football, stoolball, wrestling.’”

 

SRA website, accessed 4/11/07.  Note: we need a fuller citation and perhaps further text and motivation for these pronouncements.

 

1656.3 – Cromwellians Needlessly Ban Cricket from Ireland

 

Simon Rae writes that the “killjoy mentality reached its zenith under the Puritans, during the Interregnum, achieving an absurd peak when cricket was banned in Ireland in 1656 even though the Irish didn’t play it.”  Evidently, hurling was mistaken for cricket.

 

Simon Rae, It’s Not Cricket: A History of Skulduggery, Sharp Practice and Downright Cheating in the Noble Game (Faber and Faber, 2001), page 46.  Note: Rae does not document this event.

  

 

1658.1 -- English Parish Rewards Informant for Ratting on Sunday Trap-baller

 

Nichols, John, Illustrations of the Manners and Expences of Ancient Times in England [London, 1797], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 182.  Included is an account from the parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, from 1658: “Item to Richard May, 13 shillings for informing of one that played at trap-ball on the Lord’s day.”

 

1658.2 – Milton’s Nephew Eyes Cricket with Apprehension

 

“Cricket was . . . emerging in a written sense, not through the form of a celebratory discourse, but as the target of Puritan and sabbatarian ire.  Even in the first reliable literary reference to cricket – in The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence (1658) [a poem] by John Milton’s nephew, Edward Philips – the game is represented as synonymous with brutality: ‘Ay, but Richard, will you not think so hereafter?  Will you not when you have me throw a stool at my head, and cry, “Would my eyes had been beaten out with a cricket ball [“batt?” asks Bateman], the day before I saw thee”’.”

 

Bateman, Anthony,“More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘  Culture,, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 30.  Bateman does not give the original source for the Philips quotation.   Note:  Can we find the original Philips source?  A few citations give the year of publication as 1685.

 

1659.1 -- Stuyvesant: No Tennis, Ball-Playing, Dice on Fast Day

 

“We shall interdict and forbid, during divine service on the [fasting] day aforesaid, all exercise and games of tennis, ball-playing, hunting, plowing and sowing, and moreover all unlawful practice such as dice, drunkenness . . .” proclaimed Peter Stuyvesant.

 

Manchester, Herbert, Four Centuries of Sport in America [Publisher?, 1931].  Note: Can we determine what area was affected by this proclamation?

 

1660c.1 – Village Life: The Men to Foot-Ball, Maids and Kids to Stoolball

 

The biography of a 17^th century lord includes “a nostalgic description of the little town of Kirtling” by the lord’s son Roger, born in 1651, as follows:

 

“The town was then my grandfather’s . . . it was always the custom for the youth of the town . . . to play [from noon when chores ended] to milking time and supper at night.  The men [went to play] football, and the maids, with whom we children were commonly mixed, being not proof for the turbulence of the other party, to stoolball and such running games as they knew.”  Dale B. J. Randall, Gentle Flame: The Life and Verse of Dudley, Lord North (1602 – 1677 (Duke Univ. Press, 1983), page 56.  The town of Kirtling is in Cambridgeshire, northeast of London.

 

 

1660c.2 -- Ben Franklin’s Uncle Recalls Ballplaying On an English Barn

 

“That is the street which I could ne’er abide,/And these the grounds I play’d side and hide;/ This the pond whereon I caught a fall,/ And that the barn whereon I play’d at ball.”

 

The uncle of U.S. patriot Benjamin Franklin, also named Benjamin Franklin, wrote these lines in a 1704 recollection of his native English town of Ecton.  The uncle lived from 1650/1 to 1727.  Ecton is a village in Northamptonshire.

 

Loring, J. S., The Franklin Manuscripts.  The Historical Magazine, and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America (1857-1875), Volume 3, issue 1, January 1859, 4 pages. Submitted by John Thorn, 4/24/06. 

 

 

1661.1 – Galileo Galilei Discovers . . . Backspin!

 

The great scientist wrote, in a treatise discussing how the ball behaves in different ball games, including tennis:  “Stool-ball, when they play in a stony way, . . . they do not trundle the ball upon the ground, but throw it, as if to pitch a quait. . . . .  To make the ball stay, they hold it artificially with their hand uppermost, and it undermost, which in its delivery hath a contrary twirl or rolling conferred upon it by the fingers, by means whereof in its coming to the ground neer the mark it stays there, or runs very little forwards.”  Galileo Galilei, Mathmatical Collections and Translations.  “Inglished from his original Italian copy by Thomas Salusbury” (London, 1661), page 142.

 

Provided by David Block, email of 2/27/2008.  David further asks: “could it be that this is the source of the term putting “English” on a ball?”

 

 

 

1665.1 -- Poet Depicts Fleet-footed Mercury as Wielding a Kit-Cat Bat

 

This translation of a French parody of Virgil’s Aeneid includes these lines on the god Mercury:  “Then in his hand he take a thick Bat,/ With which he us’d to play at kit-cat;/ To beat mens Apples from their trees, . . . ”  Ouch.

 

Scarron, Paul, Scarronnides, or, Virgile travestie a mock poem [London], trans. Charles Cotton, Book Four, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 172. 

 

1666.1 -- John Bunyan is Very Seriously Interrupted at Cat

 

Bunyan, John, Grace abounding to the chief of sinners [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 173.  From the autobiography of the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress:  “I was in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike the second time a voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my soul which said, ‘Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven or have thy sins and go to hell?’”  David notes on 5/29/2005 that this reference was originally reported by Harold Peterson, but that Peterson had attributed it to Pilgrim’s Progress itself.

 

1669.1 – Shadwell Play Said to List Rural Games, including Stool-ball.

 

“The writer who took most interest in popular pastimes was Shadwell, whose rococo play The Royal Shepherdess was produced before the king in 1669.  It included country folk who danced and sand of a list of genuine English rural games, such as trap, keels, barley-break, golf [and] stool-ball . . . .”

 

Hutton, Ronald, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: the Ritual Year, 1400-1700 (Oxford U Press, Oxford, 1994), page 235.  Provided by John Thorn, email, 7/9/2004.  Note: can we retrieve the full original list?

 

1671.1 -- Lusty Little Song Mentions Trap as “Innocent” Prelude to Heavy Petting

 

“Thus all our life long we are frolick and gay,/And instead of Court revels, we merrily play/At Trap, at Rules, and at Barly-break run:/At Goff, and at Foot-ball, and when we have done/These innocent sports, we’l laugh and lie down,/And to each pretty Lass/We will give a green Gown.

 

Ebsworth, Joseph W., Westminster Drolleries, Both Parts, of 1671, 1672 [R. Roberts, Lincolnshire, 1875], page 28.  Note: Yes, the player’s method for turning the gown to green is what you suspect it is.  We’ll see this gown again at #1719.1, below.

 

1672.1 – Rev. Wilson Decries Sunday “Stool-Ball” and “Cricketts” Playing

 

 

In his memoirs, the Rev. Thomas Wilson, a Puritan divine of Maidstone, England, states: “Maidstone was formerly a very profane town, in as much as I have seen morrice-dancing, cudgel-playing, stool-ball, cricketts, and many other sports openly and publicly indulged in on the Lord’s Day.” 

 

Note:  Henderson covers Wilson, but doesn’t reference him.  In the text, he says that Wilson wrote a memoir in 1700, but doesn’t use a year for the events that were then recalled.  I assume that the 1672 date is taken from date clues in the whole text.  Henderson's source may be his ref #167: see Woodruff, C.H., “Origin of Cricket,” Baily’s Magazine [London, 1901], Vol. 6, p. 51. David Block [page 173ff] describes how “base ball” was substituted for “stool-ball” in later accounts of Wilson’ s biography, which he cites as Swinnick, George, The Life and Death of Mr. Tho. Wilson, Minister of Maidstone [London].

 

1672c.2 -- Francis Willughby’s “Book of Games” Surveys Folkways:  First Stoolball Rules Appear

 

Warwickshire scientist Francis Willughby [1635-1672] compiled, in manuscript form, descriptions of over 130 games, including, stoolball, hornebillets, kit-cat, stowball, and tutball [but not cricket, trapball or rounders].  He died at 36 and the incomplete manuscript, long held privately, became known to researchers in the 1990s and was published in 2003.

 

Willughby described stoolball as a game in which a team of players defended an overturned stool with their hands.  Hornebillets, unlike stoolball, involved batting and running [between holes placed 7 or 8 yards apart], but it used no ball – a cat was used as the batted object.  A runner [running was compulsory, even for short hits] had to place his staff in a hole before the other team could put the cat in that hole.  The number of holes depended on the number of players available.  Stowball appears as a golf-like game.  Kit Cat is described as a sort of fungo game in which the cats can be hit 60 yards or more.  He does not mention cricket, trap, or other games.

 

David Cram, Jeffrey L. Forgeng, and Dorothy Johnston, Francis Willughby’s Book of Games: A Seventeenth Century Treatise on Sports, Games, and Pastimes [Ashgate Publishing, 2003]. 

 

1676.1 -- The “Citty of New Yorke” Sets a Fine for Sunday “Gameing or Playing: Ten Guilders

 

The Mayor and Aldermen of New York that none should “att any Time hereafter willfully or obstinately prophane the Sabbath daye by .  . . Playinge att Cards Dice Tables or any other Vnlawful Games whatsoeuer,” banning “alsoe the disorderly Assemblyes of Children In ye Streets and other Places To the disturbance of Others with Noyse.”  Consequences?  “Ye Person or Persons soe found drinkinge Gameing or Playing Either in Priuate or Publicke Shall forfeict Tenn Guildrs for Euery such offence.”  Note that ballplaying was not specifically prohibited.  Dated November 13, 1676.  Laws of the City of New York [Publication data?], page 27.  Submitted by John Thorn 9/29/06.

 

1676.2 – Early Limeys Take “Krickett” to Mediterranean

 

The chaplain assigned to three British ships at Aleppo [now in northern Syria] wrote this in his diary for May 6, 1676:

 

“at least 40 of the English, with his worship the Consull, rod [sic] out of the citty about 4 miles to the Greene Platt, a fine vally by a river side, to recreate them selves.  Where a princely tent was pitched; and wee had severall pastimes and sports, as duck-hunting, fishing, shooting, handball, krickett, scrofilo . . . .  and at 6 wee returne all home in good order, but soundly tyred and weary.”

 

A.G. Steel and R. H. Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 8.  The passage is at Teonge, Henry, The Diary of Henry Teonge (Charles Knight, London, 1825), page 159.  Accessed on Google Books, 12/28/2007.

 

 

1677.1 -- Almanac’s Easter Verse Mentions Stool-ball

 

“Young men and maids,/ Now very brisk,/ At barley-break and/ Stool-ball frisk.”

 

W. Winstanley, Poor Robin 1677.  An almanack after a new fashion, by Poor Robin [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 174.

 

1680.1 -- Political Tract Uses Trap-stick Metaphor

 

Anon., Honest Hodge and Ralph Holding a Sober Discourse in Answer to a late Scandalous and Pernicious Pamphlet, by “a person of quality” [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 174.  The anonymous author of this tract sees the pamphlet as a tool used to trigger civil unrest in England, calling it “a mere trap-stick to bang the Phanaticks about.”

 

1680s.2 -- Cricket Pitch Thought to be Established at 22 Yards

 

While the length of the cricket pitch [distance between wickets] was formally set at 22 yards in the 1744 rules, that distance is already “thought to have been 22 yards in the 1680’s.”  [John Thorn points out that 22 yards is one-tenth of a furlong (and is also one-eightieth of a mile), and that a 22-yard chain was commonly used as a standard starting in the 1600’s; in fact, the “chain” became itself a word for this distance in 1661; email of 2/1/2008.]

 

Scholefield, Peter, Cricket Laws and Terms [Axiom Publishing, Kent Town Australia, 1990], page 16. Note: Scholefield does not provide a citation for this claim; keep an eye out!

 

1683c.1 – Cricket’s First Wicket is Pitched

 

“We know that the first wicket, comprising two stumps with a bail across them, was pitched somewhere about 1683, as John Nyren recalled long afterward.”  Thomas Moult, “The Story of the Game,” in Thomas Moult, ed., Bat and Ball: A New Book of Cricket (The Sportsmans Book Club, London, 1960: reprint from 1935), page 31.

 

Note:  We should locate Nyren’s original claim.  Does this imply that cricket was played without wickets, or without bails, before 1683?

 

1685.1 -- Juicy Early Description of Stool-ball is Written, Then Unread for 162 Years

 

Aubrey, John, Natural History of Wiltshire [London, Nichols and Son, 1847], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 210.  Folklorist Alice Gomme [see below] called this the earliest description of stool-ball.  Aubrey says “it is peculiar to North Wilts, North Gloucestershire, and a little part of Somerset near Bath.  They smite a ball, stuffed very hard with quills and covered with soale leather, with a staffe, commonly made of withy, about three feet and a half long.  Colerne down is the place so famous and so frequented for stobbal playing.  The turfe is very fine and the rock (freestone) is within an inch and a halfe of the surface which gives the ball so quick a rebound.  A stobball ball is of about four inches diameter and as hard as stone.  I do not heare that this game is used anywhere in England but in this part of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire adjoining.”  From A. B. Gomme, The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1964 reprint of 1898 text [New York, Dover], page 217.

 

1688.1 – New Royals Reportedly Watch Stoolball

 

“It is reported that William III watched the game soon after he landed at Torbay, and that subsequently Queen Anne was an interested spectator.”

 

M. S. Russell-Goggs, page 320.  Note: we need to locate the full citations for this and all other Russell-Goggs references; short of this, we need to confirm the date of the Torbay landing.  A cursory Google search does not reveal confirming evidence of this anecdote.

 

 

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 [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 175.  In this comical prose work, protection in battle was said to be provided by four Arch Angels -- who, “when they see a Cannon Ball coming toward ye from any corner of the Wind, will catch it like a stool-ball and throw it to the Devil.”

 

1694.1 --Musical Play Includes Baudy Account of Stoolball

 

D’Urfey, Thomas, The comical history of Don Quixote [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 175.  Block sees a “long, silly, bawdy rap song” in this play.  It starts “Come all, great, small, short tall, away to Stoolball,” and depicts young men and women becoming pretty familiar. It ends “Then went the Glasses round, then went the lasses down, each Lad did his Sweet-heart own, and on the Grass did fling her.  Come all, great small, short tall, a-way to Stool Ball.”  Sounds like fun.

 

1694.2 – Thaw Arrives; Cricket Added to Old List of “Evening” English Pastimes

 

“With a relaxation of attitudes towards sports at the Restoration cricket began to emerge from its position of relative obscurity with the printed word beginning to define it, along with other folk games, as an element of the national culture.  Edward Chamberlyne’s Anglia Notitia, a handbook on the social and political conditions of England, lists cricket for the first time in the eighteenth edition of 1694.  ‘The natives will endure long and hard labour; insomuch, that after 12 hours of hard work, they will go in the evening to foot-ball, stool-ball, cricket, prison-base, wrestling, cudgel-playing, and some such vehement exercise, for their recreation.’”

 

Source: Bateman, Anthony, “More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘  Culture, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 30. 

 

Upon further examination, Protoball notes that Anglia Notitia actually has two ongoing areas of special interest.  The first is the text above in part 1, chapter V, which had evolved through earlier editions – the 1676 edition – if not earlier ones -- had already mentioned stow-ball [changed to “stoolball” as of 1694 or earlier], according to Hazlitt’s Faith and Folklore.  Cricket historian Diana Rait Kerr agrees that cricket was first added in the 18^th edition of 1694.

 

Another section of Anglia Notitia catalogued English recreations.  Text for this section – part 3, chapter VII -- is accessible online for the 1702, 1704, 1707, and later editions. These recreations were listed in three parts: for royalty, for nobles and gentry, and for “Citizens and Peasants.”  Royal sports included tennis, pell mell and billiards. The gentry’s sports included tennis, bowling, and billiards.  And then: “The Citizens and Peafants have Hand-ball, Stow-ball, Nine-Pins, Shovel-board [and] Goffe,” said the 20^th edition [1702].  In the 22^nd edition [1707], cricket had been inserted as something that commoners also played. We find no reference to club ball, stick ball, trap ball, or other games suggested as precursors of baseball. The full title of Chamberlayne is Anglia Notitia, or the Present State of England: With Divers Remarks on the Ancient State Thereof.  Chamberlayne’s first edition apparently appeared in 1669; the 37^th was issued in 1748. Another Chamberlayne excerpt is found at entry #1704.2 below.

 

John Thorn supplied crucial input for this entry.  Note:  It would be interesting to see whether earlier and later editions of Chamberlayne cite other games of interest.

 

1700.1 – First Public Notice of a Cricket Match?

 

“Of course, there are many bare announcements of matches played before that time [the 1740’s].  In 1700 The Postboy advertised one to take place on Clapham Common.”

 

Thomas Moult, “The Story of the Game,” in  Moult, ed., Bat and Ball: A New Book of Cricket (The Sportsmans Book Club, London, 1960; reprinted from 1935), page 27.  Moult does not further identify this publication.

 

Note: A Wikipedia entry accessed on 10/17/08 states: “A series of matches, to be held on Clapham Common [in South London -- LMc] , was pre-announced on 30 March by a periodical called The Post Boy. The first was to take place on Easter Monday and prizes of £10 and £20 were at stake. No match reports could be found so the results and scores remain unknown. Interestingly, the advert says the teams would consist of ten Gentlemen per side but the invitation to attend was to Gentlemen and others. This clearly implies that cricket had achieved both the patronage that underwrote it through the 18th century and the spectators who demonstrated its lasting popular appeal.”  Caveat: This entry is has incomplete citations and cannot be verified.

 

1700c.2 – Wicket Seen on Boston Common . . . But Never on Sunday

 

“Close of the 17^th century: . . . The Common was always a playground for boys – wicket and flinging of the bullit was much enjoyed . . . .  No games were allowed to be played on the Sabbath, and a fine of five shillings was imposed on the owner of any horse seen on the Common on that day.  People were not even to stroll on the Common, during the warm weather, on Sunday.”

 

Samuel Barber, Boston Common: A Diary of Notable Events, Incidents and Neighboring Occurrences (Christopher Publishing, Boston, 1916 – Second Edition), page 47.  Note: This book is in the form of a chronology.  Barber gives no source for the wicket report.

 

1704.1 – Traveler Observes Ball-Playing in CT

 

Madame Knight, “in her inimitable journal of her ride from Boston to New York in 1704, speaks of ball-playing in Connecticut.”

 

“The Game of Wicket and Some Old-Time Wicket Players,” in George Dudley Seymour, Papers and Addresses of the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut, Volume II of the Proceedings of the Society, [n. p., 1909.] page 284.  Submitted by John Thorn, 7/11/04.  John notes 9/3/2005 that Seymour observes that Madame Knight does not specifically name the sport as wicket, but he excludes cricket as a possibility because cricket was not then known to have been played in America before 1725; however, John adds, we now have a cricket reference in Virginia from 1709.  [See #1709.1, below.]

 

1704.2 -- While the Rurals Had Stool-ball and Cricket, the Londoner Had “Blood-Stirring Excitement”

 

“[T]he growth of a commercial London failed to raise the tone of sporting tastes.  While the countryman exercised vehemently at football, stool-ball, cricket, pins-on-base, wrestling, or cudgel-playing, there was fiercer and more blood-stirring excitement for the Londoner.  Particularly at Hockley-in-the-Hole, one could find bear-baiting, bull-baiting and cock-fighting to his heart’s content.”

 

Chamberlayne, Edward, Anglia Notitia: The  Present State of England [London, 1704 and 1748], page 51.  Submitted by John Thorn, 7/9/04.

 

1704.4 -- Earliest Published Rules of Cricket [?]

 

“[The following] text is, as far as we know, the earliest published rules of cricket that have come down to us.  They are more than eighty years older than the first official Laws of Cricket, published in 1789.”  The ensuing text calls for the 4-ball over, unregulated runner and fielder interference, and says nothing to keep a batsman from deflecting bowled balls with his body.

 

http://www.seatllecricket.com/history/1704laws.htm, accessed 10/2/02.  Most sources date the easiest rules to 1744; could this date stem from a typo?  No source is given for the rules themselves. Note: we should compare this text to the 1744 rules.

 

1705.1 – Early Cricket Match “To Be Plaid . . . for 11 Guineas a Man”

 

An account in the July 24 issue of The Postman reads, “This is to give notice that a match of cricket is to be plaid between 11 gentlemen of the west part of Kent, against as many of Chatham, for 11 guineas a man at Maulden in Kent on August 7^th next.”  Thomas Moult, “The Story of the Game,” in Thomas Moult, ed., Bat and Ball: A New Book of Cricket (Sportsmans Book Club, London, 1960; reprint of 1935), page 27. 

 

1706.1 -- Poem Suggests Cricket is Becoming “Respectable”

 

Goldwin, William, In Certamen Pilae.  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 15.  Ford does not provide a full citation for this source.  He reports the poem, written Latin, as “describing the early game and suggesting, perhaps, that it is becoming ‘respectable.’  He adds that “there was academic controversy over its translation in 1923.”  John Thorn offers that the poem was published in Goldwin’s Musae Juveniles in 1706, and was translated by Harold Perry as “The Cricket Match” in 1922 [email of 2/1/2008].  John also sent Protoball the original text, for you Latin speakers out there.

 

 

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 [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 176.  The [apparently fictional] hero recalls; “I was but a sorry proficient in learning: being readier at cat and doug, cappy-hole, riding the burley hacket, playing at kyles and dams, spangboder, wrestling, and foot-ball (and such other sports as we use in our country) than at my book.”  Block identifies “cat and doug,” or cat and dog, as a Scots two-base version of the game of cat, “and the likely forbear of the American game of two-old-cat.”

 

1709.1 – A Form of [Two-man and Four-man] Cricket Played in Virginia

 

In an April 25, 1709 diary entry, William Byrd, owner of the Virginia plantation Westover, wrote:  “I rose at 6 o’clock and said my prayers shortly.  Mr. W-l-s and I fenced and I beat him.  Then we played at cricket, Mr. W-l-s and John Custis against me and Mr. {Hawkins], but we were beaten.  I ate nothing but milk for breakfast . . .”

 

On May 6 of the same year he noted: “I rose about 6 o'clock and Colonel Ludwell, Nat Harrison, Mr. Edwards and myself played at cricket, and I won a bit [presumably an eighth of a Spanish dollar].  Then we played at whist and I won.  About 10 o'clock we went to breakfast and I ate some boiled rice.”  Another undated entry showed that cricket was not just an early-morning pastime:  “About 10 o'clock Dr. Blair, and Major and Captain Harrison came to see us. After I had given them a glass of sack we played cricket. I ate boiled beef for my dinner. Then we played at shooting with arrows...and went to cricket again till dark."

 

Wright, Louis B., and Marion Tinling, eds., The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover 1709-1712 [Dietz Press, Richmond, 1941], pages 25-26 and 31.  We have no page reference for the third mention of cricket, which appears in a short article on Smithsonian.com, as accessed 1/20/2007.  Thanks to John Thorn for reference data [email of 2/1/2008].

 

1709.2 -- Kent vs. Surrey -- Cricket’s First County Match?

 

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1697_to_1725_English_cricket_seasons, accessed 10/17/08:

“The earliest known match involving county teams or at any rate teams bearing the names of counties. The match was advertised in the Post Man dated Saturday June 25, 1709. The stake was £50.

“Some authors have suggested the teams in reality were "Dartford and a Surrey village", but this contradicts evidence of patronage and high stakes. It is likely that Dartford, as the foremost Kent club in this period, provided not only the venue but also the nucleus of the team, but there is no reason at all to doubt that the team included good players from elsewhere in the county. The Surrey team will equally have been drawn from a number of Surrey parishes and subscribed by their patron.”

The Wikipedia entry credits the website “From Lads to Lords: The History of Cricket 1300-1787”, at http://www.jl.sl.btinternet.co.uk/stampsite/cricket/main.html

 

1709.3 -- Cat and Trap-ball Seen as Boys’ Games [The Men Play Foot-ball]

 

W. Winstanley and Successors, Poor Robin 1709. An almanack after a new fashion [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 176.  A selection begins, “Thus harmless country lads and lasses/ In mirth the time away so passes:/ Here men at foot-ball they do  fall;/ There boys at cat and trap-ball.”

 

1711.1 – Betty Was “a Romp at Stool-Ball”

 

“James before he beheld Betty, was vain of his strength, a rough wrestler . . . ; Betty [was] a publick Dancer at May-poles, a Romp at Stool-Ball.  He was always following idle Women, she playing among the Peasants; He a Country Bully, she a Country Coquet.”

 

Steele, Spectator number 71, May 22, 1711, page 2.   Provided by John Thorn, emails of 6/11/2007 and 2/1/2008.  The implication of the passage appears to be that women who played a game like stool-ball were unlikely  to be chaste. 

 

1712.1 -- Two Noblemen Blasted for Sunday Cricket Play, and for Betting Too

 

The Duke of Marlborough and Viscount Townsend are publicly criticized for currying favor with electors by playing cricket with children “on a Sabbath day,” and for wagering 20 guineas on the outcome.  Bateman cites and quotes from a broadsheet report on this match at The Devil and the Peers, or a Princely Way of Sabbath Breaking [source not otherwise identified] at Bateman, Anthony,“’More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘  Culture,, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 30.  John Thorn identifies the broadsheet as having been published by J. Parker [email of 2/1/2008].

 

1713.1 – Boston Magistrate Finds Trap Ball Clogging a Gutter

 

“I went on the Roof, and found the Spout next Slater’s  stopped . . . . Boston went up . . . came down a Spit, and clear’d the Leaden-throat, by thrusting out a Trap-Ball that stuck there.”

 

Thomas, M. H., ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewell 1674 – 1729, Volume II, 1710 – 1729 [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973], p. 718.  Per Altherr ref # 18.  Sewall is known as the “Salem Witch Judge.”

 

1715.1 – Men Top Over Women in “Merry-Night” of Stoole Balle

 

“The Young Folks of this Town had a Merry-Night . . . .  The Young Weomen treated the Men with a Tandsey as they lost to them at a Game at Stoole Balle.”

 

T. Ellison Gibson, ed., Blundell’s Diary, Comprising Selections from the Diary of Nicholas Blundell, Esq. (Gilbert G. Walmsley, 1895), diary entry for May 14, 1715, page 134.  Note:  “Tandsey” presumably refers to tansey-cakes, traditionally linked to springtime games. 

 

 

1719.1 -- Trap and Stool-ball Help Set the Mood . . . Again

 

“Thus all our lives we’re Frolick and gay,/And instead of Court Revels we merrily Play/ At Trap and Kettles and Barley-break run,/ At Goff, and at Stool-ball, and when we have done/ These innocent Sports, we Laugh and lie down,/ And to each pretty Lass we give a green Gown.”

 

D’Urfey, Thomas, Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy [London], Vol. 3, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 177.  Note: This closely mimics the verse found above at #1671.1. 

 

1720.1 – Puritans Thwarted Fun, “Even at Stool-ball”

 

In a strong anti-Presbyterian tract, Thomas Lewis noted that among Puritans “all Games where there is any hazard of loss are strictly forbidden; as Tennis, Bowles and Billiards;  not so much as a Game at stool-ball for a Tansy, . . . upon Pain of Damnation.”

 

Thomas. Lewis, English Presbyterian Eloquence: Or, Dissenters Sayings Ancient and Modern (T. Bickerton, London, 1720), page 17.  Citation provided by John Thorn, email of 2/1/2008.

 

1720.2 -- Holiday in Kent:  Cricket, Stool-Ball, Tippling, Kissing

 

In 1907, a kindred spirit of ours reported [in a listserve-equivalent of the day] on his attempts to find early news coverage of cricket.  He reports on a 1720 article he sees as “the first newspaper reference I have yet found to cricket as a popular game:”

 

“The Holiday coming on, the Alewives of Islington, Kentish Town, and several adjacent villages . . . .  The Fields will swarm with Butchers’; Wives and Oyster-Women . . . diverting themselves with their Offspring, whilst their Spouses and Sweethearts are sweating at Ninepins, some at Cricket, others at Stool-Ball, besides an amorous Couple in every Corner . . . Much Noise and Cutting in the Morning; Much Tippling all Day; and much Reeling and Kissing at Night.”

 

Alfred F. Robbins, “Replies: The Earliest Cricket Report,” Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc, September 7, 1907, page 191.  Provided by John Thorn, 2/8/2008, via email.  He reports his source as Read’s Weekly Journal, or British-Gazeteer, June 4, 1720, and advises that he has omitted phrases not “welcome to the modern taste.  Accessed via Google Books 10/18/2008.

 

 

1720.3 – Cricket in Kent; Londoners Beat Kent Eleven, But Two Are Konked Out

 

A month later [see #1720.2, above], Islington was in the news again.  The Postman reported on July 16, 1720 that:

 

“Last week a match was played in The White Conduit Fields, by Islington, between 11 Londoners on one side and elevent men of Kent on the other side, for 5s a head, at which time being in eager pursuit of the game, the Kentish men having the wickets, two Londoners striving [p.27/p.28] for expedition to gain the ball, met each other with such fierceness that, hitting their heads together, they both fell backwards without stirring hand or foot, and lay deprived of sense for a considerable time, and ‘tis not yet known whether they willl recover.  The Kentish men were beat.”  Thomas Moult, “The Story of the Game,” in Thomas Moult, ed., Bat and Ball: A New Book of Cricket (Sportsmans Book Club, London, 1960 – reprint from 1935), pp 27-28.

 

1722.1 – Scotch “Rogue” Prefers Cat/Dog Games to His Books

 

“In the Life of the Scotch Rogue, 1722, p.7, the following sports occur:  ‘I was but a sorry proficient in learning: being readier at Cat and Doug, cappy-hole, riding the hurley hacket, playing at kyles and dams, spang-bogle, wrestling, and foot-ball (and such other sports as we use in out country), than at my book.’”

 

Brand, John, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (George Bell and Sons, London, 1900), page 407.  The original source is presumably The Scotch Rogue; or, the Life and Actions of Donald Macdonald, a Highland Scot (Robert Gifford, London, 1706 and 1722). Note:   Confirm in original?  Can we confirm that this was in the 1706 printing, not only the 1722 printing?  Identify “cappy-hole?”  Citation provided by John Thorn, email of 2/1/2008.

 

1725c.1 – Wicket Played on Boston Common

 

“March, 15. Sam. Hirst [Sewall’s grandson, reportedly, and a Harvard ’23 man] LMc] got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with him and went into the (Boston) Common to play at Wicket. Went before any body was up, left the door open; Sam came not to prayer; at which I was most displeased.

 

”March 17^th.  Did the like again, but took not Ben with him.  I told him he could not lodge here practicing thus.  So he lodg‘d elsewhere.  He grievously offended me in persuading his Sister Hannam not to have Mr. Turall, without enquiring of me about it.  And play’d fast and loose in a vexing matter about himself in a matter relating to himself, procuring me great Vexation.”

 

Diary of Samuel Sewall, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Published by the Society, Boston, 1882) Volume VII – Fifth Series, page 372.

 

Note: Further comment on this entry is welcome, especially from wicket devotees; after all, this may be the initial wicket citation in existence (assuming that $1700c.2 is cannot be documented and that #1704.1 above is not ever confirmed as wicket).

 

1725.2 – Duke of Richmond Issues Challenge to Play Single-Wicket Cricket

 

“In 1725, he [the Duke of Richmond] challenged Sir William Gage in a two-a-side single-wicket competition. . . .”

 

Simon Rae, It’s Not Cricket: A History of Skulduggery, Sharp Practice and Downright Cheating in the Noble Game (Faber and Faber, 2001), page 57.  Note: is there a fuller account for tis match?  A primary source?

 

 

 

1726.1 -- Cricket Crowd is Eyed Nervously as Possibly Seditious

 

An Essex official worries that a local game of cricket was simply a way of collecting a crowd of disaffected people in order to foment rebellion.  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 16.  Ford does not provide a citation for this account.

 

1727.1 -- First Documented Cricket Playing Rules Agreed to, for One-time Use

 

Two sides forged “Articles of Agreement” that specify 12 players to a side, a 23-yard pitch, two umpires to be named by each side, and “mentions catches but not other forms of dismissal.”  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 16.  Note: Ford does not provide a citation for this account.

 

1727.2 -- How To Score at Cricket, Olde Style

 

In order to score a run, a batsman/runner had to touch a staff held by an umpire with his bat.  The modern rule appeared in the 1744 rules.

 

Scholefield, Peter, Cricket Laws and Terms [Axiom Publishing, Kent Town Australia, 1990], page 22.

 

1728.1 – Delaware Resident Writes of Playing Trap Ball, with Cider as Reward

 

“James Gordon & I Plaid Trabbel against John Horon and Th Horon for an anker of Syder We woun.  We drunk our Syder.”

 

Hancock, H. B., ed., “’Fare Weather and Good Helth:’ the Journal of Caesar Rodeney, 1727 – 1729,” Delaware History, volume 10, number 1 [April 1962], p. 64. Per Altherr ref # 19.

 

1730c.1 – (Moved to become #1741.1 below.)

 

 

1730c.2 – Cricket Play at Eton Seen as Common

 

“I can’t say I am sorry I was never quite a school-boy: an expedition against bargemen or a match at cricket may be very pretty things to recollect; but thank my stars, I can remember things very near as pretty.”

 

Letter from Horace Walpole to George Montagu, May 6, 1736.  One interpretation of this letter:  “Horace Walpole was sent to Eton in 1726.  Playing cricket, as well as bashing bargemen, was common at that time:” Pycroft, John, The Cricket Field; or, The History and the Science of the Game of Cricket, second edition (Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, London, 1854), page 43.

 

 

1731.1 – Patient Thousands Watch First Known Drawn Match in Cricket

 

“The Great Cricket Match, between the Duke of Richmond and Mr. Chambers, 11 men on each side, for 200 Guineas, was begun to be played on Monday at two in the Afternoon, on Richmond Green.  By agreement they were not to play after 7 o’clock. . . . when the Hour agreed being come, they were obliged to leave off, tho’ beside the Hands then playing, they [chambers’ side] had 4 or 5 more to have come in.  Thus it proved a drawn Battle.  There were many Thousand Spectators, of whom a great number were Persons of Distinction of both Sexes.” 

 

Source: The Daily Journal, August 25, 1731, as uncovered by Alfred Robbins in his 1907 digging.  Robbins finds the article of “historical interest, for it is the earliest I have yet traced of a drawn game.”  Alfred Robbins, “The Earliest Cricket Report,” Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc., September 7, 1907, page 192.  Note: does this match still stand as the first recorded drawn match?

 

1733.1 -- Long Poem Describes Stool-Ball in Some Detail; First Evidence of Use of a Bat

 

The London Magazine, vol 2, December 1733 [London], page 637, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 177.  Block calls this account “the most complete and detailed portrayal of the game to date.”  It provides the earliest reference to the use of a bat, describes a game that does not involve running after the young [female] players hit the ball, and includes a description of the field and the assembled audience.  Note: A bat had been described in Willughby’s c.1672 account of hornebillets.  Some actual text should be added here, if it can be captured.

 

1737.1 -- Surreymen Play Londoners in Cricket for 500 Pounds a Side

 

 

“On Wednesday next a great Match at Cricket is to be play’d at Moulsey-Hurst in Surrey, between eleven Men of the said County, chose by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and the same Number chose out of the London Club by his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, for 500 [pounds] a Side.”  Country Journal of The Craftsman (London), July 16, 1737.  Excavated by John Thorn, 2/1/2008.  Note:  So who won?  And was the bet really paid off? 

 

 

1737.2 – Doctor Writes of North Carolina Game Resembling Ireland’s Trap Ball

 

Brickell, an Irishman, writes of NC Indians: “They have [a] game which is managed with a Battoon, and very much resembles our Trap-ball.”

 

Brickell, John., The Natural History of North Carolina [James Carson, Dublin, 1737], p. 336.  Per Altherr ref # 20. 

 

1737.3 – Cricket Played Georgia Town Square

 

Georgia planter William Stephens: “Many of our Townsmen, Freeholders, Inmates, and Servants were assembled in the principal Square, at Cricket and divers other athletick Sports.”

 

A Journal of the Proceedings in Georgia, II, page 217, as cited in  Lester, ed., A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [U Penn, 1951], page 4. Lester cites this account as the first mention of American cricket.

 

1739.1 -- First Known Picture of Cricket Appears

 

 

“The earliest known cricket picture was first displayed in 1739.  It is an engraving call “The Game of Cricket”, by Hubert-Francois Gravelot (1699-1773) and shows two groups of cherubic lads gathered around a batsman and a bowler.  The wicket shown is the “low stool” shape, probably 2 feet wide and 1 foot tall, with two stumps and a single bail.”  Received in an email from John Thorn, 2/1/2008.  Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1739_English_cricket_season. 

 

Another fan’s notes:  “Art is immortal, and the M.C.C. has acquired a new work of Art in connection with cricket.  This is a drawing in pencil on grey paper, representing a country game in the [eighteenth] century. . . .  The two notched stumps with one bail are only about six inches high, and the bowler appears to be “knuckling” the ball like a marble.  I have very little doubt that the artist was Gravelot.”  Andrew Lang, “At the Sign of the Ship,” Longmans’ Magazine (London) Number LXIX, July 1888, page 332.

 

Note:  Can this engraving/drawing be viewed online?

 

 

1740s.1 – Intervillage Cricket Played by Women in Surrey and Sussex

 

Cashman, Richard, “Cricket,” in David Levinson and Karen Christopher, Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present [Oxford University Press, 1996], page 88.

 

1740.2 -- Almanack Sees Time Wasted at Stool-ball

 

“Much time is wasted now away/ At pigeon-holes and nine-pin play/. . . ./ At stool-ball and at barley-break,/Wherewith they at harmless pastime make.”

 

W. Winstanley and Successors, Poor Robin 1740. An almanack after a new fashion [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 178. 

 

1740.3 – Lord Chesterfield Nods Approvingly at Cricket – and Trap Ball!

 

“Dear Boy: . . . Therefor remember to give yourself up entirely to the thing you are doing, be it what it will, whether your book or play: for if you have a right ambition, you will desire to excell all boys of your age at cricket, or trap ball, as well as in learning.”  P.D.S. Chesterfield, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters of His Son (M. W. Dunne, 1901), Volume II, Letter LXXI, to his son.  Citation provided by John Thorn, email of 2/1/2008.

 

Cited by Steel and Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890), pp 8 - 9.. Steel and Lyttelton introduce this quotation as follows:  “When once the eighteenth century is reached cricket begins to find mention in literature.  Clearly the game was rising in the world and was being taken up, like the poets of the period, by patrons.” 

 

 

1741c.1 – Does Alexander Pope “Sneer” at Cricket in Epic Poem?

 

“The judge to dance his brother serjeant call,

The senator at cricket urge the ball”

 

Pope, “The Dunciad,” per Steel and Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 9.  Steel and Lyttelton date the writing to 1726-1735.  Their remark:  “Mr. Alexander Pope had sneered at cricket.  At what did Mr. Pope not sneer?”

 

Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Complete in Four Books, According to Mr. Pope’s Last Improvements (Warburton, London, 1749), Book IV, line 592, page 70.  Note; This fragment does not seem severely disparaging.  Is it clear from context what offense he gives to cricketers?  It is true that this passage demeans assorted everyday practices, particularly as pursued by those of high standing.  Book IV, the last, is now believed to have been written in 1741.  Other entries that employ the “urge the ball” phrasing are #1747.1, #1805c.7, #1807.3, and #1824.4.

 

 

1743.1 -- Cricket’s Popularity Attacked in Gentlemen’s Magazine

 

“I very much doubt whether [noblemen and gentlemen] they have any Right to invite Thousands of People to be Spectators of their Agility, at the Expense of their Duty and Honesty.  The Time of People of Fashion may be indeed of very little value, but, in a trading Country, the Time of the meanest Man ought to be of some Worth to himself, and to the Community.

 

“The Diversion of Cricket may be proper in Holiday Time, and in the Country; but upon Days when Men ought to be busy, and in the Neighbourhood of a great City, it is not only improper but mischievous in a high Degree. . . . it gives the most open Encouragement to Gaming

 

Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 17.  John Thorn located the piece, “Of publick cricket matches,” in The Gentleman’s Magazine, September 1743, p.486.

 

 

1743.2 – Three-on-Three Cricket Match, A Close One, Draws Reported 10,000 Fans

 

“July 11.  In the Artillery Ground.  Three of Kent – Hodswell, J. Cutbush, V. Romney vs. Three of England – R. Newland, Sawyer, John Bryan.  Kent won by 2 runs.”

 

Cited in Thomas Moult, “The Story of the Game,” Thomas Moult, ed., Bat and Ball: A New Book of Cricket (Sportsmans Book Club, London, 1960 – reprinted from 1935), page 29.  Moult’s commentary:  “Several features of this match are to be emphasized [besides the fact that the score was reported, not simply thename of the winning side -- LM].  The convention of eleven a side was not yet established . . . .  Also the match was played before 10,000 spectators.”  Note: Moult does not cite the original source.

 

 

1744.1 – First Laws of Cricket are Written

 

Includes the 4-ball over, later changed to 6 balls.  [And to 8 balls in Philadelphia in 1790].  Cashman, Richard, “Cricket,” in David Levinson and Karen Christopher, Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present [Oxford University Press, 1996], page 87.  The 22 yard pitch is one-tenth of the length of a furlong, which is an eighth of a mile.

 

Ford’s crisp summary of the rules:  “Toss for pitching wickets and choice of innings; pitch 22 yards; single bail; wickets 22 inches high; 4-ball overs; ball between 5 and 6 ounces; ‘no ball’ defined; modes of dismissal -- bowled, caught, stumped, run out, obstructing the field.”  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 17.

 

The rules are listed briefly at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1744_English_cricket_season [as assessed 1/31/07].  The rules were written by a Committee under the patronage of “the cricket-mad Prince of Wales,” Frederickm, son of George II.

 

 

1744.2 – Newbery’s Little Pretty Pocket-Book Refers to “Base-Ball,” “Stooleball, “Trap-Ball,”

 

John Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, published in England, contains a wood-cut illustration showing boys playing “base-ball” and a rhymed description of the game:  “The ball once struck off,/Away flies the boy/To the next destined post/And then home with joy.” .  This is held to be the first appearance of the term “base-ball” in print.  Other pages are devoted to stool-ball, trap-ball, and tip-cat [per David Block, page 179].  Block finds that this book has the first use of the word “base-ball.”

 

Little Pretty Pocket-Book, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly [London, John Newbery, 1744].  Per RH ref 107, adding Newbery name as publisher from text at p. 132.  The earliest extant version of this book is from 1760 [per David Block], and Altherr [ref #24] gives a p.90 cite for “base-ball” from the 1767 version. Note: we may need reason to assume the “Base-ball” poem appeared in the 1744 version.  According to Altherr, pp. 20 – 21, the 1767 London version also has poems titled “Stoolball” [p. 88] and Trap-Ball.[p. 91].  According Zoernik in the Encyclopedia of World Sports [p.329], rounders is also referred to [we need to confirm this].  There was an American pirated edition in 1760, as per Henderson [ref #107]; David Block dates the American edition in 1762. He also notes that a 1767 revision features engravings for the three games.

 

 

1744.3 -- Earliest Full Cricket Scorecard for the “Greatest Match Ever Known”

 

The match it describes: All England vs. Kent, played at the Artillery Ground.  The same year, admission at the Ground increased from tuppence to sixpence. Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 17. 

 

John Thorn [email of 2/1/2008] located an account of the match:  “Yesterday was play’d in the Artillery-Ground the greatest Cricket-Match even known, the County of Kent again all England, which was won by the former [the score was  97-96 – LM] . . . . There were present the their Royal Highnesses the Princeof Wales and Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Richmond, Admiral Vernon, and many other Persons of Distinction.”  The London Evening-Post Number 2592, June 16-19, 1744, page 1 column 3, above the fold.  Note:  Is the scorecard available somewhere?

 

 

1744.4 – Poet:  “Hail Cricket!  Glorious Manly, British Game!

 

Writing as James Love, the poet and actor James Dance [1722-1774] penned a 316-line verse that extols cricket.  The poem, it may surprise you to learn, turns on the muffed catch by an All England player [shades of Casey!] that, I take it, allows Kent County to win a close  match.  Protoball’s virtual interview with Mr. Dance:

 

Protoball:  Are you a serious cricket fan?

 

Dance:" Hail, cricket! Glorious manly, British Game! / First of all Sports! be first alike in Fame!” [lines 13-14]

 

PBall: Isn’t billiards a good game too?

 

Dance: “puny Billiards, where, with sluggish Pace / The dull Ball trails before the feeble Mace” [lines 40-41]

 

PBall: But you do appreciate tennis, right?”

 

Dance:  “Not Tennis [it]self, [cricket’s] sister sport can charm, /Or with [cricket’s] fierce Delights our Bosoms warm".[lines 55-56] . . . to small Space confined, ev’n [tennis] must yield / To nobler CRICKET, the disputed field.”  [lines 60-61]

 

PBall: But doesn’t every country have a fine national pastime?

 

Dance: “Leave the dissolving Song, the baby Dance, / To Sooth[e] the Slaves of Italy and France: / While the firm Limb, and strong brac’d Nerve are thine [cricket’s] / Scorn Eunuch Sports; to manlier Games [we] incline” [lines 68-71]

 

PBall: Manlier?  You see the average cricketer as especially manly?

 

Dance:  “He weighs the well-turn’d Bat’s experienced Force, / And guides the rapid Ball’s impetuous course, / His supple Limbs with Nimble Labour plies, / Nor bends the grass beneath him as he flies.”  [lines 29 – 32]

 

James Love, Cricket: an Heroic Poem. illustrated with the Critical Observations of Scriblerus Maximus(W. Bickerton, London, undated)”  The poet writes of a famous 1744 match between All England and Kent [#1744.3, above.]  Thanks to Beth Hise for a lead to this poem, email, 12/21/2007.   John Thorm, per email of 2/1/2008, located and pointed to online copy.  Note:  Are we sure the versified game account is from the 1744 Kent/England match -- not 1746, for example? 

 

1745c.1 -- John Adams Recalls Youthful Bat and Ball Play

 

Saying that his first fifteen years “went off like a fairy tale,” John Adams [1735-1826] wrote fondly “of making and sailing boats  . . swimming, skating, flying kites and shooting marbles, bat and ball, football, . . . wrestling and sometimes boxing.”

 

David McCullough, John Adams [Touchstone Books, 2001], page 31.  Submitted by Priscilla Astifan, 11/17/06.

 

1747.1 – Poet Thomas Gray:  “Urge the Flying Ball.”

 

“What idle progeny succeed

To chase the rolling circle's speed,

Or urge the flying ball?”

 

Thomas Gray, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” lines 28-30.  Accessed 12/29/2007 at http://www.thomasgray.org.  “Rolling circle” had been drafted as “hoop,” and thus does not connote ballplay.  Cricket writers have seen “flying ball” as a cricket reference, but a Gray scholar cites “Bentley’s Print” as a basis for concluding that Gray was referring to trap ball in this line.  Steel and Lyttelton note that this poem was first published in 1747.  Note: is it fair to assume that Gray is evoking student play at Eton in this ode?  Do modern scholars agree with the 1747 publication date?

 

1747.2 – Well-Advertised Women’s Cricket Match Held, with 6-Pence Admission

 

In July 1747 two ladies’ sides from Sussex communities played cricket at London’s Artillery-Grounds, and the announced admittance fee was sixpence.  At a first match, according to a 7/15/1747 news account, play was interrupted when “the Company broke in so, that it was impossible for the [match] to be play’d; and some of them [the players? – LM] being very much frighted, and others hurt . . . .”  That match was to be completed on a subsequent morning . . . . “And in the Afternoon they wil play a second Match at the same Place, several large Sums being depended between the Women of the Hills of Sussex, in Orange colour’d Ribbons, and the Dales in blue!”

 

This item was contributed by David Block on 2/27/2008.  David notes that the source is a large scrapbook with thousands of clippings from 1660 to 1840 as collected by a Daniel Lysons: “Collectanea: or A collection of advertisements and paragraphs from the newspapers, relating to various subjects.  Publick exhibitions and places of amusement,” Vol IV, Pt 2, page 227, British Library shelfmark C.103.k.11.  David adds, “Unfortunately, Lysons, or whoever assembled this particular volume, neglected to indicate which paper the clippings were cut from.”

 

 

1748.1 – Lady Hervey Reports Royals’ “Base-ball” in a Letter

 

Lady Hervey (then Mary Leppel) describes in a letter the activities of the family of Frederick, Prince of Wales: 

 

“[T]he Prince’s family is an example of innocent and cheerful amusements  All this last summer they played abroad; and now, in the winter, in a large room, they divert themselves at base-ball, a play all who are, or have been, schoolboys, are well acquainted with.  The ladies, as well as gentlemen, join in this amusement . . . .  This innocence and excellence must needs give great joy, and well as great hope, to all real lovers of their country and posterity.”

 

[The last sentence may well be written in irony, as Lady Hervey was evidently known to be unimpressed with the Prince’s conduct.]

 

Hervey, Lady (Mary Lepel), Letters (London, 1821), p.139 [Letter XLII, of November 14, 1748, from London]. Google Books now has uploaded the letters:  search for “Lady Hervey.”  Letter 52 begins on page 137, and the baseball reference is on page 139.  Accessed 12/29/2007.  Note: David Block, page 189, spells the name “Lepel,” citing documented family usage; the surname often appears as “Leppell.”  In a 19CBB posting of 2/15/2008, David writes that it is “George III, to whom we can rightly ascribe the honor of being the first known baseball player.  The ten-year-old George, as [Prince] Frederick’s eldest son, was surely among the prince’s family members observed by Lady Hervey in 1748 to be ‘divert[ing] themselves at base-ball.’”

 

1749.1 -- Early Cricket: Addington Club Takes On  All-England, Five on Five

 

“A newspaper advertisement announced a match on the [London Artillery] ground on July 24^th, 1749, between five of the Addington Club and an All England five.  The advertisement gave the names of the players, and thus concluded: NB -- The last match, which was played on Monday the 10^th instant, was won by All England, notwithstanding it was eight to one on Addington in the playing.’”

 

Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England [Methuen, London, 1903], page 102.  This edition of Strutt [originally published in 1801] was “much enlarged and corrected by L. Charles Cox;” the cited text was inserted by Cox.

 

1750c.1 -- Cricket No Longer Played Only With Rolled Deliveries to Batsmen

 

“Originally bowling literally meant ‘to bowl the ball along the ground’ as in the style of lawn bowls.  By 1750, however, a mixture of grubbers and fully pitched balls were seen.”

 

Peter Scholefield, Cricket Laws and Terms [Axiom Publishing, Kent Town Australia], page 34.

 

1750s.2 – Town Ball and Cat Played in NC Lowlands?

 

One biographer has estimated:  “Of formalized games, choices for males [in NC] appear to have been ‘town-ball, bull-pen,’ ‘cat,’ and ‘prisoner’s base,’ whatever exhibitions of dexterity they may have involved” Chalmers G. Davidson, Piedmont Partisan: The Life and Times of Brigadier-General William Lee Davidson (Davidson College, Davidson NC, 1951), page 20.  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 32. 

 

Caution: This is a very early claim for town ball, preceding even New England references to roundball or like games.  It would be useful to examine C. Davidson’s sources.  Note:  Can we determine what region of NC is under discussion?  Text of the biography is unavailable via Google Books as of 11/15/2008.  Prisoner’s base is not a ball game, and bull-pen is not a safe-haven game.

 

 

1751.1 – First Recorded US Cricket Match Played, “For a Considerable Wager,” in NYC

 

“Last Monday afternoon, a match at cricket was play’d on our Common for a considerable Wager, by eleven Londoners, against eleven New Yorkers:  The game was play’d according to the London Method; and those who got most notches in two Hands, to be the Winners: The New Yorkers went in first, and got 81; Then the Londoners went in, and got but 43; Then the New Yorkers went in again, and got 86; and the Londoners finished the Game with getting only 37 more.”  New York Gazette Revived, May 6, 1751, page 2, column 2.  Submitted 7/25/2005 by George Thompson.

 

This was the first recorded cricket match played in New York City, and took place on grounds where Fulton Fish Market now stands, “by a Company of Londoners – the London XI -- against a Company of New Yorkers.” (The New Yorkers won, 167-80.)

 

New York Post-Boy, 4/29/51.  Per John Thorn, 6/15/04:  Source is multiple: clip from Chadwick Scrapbooks; see also, “the first recorded American cricket match per se was in New York in 1751 on the site of what is today the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan.  A team called New York played another described as the London XI ‘according to the London method’ - probably a reference to the 1744 Code which was more strict that the rules governing the contemporary game in England.   Also, and dispositively, from Phelps-Stokes, Vol. VI, Index—ref. against Chronology and Chronology Addenda (Vol. 4A or 6A); [CRICKET] Match on Commons April 29, 1751; and finally, V. 4, p. 628, 4/29/1751: “…this day, a great Cricket match is to be played on our commons, by a Company of Londoners against a Company of New-Yorkers. New-York Post-Boy, 4/29/51.” The New Yorkers won by a total score of 167 to 80. New York Post-Boy, 5/6/51.  This game is also treated by cricket historians Wisden [1866] and Lester [1951].

 

1751.2 -- Cricket Lore:  Ball Kills the Prince of Wales?

 

RIP, sweet Prince.  [The prince was the father of King George III.]

 

Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 17: “Death of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, as a result of a blow on the head from a cricket ball.”  Ford does not give a citation.

 

Others attribute the Prince’s death to a tennis incident; neither theory seems fully credible, as death was not immediate, and “an abscess” of the lung was thought to be the proximal cause of death.

 

 

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. 

 

1754.1 -- Marylanders Play “Great Cricket Match for a Good Sum”

 

“We hear that there is to be a great cricket match for a good sum played on Saturday next, near Mr. Aaron Rawling’s Spring, between eleven young men of this city [Annapolis] and the same number from Prince George’s County [now a Washington suburban community]”

 

Bradford’s Journal, August 1, 1754, as cited in Lester’s A Century of Philadelphia Cricket UPenn Press, Philadelphia, 1951], page 5.

 

1754.1 – Ben Franklin Brings Copy of Cricket Rules Back to U.S.

Several sources, including the Smithsonian, magazine, report that “The rules of the game on this side of the Atlantic were formalized in 1754, when Benjamin Franklin brought back from England a copy of the [ten year old – LMc] 1744 Laws, cricket’s official rule book.”  Simon Worrall, “Cricket, Anyone?” Smithsonian Magazine, October 2006.  The excerpt can be found in the seventh paragraph of the article [as accessed 10/19/2008] at:                                            

http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/october/cricket.php:

Lester adds this:  “Benjamin Franklin was sufficiently interested in the game [cricket] to bring back with him from England a copy of the laws of cricket, for it was this very copy which was presented to the Young America Club . . .on June 4, 1867.”  Lester, A Century of Philadelphia Cricket (U Penn, 1951), page 5. Caveat: we have not located a contemporary account of the Franklin story.

 

1755.1 -- Johnson Dictionary Defines Stoolball and Trap

 

Stoolball is simply defined as “A play where balls are driven from stool to stool,” and trap is defined as “A play at which a ball is driven with a stick.”

 

Johnson, Samuel, A dictionary of the English language [London, 1755], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 179. 

 

1755.2 -- Laws of Cricket are Revised

 

“1755: Minor revision of the Laws of Cricket.” John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 18.  Ford does not give a source.

 

1755.3 – Young Man Goes to “Play at Base Ball” in Surrey

 

On the day after Easter in 1755, 18-year-old William Bray recorded the following entry in his diary:

 

“After Dinner Went to Miss Seale’s to play at Base Ball, with her, the 3 Miss Whiteheads, Miss Billinghurst, Miss Molly Flutter, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Ford, H. Parsons & Jolly.  Drank tea and stayed till 8.”

 

The story of this 2007 find is told in Block, David, “The Story of William Bray’s Diary,” Base Ball, volume , no. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 5-11.

 

Block points out that this diary entry, is among the first four appearances of the term “base ball,” [see #1744.2 and #1748.1 above, and #1755.4 below] shows adult and mixed-gender play, and that “at this time, baseball was more of a social phenomenon than a sporting one. . . . played for social entertainment rather than serious entertainment.”  [Ibid, page 9.]

 

1755.4 – Satirist Cites Base-Ball as “An Infant Game”

 

“. . . the younger Part of the Family, perceiving Papa not inclined to enlarge upon the Matter, retired to an interrupted Party at Base-Ball, (an infant Game, which as it advances in its Teens, improves to Fives [handball], and in its State of Manhood, is called Tennis).”

 

Kidgell, John, The Card (John Newbery, London, 1755), page 9.  This citation was uncovered in 2007 by David Block.  He tells the story of the find in Block, David, “The Story of William Bray’s Diary,” Base Ball, volume , no. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 9-11.

 

1756.1 -- First Recorded Game by Hambledon Cricket Club

 

“1756: The Hambledon Club plays its first recorded game.”  John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 18.  Ford does not give a source.

 

1760s.1 – Harvard Man Recalls Cricket, “Various Games of Bat and Ball” on Campus

 

Writing of the Buttery on the Harvard campus in Cambridge MA, Sidney Willard later recalled that “[b]esides eatable, everything necessary for a student was there sold, and articles used in the play-grounds, as bats, balls, &c. . . . [w]e wrestled and ran, played at quoits, at cricket, and various games of bat and ball, whose names perhaps are obsolete.” 

 

Sidney Willard, Memories of Youth and Manhood [John Bartlett, Cambridge, 1855], volume 1, pp 31 and 316.  Per Altherr ref # 44.

 

 

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.”  Provided 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.

 

 

1761.1 – Princeton Faculty [NJ] Disparages “Playing at Ball”

 

“A minute of the Princeton faculty of May, 1761, frowns upon students “playing at ball.”

 

Bentley, et. al., American College Athletics [Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, New York, 1929], pages 14-15.  Submitted by John Thorn, 6/6/04.

 

1761.2 -- School Rule in PA; No Ballplaying in the College Yard, Especially in Front of Trustees and Profs

 

“None shall climb over the Fences of the College Yard, or come in or out thro the Windows, or play Ball or use any Kind of Diversion within the Walls of the Building; nor shall they in the Presence of the Trustees, Professors or Tutors, play Ball, Wrestle, make any indecent Noise, or behave in any way rudely in the College Yard or Streets adjacent.”

 

Sack, Saul, History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania, vol. 2 [Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, 1963], page 632.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.  Note: do we know the college?  UPa?

 

1762.1 – Pirated Version of Little Pretty Book Uses Term “Base-ball.”

 

Note:  This version, published in 1762 by Hugh Gaine, was advertised in The New York Mercury on August 30, 1762, but no copy has been found.   Per RH, p. 135.  Henderson says that this is the first use of “base-ball” in an American source.  In his note #107, RH gives 1760 as the year of publication.

 

1762.2 – Salem Ordinance Outlaws Bat-and-Ball, Cricket

 

“. . . no Person shall use the Exercise of playing or kicking of Foot-ball, or the Exercise of Bat-and-Ball, or Cricket, within the Body of the Town, under a Penalty of One Shilling and Six Pence.”

 

By-Laws and Orders of the town of Salem, July 26, 1762, as printed in the Essex Gazette, December 6 to 13, 1768, page 81: posted to 19CBB on July 30, 2007 by Richard Hershberger.  The town is Salem MA.

 

1766.1 – Cricket Balls Advertised in US by James Rivington

 

In 1766 “James Rivington imported battledores and shuttlecocks, cricket-balls, pillets, best racquets for tennis and fives, backgammon tables with men, boxes, and dice.”

 

Singleton, Esther, Social New York Under the Georges [New York, 1902], page 265.  [Cited by Dulles, 1940.]  Caveat:  Singleton does not provide a source at this location; however, from context [see pp. 91-92] her direct quotation seems likely to be taken from a contemporary Rivington advertisement.  Note: John Thorn is unable to find online evidence of cricket ball imports before 1772, per email of 2/2/2008.

 

1766.2 -- Cricket [or Wicket?] Challenge in CT

 

“A Challenge is hereby given by the Subscribers, to Ashbel Steel, and John Barnard, with 18 young Gentlemen . . . to play a Game of BOWL for a Dinner and Trimmings . . . on Friday next.”  Connecticut Courant , May 5, 1766, as cited in John A. Lester, A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1951], page 6.  Note:  is “game of bowl” a common term for cricket?  Could this not have been a wicket challenge, given the size of the teams?

 

1767.1 –  [Item #1767.1 has been moved become 1754.1 above.]

 

1767.2 -- North-South Game of Cricket in Hartford CT

 

“Whereas a Challenge was given by Fifteen Men South of the Great Bridge in Hartford . . . the Public are hereby inform’d that that Challenged beat the Challengers by a great majority.  And said North side hereby acquaint the South Side, that they are not afraid to meet them with any Number they shall chuse . . . .”  Source: “Hartford and Her Sons and Daughters of the Year The Courant was Founded,” Hartford Daily Courant, 10/25/1914.  The original Courant notice was dated June 1, 1767.  Sleuthwork provided by John Thorn, email of 2/2/2008.

 

1768.1 -- “Old Boys of Westminster” Play Harrow in Cricket

 

“William Hickey plays in a match at Moulsey Hurst for the old boys of Westminster School against eleven old boys of Harrow.”  John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 18.  Ford does not give a source.

 

 

1770s.1 – British Soldiers Seek Amusements, Rebels Yawn

 

“the presence of large numbers of British troops quartered in the larger towns of the [eastern] seaboard brought the populace into contact with a new attitude toward play.  Officers and men, when off duty, like soldiers in all ages, were inveterate seekers of amusement.  The dances and balls, masques and pageants, ending in Howe’s great extravaganza in Philadelphia, were but one expression of this spirit.  Officers set up cricket grounds and were glad of outside competition. . [text refers to cock-fighting in Philadelphia, horseracing and fox hunts on Long Island, bear-baiting in Brooklyn].

 

“There is little indication, however, that the British occupation either broke down American prejudices against wasting time in frivolous amusements or promoted American participation and interest in games and sports.”

 

Krout, John A., The Pageant of America: Annals of American Sport (Oxford U Press, 1929), page 26.

 

1771.1 -- Dartmouth President Finds Gardening “More Useful” Than Ballplaying

 

Dartmouth College’s founding president Eleazar Wheelock thought his students should “turn the course of their diversions and exercises for their health, to the practice of some manual arts, or cultivation of gardens and other lands at the proper hours of leisure.”  That would be “more useful” than the tendency of some non-Dartmouth students to engage in “that which is puerile, such as playing with balls, bowls and other ways of diversion.”  Dartmouth is in Hanover NH.

 

Eleazar Wheelock, A Continuation of the Narrative [1771], as quoted in W. D. Quint, The Story of Dartmouth College (Little, Brown, Boston, 1914) , page 246.  Submitted by Scott Meacham, 8/21/06.  Dartmouth is in Hanover NH.

 

1771.2 – Province of New Hampshire Prohibits Christmas “Playing With Balls” in the Streets

 

“[M]any disorders are occasioned within the town of Portsmouth . . . by boys and fellows playing with balls in the public street: . . . [when] there is danger of breaking the windows of any building, public or private, [they] may be ordered to remove to any place where there shall be no such danger.”

 

“An Act to prevent and punish Disorders usually committed on the twenty-fifth Day of December . . . ,“ 23 December 1771, New Hampshire (Colony) Temporary Laws, 1773 (Portsmouth, NH), page 53.  Per Altherr ref # 25.

 

1771.3 – A Wider Bat? Even in Cricket, There’s Always a Joker

 

“There was no size limit [on a cricket bat] until 1771, when a Ryegate batsman came to the pitch with a bat wider than the wicket itself!  A maximum measurement was then drawn up, and this has remained the same since.” The Hambledon Committee new resolution, appearing two ddays later, specified that the bat much be no wider than 4.25 inches. The rule stuck.

 

Peter Scholefield, Cricket Laws and Terms [Axiom Publishing, Kent Town Australia, 1990], page 15.

 

 

1773.1 -- Surrey/Kent Cricket Match Draws 12,000, Spawns Poetic Duel

 

Surrey beat Kent at Bourne Paddock, July 19-21, 1773.  The Rev J. Duncombe described the match in a poem entitled “Surrey Triumphant; or, the Kentish-Men’s Defeat.  A New Ballad, Being a Parody on ‘Chevy Chase’,” which [cheeeeeky indeed] appeared in the Kentish Gazette of July 24.  Then “a Gentleman” penned a reply, “Kentish Cricketers.” This exchange is amply told in H. T. Waghorn, compiler, Cricket Scores, Notes, Etc. from 1730-1773 (Blackwood, London, 1899)pp 116 – 126.  Accessed via Google Books 10/19/2008.

 

 

1773.2 -- “Best” Cricket Bats Sold for Four Shillings Sixpence

 

Pett’s of Sevenoaks was selling “best bats” for 4s 6d.  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 18.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

1774.1 -- Cricket Rules Adjusted -- Visitors Bat First, LBW Added

 

A “Committee of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Kent, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex, and London” agree on rule changes.  Ford’s summary:  “Particular reference is made to the requirements of gambling.  Ball between 5.5 and 5.75 ounces.  LBW [leg-before-wicket, a form of batman interference -- LM] for the first time; short runs; visiting side gets the choice of pitch and first innings.  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 18.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

Writing in 1890, Steel and Lyttelton say that “[t]he earliest laws of the game, or at least the earliest which have reached us, are of the year 1774:”  See A.G. Steel and R. H. Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 12. 

 

 

1774.2 – Ah, The Good Ol’ Days: Cricket Now No Longer “Innocent Pastime”

 

“The game at cricket, which requires that utmost exertion of strength and agility, was followed, until of late years, for manly exercise, animated by a noble spirit of emulation. This sport has too long been perverted from diversion and innocent pastime to excessive gaming and public dissipation.”  Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser (Londoin) August 23, 1774, Column 1, seventh paragraph.

 

1775.1 – Soldier in CT “Played Ball All Day”

 

“Wednesday the 6.  We played ball all day”

 

[Lyman, Simeon], “Journal of Simeon Lyman of Sharon August 10 to December 28, 1775,” in “Orderly Book  and Journals Kept by Connecticut Men While Taking Part in the American Revolution 1775 – 1778,” Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, volume 7 [Connecticut Historical Society, 1899, p. 117.  Per Altherr, ref # 26.  Lyman was near New London CT.

 

1775.2 – Soldier in MA Played Ball

 

Thomas Altherr writes in 2008:  “Ephriam [Ephraim? – TA] Tripp, a soldier at Dorchester in 1775, also left a record, albeit brief, of ball playing: ‘Camping and played bowl,’ he wrote on May 30.  ‘Bowl’ for Tripp meant ball, because elsewhere he referred to cannonballs as ‘cannon bowls.’  On June 24 he penned: ‘We went to git our meney that we shud yak when we past muster com home and played bawl.’”  Note:  Dorchester MA, presumably?  Is it clear whether Tripp was a British soldier?  May 1775 was some months before an American army formed.

 

E. Tripp, “His book of a journal of the times in the year 1775 from the 19^th day,” Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University:  “Diaries (Miscellaneous) Collection, Group 18, Box 16, Folder 267.  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 39

 

 

1776.1 -- Book on Juvenile Pastimes Comments on Trap Ball

 

Michel Angelo, Juvenile Sports and Pastimes [London], 2^nd edition. per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 179.  The text decries the use of a broad flat bat instead of a thin round one, which had evidently been used formerly.

 

1776.2 – NJ Officer Plays Ball Throughout His Military Service

 

Elmer, Ebenezer, “Journal of Lieutenant Ebenezer Elmer, of the Third Regiment of New Jersey Troops in the Continental Service,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society [1848], volume 1, number 1, pp. 26, 27, 30, and 31, and volume 3, number 2, pp.98. Per Altherr ref # 29.

 

1776c.3 – Revolutionary War Officer Plays Cricket, Picks Blueberries

 

“The days would follow without incident, one day after another.  An officer with a company of Pennsylvania riflemen [in Washington’s army] wrote of nothing to do but pick blueberries and play cricket.”  David McCullough, 1776 (Simon and Schuster, 2005), page 40.  McCullough does not give a source for this item.  Provided by Priscilla Astifan, 19CBB posting of 8/5/2008 and email of 11/16/2008.  McCullough notes that the majority of the army comprised farmers and skilled artisan [ibid, page 34].

 

1777.1 – Revolutionary War Prisoner Watches Ball-Playing in NYC Area

 

Sabine, William H. W., ed., The New York Diary of Lieutenant Jabez Finch of the 17^th (Connecticut) Regiment from August 22, 1776 to December 15, 1777 [private printing, 1954], pp. 126, 127, and 162.  Per Altherr ref # 34.

 

1777.2 – Mass. Sailor Plays Ball in English Prison

 

[Herbert, Charles], A Relic of the Revolution, Containing a Full and Particular Account of the Sufferings and Privations of All the American Prisoners Captured on the High Seas, and Carried to Plymouth, England, During the Revolution of 1776 [Charles S. Pierce, Boston, 1847], p. 109.  Per Altherr ref # 35.

 

1777.3 -- Cricket Gets Improved Wicket – A Third Stump Added

 

Says Ford: “Third (middle) stump introduced.”  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 18.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

1778.1 – American Surgeon Sees Ball-Playing in English Prison

 

Coan, Marion, ed., “A Revolutionary Prison Diary: The Journal of Dr. Jonathan Haskins,” New England Quarterly, volume 17, number 2 [June 1944], p. 308.  Per Altherr ref # 36.

 

1778.2 – Teamster Sees Soldiers Play Ball.

 

[Joslin, Joseph], “Journal of Joseph Joslin Jr of South Killingly A Teamster in the Continental Service March 1777 – August 1778, in “Orderly Book [sic?] and Journals Kept by Connecticut Men While Taking Part in the American Revolution 1775 – 1778,” Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, volume 7 [Connecticut Historical Society, 1899, pp. 353 - 354.  Per Altherr, ref # 27.

 

1778.3 – MA Sergeant Found Some Time and “Plaid Ball”

 

Symmes, Rebecca D., ed., A Citizen Soldier in the American Revolution: The Diary of Benjamin Gilbert of Massachusetts and New York [New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, 1980], pp. 30 and 49; and “Benjamin Gilbert Diaries 1782 – 1786,” G372, NYS Historical Association Library, Cooperstown.  Per Altherr ref # 30.

 

1778.4 – Ewing Reports Playing “At Base” and Wicket at Valley Forge – with the Fataher of his Country

 

George Ewing, a Revolutionary War soldier, tells of playing a game of “Base” at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: “Exercisd in the afternoon in the intervals playd at base.  Caveat: It is unknown whether this this was a ball game, rather than prisoner’s base.

 

Ewing also wrote: "[May 2d] in the afternoon playd a game at Wicket with a number of Gent of the Arty . . . .“  And “This day [May 4, 1778] His Excellency [i.e., George Washington] dined with G Nox and after dinner did us the honor to play at Wicket with us."

 

Ewing, G., The Military Journal of George Ewing (1754-1824), A Soldier of Valley Forge [Private Printing, Yonkers, 1928], pp 35 [“base”] and 47 [wicket].  Also found at John C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. Volume: 11. [U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1931]. page 348.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.  The text of Ewing’s diary is unavailable at Google Books as of 11/17/2008.

 

Also note:

“Q.  What did soldiers do for recreation?

“A:  During the winter months the soldiers were mostly concerned with their survival, so recreation was probably not on their minds.  As spring came, activities other than drills and marches took place.  “Games” would have included a game of bowls played with cannon balls and called “Long Bullets.”  “Base” was also a game – the ancestor of baseball, so you can imagine how it might be played; and cricket/wicket.  George Washington himself was said to have took up the bat in a game of wicket in early May after a dinner with General Knox! . . . Other games included cards and dice . . . gambling in general, although that was frowned upon.”

 

From the website of Historic Valley Forge; see --

http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/youasked/067.htm, accessed 10/25/02. Note: it is possible that the source of this material is the Ewing entry above, but we’re hoping for more details from the Rangers at Valley Forge.  In 2008, we’re still hoping.

 

1778.5 -- Cricket Game Played at Cannon’s Tavern, New York City

 

“The game of Cricket, to be played on Monday next, the 14th inst., at Cannon’s Tavern, at Corlear’s Hook. Those Gentlemen that choose to become Members of the Club, are desired to attend. The wickets to be pitched at two o’Clock”

 

Per John Thorn, 6/15/04: from Phelps-Stokes, Vol. VI, Index—ref. against Chronology and Chronology Addenda (Vol. 4aA or 6A); also, Vol. V, p.1068 (6/13/1778): Royal Gazette, 6/13/1778. Later, the cricket grounds were “where the late Reviews were, near the Jews Burying Ground ” Royal Gazette, 6/17/1780.

 

1778.6 -- NH Loyalist Plays Ball in NY; Mentions “Wickett”

 

The journal of Enos Stevens, a NH man serving in British forces, mentions playing ball seven times from 1778 to 1781.  Only one specifies the game played in terms we know: “in the after noon played Wickett” in March of 1781.  C. K. Boulton, ed., “A Fragment of the Diary of Lieutenant Enos Stevens, Tory, 1777-1778,” New England Quarterly v. 11, number 2 (June 1938), pages 384-385, per Altherr reference #33.  Tom notes that the original journal is at the Vermont Historical Society in Montpelier VT.

 

1779.1 – Cricket Played On Grounds near NY’s Brooklyn Ferry.

 

August 9, 1779, match between Brooklyn and Greenwich Clubs. “A Set of Gentlemen” propose playing a cricket match this day, and every Monday during the summer season, “on the Cricket Ground near Brooklyn Ferry.” The company “of any Gentleman to join the set in the exercise” is invited. A large Booth is erected for the accommodation of spectators:” New York Mercury, 8/9/1779

 

Per John Thorn, 6/15/04:  from Phelps-Stokes, Vol. VI, Index—ref. against Chronology and Chronology Addenda (Vol. 4aA or 6A); Vol. V, p. 1092.

 

1779.2 – Lieutenant Reports Playing Ball, and Playing Bandy Wicket

 

“Samuel Shute, a New Jersey Lieutenant, jotted down his reference to playing ball in central Pennsylvania sometime between July 9 and July 22, 1779; ‘until the 22^nd, the time was spent playing shinny and ball’ Incidentally, Shute distinguished among various sports, referring elsewhere in his journal to ‘Bandy Wicket.’ He did not confuse baseball with types of field hockey [bandy] and cricket [wicket] that the soldiers also played.”  -- Thomas Altherr.  Note: Gomme says that “bandy wicket” was a name for cricket in England. [XXX add cite here]

 

[Shute, Samuel], “Journal of Lt. Samuel Shute,” in Frederick Cook, ed., Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779 [Books for Libraries Press, Freeport NY, reprint of the 1885 edition], p. 268. Per Altherr ref # 28.

 

1779.3 – Revolutionary War Soldier H. Dearborn Reports Playing Ball in PA

 

Brown, Lloyd, and H. Peckham, eds., Revolutionary War Journals of Henry Dearborn 1775 – 1783  [Books for Libraries Press, Freeport NY, 1969 [original edition 1939]], pp 149 – 150.  Per Altherr ref # 1.

 

1779.4 – French Official Sees George Washington Playing Catch “For Hours”

 

Chase, E. P., ed., Our Revolutionary Forefathers: The Letters of Francois Marquis de Barbe-Marbois during his Residence in the United States as Secretary of the French Legation 1779 – 1785 [Duffield and Company, NY, 1929], p. 114.  Per Altherr ref # 32.

 

1779.5 -- Army Lieutenant Cashiered for “Playing Ball with Serjeants”

 

Lieutenant Michael Doughetry, 6^th Maryland Regiment, was cashiered at a General Court Martial at Elizabeth Town on April 10, 1779, in part for a breach of the 21^st article, 14^th section of the rules and articles of war -- “unofficer and ungentlemanlike conduct in associating and playing ball with Serjeants on the 6^th instant.”

 

Fitzpatrick, John C., ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Sources, 1745-1799, vol. 14 [USGPO, Washington, 1931], page 378.  Submitted 10/12/2004 by John Thorn.

 

1779.6 – Dartmouth College Fine for Ballplay – Two Shillings

 

“If any student shall play ball or use any other deversion [sic] that exposes the College or hall windows within three rods of either he shall be fined two shillings . . . “  In 1782 the protected area was extended to six rods. John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College 1815-1909 (Rumford Press, Concord NH, 1913), page 593.  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 35.  See also #1771.1.

 

1780.1 -- NYC Press Cites Cricket Matches to be Played in Summer

 

A cricket match is advertised to be played on this day, and continued every Monday throughout the summer, “on the Ground where the late Reviews were, near the Jews Burying Ground.”

 

Per John Thorn, 6/15/04: from Phelps-Stokes, Vol. VI, Index—ref. against Chronology and Chronology Addenda (Vol. 4aA or 6A); June 19, 1780. Vol. V, p. 1111, 6/19/1780: New York Mercury, June 19, 1780

 

1780.2 -- Challenges for Cricket Matches between Englishmen and Americans

 

On August 19, 11 New Yorkers issued this challenge: “we, in this public manner challenge the best eleven Englishmen in the City of New York to play the game of Cricket . . . for any sum they think proper to stake.”  On August 26, the Englishmen accepted, suggesting a stake of 100 guineas.  On September 6, the news was that the match was on: “at the Jew’s Burying-ground, WILL be played on Monday next . . . the Wickets to be pitched at Two O’Clock.”  We seem to lack a report of the outcome of this match.

 

Royal Gazette, August 19, 1780, page 3 column 4; August 26, 1780, page 2 column 2; and September 6, 1780, page 3 column 4.  Submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.

 

 

1780.3 – [this entry was expanded and appears as #1779.6]

 

1780c.4 – “Round Ball” Believed to be Played in MA

 

“Mr. Stoddard believes that Round Ball was played by his father in 1820, and has the tradition from his father that two generations before, i.e., directly after the revolutionary war, it was played and was not then a novelty.”

 

Letter from Henry Sargent, Grafton MA, to the Mills Commission, May 23, 1905.  Stoddard was an elderly gentleman who had played round ball in his youth.

 

1780s.5 -- Diminished in its Range, Stoolball Still Played at Brighton

 

“The apparent former wide diffusion of stoolball was reduced in the 18^th century to a few geographical survivals.  It was played in Brighton to celebrate a royal birthday in the 1780s and by the early 19^th century appeared to be limited to a few Kent and Sussex Wealden settlements.”

 

John Lowerson, “Conflicting Values in the Revivals of a ‘Traditional Sussex Game,’ Sussex Achaeological Collections 133 [1995], page 265.  Lowerson’s source for the 1780s report seems to be F. Gale, Modern English Sports [London, 1885], pages 8 and/or 11.

 

1780s.6 – Newell Sees Baseball’s Roots in MA

 

Writing on early baseball in the year 1883, W. W. Newell says:

 

“The present scientific game . . . was known in Massachusetts, twenty years ago, as the ‘New York game.’  A ruder form of Base-ball has been played in some Massachusetts towns for a century; while in other parts of New England no game with the ball was formerly known except “Hockey.”  There was great local variety in these sports.”

 

Newell, William W., Games and Songs of American Children (Dover, New York, 1963 – originally published 1883) page 184.  Note:  The omission of wicket – and arguably cricket – from Newell’s account is interesting here.  The claim that hockey was seen as a ball game is also interesting.

 

1780c.7 –The Young Josiah Quincy of MA:  “My Heart was in Ball”

 

Josiah Quincy was sent off to Phillips Academy in about 1778 at age six.  It was a tough place.  “The discipline of the Academy was severe, and to a child, as I was, disheartening. . . [p24/25]. I cannot imagine a more discouraging course of education that that to which I was subjected. The truth was, I was an incorrigible lover of sports of every kind.  My heart was in ball and marbles.”  Biographer Edmund Quincy sets this passage in direct quotes, but does not provide a source.

 

Edmund Quincy, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts (Fields, Osgood and Company, Boston, 1869), pages 24-25.. 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 36.  Accessed on 11/16/2088 via Google Books search for “’life of josiah quincy.’”

 

1781.1 – Teen Makes White Leather Balls for Officers’ Ball-Playing

 

Hanna, John S., ed., A History of the Life and Services of Captain Samuel Dewees, A Native of Pennsylvania, and Soldier of the Revolutionary and Last Wars [Robert Neilson, Baltimore, 1844], p. 265- 266.  Per Altherr ref #37.

 

1781.2 – “Ancient Harvard Custom:  Freshmen Furnish the Bats, Balls

 

“The Freshmen shall furnish Batts, Balls, and Foot-balls, for the use of the students, to be kept at the Buttery.”

 

Rule 16, “President, Professors, and Tutor’s Book,” volume IV.  The list of rules is headed “The antient Customs of Harvard College, established by the Government of it.”

 

Conveyed to David Block, April 18, 2005, by Professor Harry R. Lewis, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.  Dr. Lewis adds,  “The buttery was a sort of supply room, not just for butter.  Who is to say what the “Batts” and “Balls” were to be used for, but it is interesting that any bat and ball game could already have been regarded as ancient at Harvard in 1781.”

 

1781.3 – “Game at Ball” Variously Perceived at Harvard

 

-- And that no other person was present in said area, except a boy who, they say was playing with a Ball -- From the testimony some of the persons in the kitchen it appeared that the company there assembled were very noisy --That some game at Ball was played --That some of the company called on the Boy to keep tally; which Boy was seen by the same person, repeated by running after the Ball, with a penknife & stick in his hand, on which stick notches were cut --That a Person who tarried at home at Dr. Appleton's was alarmed by an unusual noise about three o'clock, & on looking out the window, saw in the opening between Hollis & Stoughton, four or five persons, two of whom were stripped of their coats, running about, sometimes stooping down & apparently throwing something . . .”  Posted to 19CBB by Kyle DeCicco-Carey [date?]  Source: Harvard College Faculty Records (Volume IV, 1775-1781), call number UAIII 5.5.2, page 220 (1781).  Harvard is in Cambridge MA.

 

1782.1—Cricket Match Scheduled for the Green, Near Shipyards,

 

Cricket is to be played on July 15th “on the green, near the Ship-Yards.” Royal Gazette, 7/13/1782, page 1 column 2.  Submitted by John Thorn 6/15/04 and extended by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.

 

1782.2 – Ball Played at Albany During War

 

Spear, John A., ed., “Joel Shepard Goes to War,” New England Quarterly, volume 1, number 3 [July 1928], p. 344.  Per Altherr ref # 38.

 

1782.3 – NH Diarist Notes that Local Youths “Play Ball Before My Barn”

 

Stabler, Lois K., ed., Very Poor and of a Lo Make: The Journal of Abner Sanger [Peter E. Randall, Portsmouth NH, 1896], p. 416.  Per Altherr ref # 74.

 

1784.1 – UPenn Bans Ball Playing Near Open University Windows

 

RULES for the Good Government and Discipline of the SCHOOL in the UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA [Francis Bailey, Philadelphia PA, 1784]. Per Altherr ref # 41.

 

1784.2 – Seymour Notation Adverts to Evidence that Town Ball Exported to England

 

“Rounders not a serious game until 1889 in Britain.  But at least close resemblance.  Evidence Town Ball introduced by Amer. to Br. 1784 – between Rounders and Base Ball.”

 

Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.  Note: it would be good to find such evidence soon.

 

1785.1 – Thomas Jefferson: Hunting is More Character-building Than Ballplaying

 

Jefferson:  “Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.”

 

Thomas Jefferson letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785, in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson [Princeton University Press, 1953], volume 8, p. 407.  Per Altherr ref # 55.

 

 

1785.2 – Cricket, Long After Reaching Tazmania, Gets Past Hadrian’s Wall

 

“It is difficult to believe that the English soldiers who flooded into Scotland in 1745/1746 did not bring cricket with them, but evidence has not yet emerges.  The well-known ‘first cricket match in Scotland’ took place at Earl Cathcart’s seat at Schow Park, Alloa, in September 1785, when Hon. Colonel Talbot’s XI played the Duke of Atholl’s XI. . . . Most of the players were English: no further matches in Scotland followed from it.  However, a Scot, the Duke of Hamilton, had already joined the MCC, and a traveler hoping to inspect Hamilton Place in 1785 found that ‘as the Duke plays cricket every afternoon, strangers don’t get admittance then.’”  John Burnett, Riot, Revelry and Rout: Sport in Lowland Scotland before 1860 (Tuckwell Press, 2000), page 252. Burnett footnotes this passage The Scottish Antiquary, 11 (1897), 82.  Note: we don’t yet know which of the events are documented there.  

 

Another source reports that the Talbot/Atholl match was played on September 8, 1785, for 1000 pounds per man. L. Stephen and S. Lee, eds., Dictionary of National Biography (Macmillan, New York, 1908), entry on Thomas Graham, Baron Lynedoch, page 359.

 

 

1786.1 – “Baste Ball” Played at Princeton

 

“Baste Ball” is played by students on the campus of Princeton University in NJ.  From a student’s diary:

 “A fine day, play baste ball in the campus but am beaten for I miss both catching and striking the ball.”

 

Smith, John Rhea, March 22 1786, in “Journal at Nassau Hall,” Princeton Library MSS, AM 12800.  Per Altherr ref # 44.  Also found in Gerald S. Couzens, A Baseball Album [Lippincott and Crowell, NY, 1980], page 15.  Per Guschov, page 153. 

 

An article has appeared about Smith’s journal.  See Woodward, Ruth, “Journal at Nassau Hall,” PULC 46 (1985), pp. 269-291, and PULC 47 (1986), pp 48-70.  Note:  Does this article materially supplement our appreciation of Smith’s brief comment?

 

 

1786.2 -- Game Called Wicket Reported in England

 

“The late game of Wicket was decided by an extraordinary catch made by Mr. Lenox, to which he ran more than 40 yards, and received the ball between two fingers.”  Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (London), 6/27/1786.  Provided by Richard Hershberger, email of 2/3/2008.  Richard adds: “I know of only one other English citation of “wicket” as the name of a game.  I absolutely do not assume that it was the same as the game associated with Connecticut.”

 

1787.1 – Ballplaying Prohibited at Princeton – Shinny or Early Base Ball?

 

“It appearing that a play at present much practiced by the smaller boys . . . with balls and sticks,” the faculty of Princeton University prohibits such play on account of its being dangerous as well as “low and unbecoming gentlemen students.”

 

Quoted without apparent reference in Henderson, pp. 136-7.  Sullivan, on 7/29/2005, cited Warnum L. Collins, “Princeton,” page 208, per Harold Seymour’s dissertation.  Wallace quotes the faculty minute [November 26, 1787] in George R. Wallace, Princeton Sketches: The Story of Nassau Hall (Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1894), page 77, but he does not cite Collins.  Caveat: Collins – and Wallace -- believed that the proscribed game was shinny, and Altherr makes the same judgment – see 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 35-36.  Can we determine why this inference was made?  The Wallace book was accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Book search for “’princeton sketches.’”  The college is in Princeton NJ.

 

 

1787.2 – VT Man’s Letter Says “Three Times is Out at Wicket”

 

Levi Allen to Ira Allen, July 7, 1787, in John J. Duffy, ed., Ethan Allen and His Kin, Correspondence, 1772 – 1819 [University Press of New England, Hanover NH, 1998], volume 1, p. 224. Per Altherr ref # 75.

 

1787.3 – Marylebone Cricket Club, Later Official Custodian of the Game, is Founded

 

Interview with Stephen Green at Lords.  Note: needs verification.  Also Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 19.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

1787.4 -- US Publisher Offers Books “More Pleasurable Than Bat and Ball”

 

Thomas, Isaiah, publisher, The Royal Primer: or, An Easy and Pleasant Guide to the Art of Reading [Worcester], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 179.  The last page of this reader encourages the reader to come to Thomas’ book store, where “they may be suited with Something ore valuable than Cakes, prettier than Tops, handsomer than Kites, more pleasurable that Bat and Ball, more entertaining than either Scating or Sliding, and durable as marbles.”

 

1788.1 -- Cricketer Experiments with Round-Arm Bowling

 

Says John Ford:  “Tom Walker is said to have experimented with round-arm bowling.”  John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 19.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.  Caveat: The Encyclopedia Brittanica on Nyren’s estimate of about 1790 for Walker’s innovation; A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, Eleventh Edition,  (Encyclopeida Brittanica Company, New York, 1910) Volume VII, page 439, accessed 10/19/2008, as advised by John Thorn, email of 2/2/2008..

 

1788.2 – Noah Webster, CT Ballplayer?

 

“Connecticut lexicographer and writer Noah Webster may have been referring to a baseball- type game when he wrote his journal entry for March 24-25, 1788: ‘Take a long walk.  Play at Nines at Mr Brandons.  Very much indisposed.’”

 

Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball,” reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It; see page 241.  Altherr cites the diary as Webster, Noah, “Diary,” reprinted in Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, E. E. F Ford, ed., (privately printed, New York, 1912), page 227 of volume 1.  Note: “Nines seems an unusual name for a ball game; do we find it elsewhere?  Could he have been denoting nine-pins or nine-holes?  John Thorn, in 2/3/2008, says he inclines to nine-pins as the game alluded to.

 

1789.1 -- A Tale of Two Cricket Traditions?

 

Ford reports that “A cricket tour to France arranged, but cancelled at the last minute because of the French Revolution.  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 19.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

1789.2 – New York Children’s Pastimes Recalled:  Old Cat, Rounders Cited

 

“ . . . outside school hours, the boys and girls of 1789 probably had as good a time as childhood ever enjoyed.  Swimming and fishing were close to every doorstep  The streets, vacant lots, and nearby fields resounded with the immemorial games of old cat, rounders, hopscotch, I spy, chuck farthing and prisoner’s base . . . .  The Dutch influence made especially popular tick-tack, coasting, and outdoor bowling.”

 

Monaghan, Frank, and Marvin Lowenthal, This Was New York:  The Nation’s Capital in 1789 (Books for Libraries Press, 1970 – originally published 1943 , Chapter 8, “The Woman’s World,” pages 100-101.  Portions of this book are revealed on Google Books, as accessed 12/29/2007.  According to the book’s index, “games” were also covered on pages 80, 81, 115, 177, and 205, all of which were masked.  The volume includes “hundreds of footnotes in the original draft,” according to accompanying information.  Caveat:  We find no reference to the term “rounders” until 1828.  See #1828.1 below.

 

1790s.1 – Doctor in DE Recalls “Youthfull Folley”: Included Ball-playing

 

Hancock, Harold B., ed., “William Morgan’s Autobiography and Diary: Life in Sussex County, 1780 – 1857,” Delaware History, volume 19, number 1 [Spring/Summer 1980], pp. 43 - 44.  Per Altherr ref # 80.

 

1790s.2 – Boston Merchant Recalls “Playing Ball on the Common Before Breakfast”

 

Mason, Jonathan, “Recollections of a Septuagenarian,” Downs Special Collection, Winterthur Library [Winterthur, Delaware], Document 30, volume 1, pp. 20 – 21.  Per Altherr ref # 81.

 

1790s.3 – Britannica: Stickball Dates to Late 18^th Century?

 

“Stickball is a game played on a street or other restricted area, with a stick, such as a mop handle or broomstick, and a hard rubber ball. Stickball developed in the late 18^th century from such English games as old cat, rounders, and town ball.  Stickball also relates to a game played in southern England and colonial Boston in North America called stoolball.  All of these games were played on a field with bases, a ball, and one or more sticks.  The modern game is played especially in New York City on the streets where such fixtures as a fire hydrant or an abandoned car serve as bases.”

 

Britannica Online search conducted 5/25/2005.   Note: No sources are provided for this unique report of early stickball.  It also seems unusual to define town ball as an English game. Caveat:  We find no reference to the term “rounders” until 1828.  See #1828.1 below.

 

1790s.4 – Southern Pols Calhoun and Crawford:  Ballplaying Schoolmates?

 

“These two illustrious statesmen [southern leaders John C. Calhoun and William H. Crawford], who had played town ball and marbles and gathered nuts together . . . were never again to view each other except in bonds of bitterness.”

 

J. E. D. Shipp, Giant Days: or the Life and Times of William H. Crawford [Southern Printers, 1909], page 167.  Caveat: Crawford was ten years older than Calhoun, so it seems unlikely that they were close in school. Both leaders had attended Waddell’s school, but that school opened in 1804 [see #1804.1] when Crawford was 32 years old, so their common school must have preceded their time at Waddell’s.

 

1790.5 John Adams Refers to Cricket in Argument about Washington’s New Title

 

“Cricket was certainly known in Boston as early as 1790, for John Adams, then Vice-President of the United States, speaking in the debate about the choice of an appropriate name for the chief officer of the United States, declared that ‘there were presidents of fire companies and of a cricket club.’” John Lester, A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [UPenn Press, Philadelphia, 1951], page 5.

 

 

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.

 

1790s.7 – In Boston, “Boys Played Ball in the Streets?”

 

Boston, with only 18,000 inhabitants, was sparsely populated.  “Boys played ball in the streets without disturbance, or danger from the rush of traffic.”  Edmund Quincy, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts (Fields, Osgood and Company, 1869), page 37.  Writing 70 years later, the biographer here is painting a picture of the city when his father Josiah finished school and moved there at 18.  He does not document this observation.  One might speculate that Josiah had told Edmund about the ballplaying.  Accessed on 11/16/2088 via Google Books search for “’life of josiah quincy.’”

 

1791.1 – “Bafeball” Among Games Banned in Pittsfield MA – also Cricket, Wicket

 

In Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to promote the safety of the exterior of the newly built meeting house, particularly the windows, a by-law is enacted to bar “any game of wicket, cricket, baseball, batball, football, cats, fives, or any other game played with ball,” within eighty yards of the structure. However, the letter of the law did not exclude the city’s lovers of muscular sport from the tempting lawn of “Meeting-House Common.” This is the first indigenous instance of the game of baseball being referred to by that name on the North American continent. It is spelled herein as bafeball.  “Pittsfield is baseball’s Garden of Eden,” said Mayor James Ruberto.

 

Per John Thorn:  The History of Pittsfield (Berkshire County),Massachusetts, From the Year 1734 to the Year 1800. Compiled and Written, Under the General Direction of a Committee, by J. E. A. Smith. By Authority of the Town. [Lea and Shepard, 149 Washington Street, Boston, 1869], 446-447.  The actual documents themselves repose in the Berkshire Athenaeum.

 

1792.1 -- Sporting Magazine Begins Its Cricket Reports in England

 

Ford reports that this 1792 saw “First publication of the Sporting Magazine which featured cricket scores and reports. . . .  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 19.  Ford does not give a citation for this account, but John Thorn [email, 2/2/2008] found an ad announcing the new magazine: “Sporting Magazine,” The General Evening Post (London), Tuesday Octobver 23, 1792, bottom of column four.  21 topics are listed as the scope of the new publication, starting with racing, hunting, and coursing: cricket is the only field sport listed.

 

1793.1 -- Engraving Shows Game with Wickets at Dartmouth College

 

A copper engraving showing Dartmouth College appeared in Massachusetts Magazine in February 1793.  It is the earliest known drawing of the College, and shows a wicket-oriented game being played in the yard separating college buildings. The game appears to be wicket, but College personnel ask whether it is not an early form of cricket. See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/Library_Bulletin/Nov1992/LB-N92-KCramer2.html; 

 

Submitted by Scott Meacham 8/17/06.  Dartmouth is in Hanover NH.

 

1793.2 -- Big Cricket Stakes Indeed

 

“A game of cricket for 1000 guineas a side between sides raised by the Earl of Winchilsea and Lord Darnley.”  John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1770-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 19.  Ford does not give a source for this event.

 

1793.3 – Curious Cricket Match Planned in England

 

“CURIOUS CRICKET MATCH.  A young nobleman, of great notoriety in the [illegible: baut-ton? A corrupton of beau ton?], had made a match of a singular nature, with one of the would-be members of the jockey club, for a considerable sum of money, to be played by Greenwich pensioners, on Blackheath, sometime in the present month.  The 11 on one side are to have only one arm each; and the other, to have both their arms and only one leg each.  The nobleman has not at present made his election, whether he intends to back the legs or the wings – but the odds are considerably in favour of the latter.”

 

Independent Chronicle and Universal Advertiser, August 29, 1793, as taken from an unknown London newspaper.  Posted to 19CBB 7/30/2007 by Richard Hershberger.  John Thorn, email of 2/2/2008, found an identical account:  “Curious Cricket Match,” World, Monday, May 13, 1793, column two, at the fold.  Perhaps the Independent found August to be a slow news month?

 

 

1793. 4 – Scorer Compiles “Complete List” of the Years Grand Cricket Matches

 

Samuel Britcher, Scorer, Complete List of All the Grand Matches of Cricket that Have Been Played in the Year of 1793, with a Correct State of Each Innings (London)26 pages.   Included are one-page scoresheets for 25 games from May 13 to September 9, 1793.  Provided by John Thorn, email of 1/17/2008.  Each includes the match’s stake:  12 are played for 1000 guineas,   11 are for 500 guineas, one is for 50 guineas, and one is for 25 guineas.  In four matches, a side of 22 men played a side of 11 men, in one match each side had three men, and one match was between Mr. Brudennall and Mr. Welch.  An All England club played in 5 matches, and the Mary-Le-Bone played in 9 matches.  Three matches took 4 days, 8 took 3 days, 13 took two days, and one took one day.  Now you know.

 

1794.1 -- New York Cricket Club Meets “Regularly”

 

“By 1794 the New York  Cricket Club was meeting regularly, usually at Battins Tavern at six o’clock in the evenings.  Match games were played between different members of the club, wickets being pitched exactly at two o’clock.”  Holliman, Jennie, American Sports (1785-1835) [Porcupine Press, Philadelphia, 1975], page 67.

 

Holliman cites Wister, W. R., Some Reminiscences of Cricket in Philadelphia Before 1861, page 5, for the NYCC data. 

 

1794.2 -- Historian Cites “Club-ball”

 

David Block finds an earlier reference to “club-ball” than Strutt’s.  It is James Pettit Andrews, The History of Great Britain (Cadell, London, 1794.), page 438.  Email from David, 2/27/08.

 

David explains“ that in Baseball Before We Knew It, “I took the historian Joseph Strutt to task for making it seem as if a 14^th century edict under the reign Edward III [see #1300s.2 above] offered proof that a game called “club-ball” existed. It now appears that I may have done Mr. Strutt a partial injustice. A history book published seven years before Strutt’s translates the Latin pilam bacculoreum the same way he did, as club-ball (which I believe leaves the impression that the game was a distinct one, and not a generic reference to ball games played with a stick or staff.) I still hold Strutt guilty for his baseless argument that this alleged 14^th century game was the ancestor of cricket and other games played with bat and ball. Andrews, in his history of England, cites a source for his passage on ball games, but I can not make it out from the photocopy in my possession.”

 

 

1795.1 – Portsmouth NH Bans Cricket and Other Ball Games

 

By-Laws of the Town of Portsmouth, Passed at their Annual Meeting Held March 25, 1795 [John Melcher, Portsmouth], pp. 5 – 6.  Per Altherr ref # 66.

 

1795.2 -- Survey Reports Cricket in New England, Playing at Ball in TN

 

Winterbotham, William, An Historical, Geographical, Commercial and Philosophical View of the American United States [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 180. Coverage of New England [volume 2, page 17] reports that “The healthy and athletic diversions of cricket, foot ball, quoits, wrestling, jumping, hopping, foot races, and prison bars, are universally practiced in the country, and some of them in the most populous places, and by people of almost all ranks.”  The Tennessee section [volume 3, page 235] mentions the region’s fondness for sports, including “playing at ball.”  Block notes that Winterbotham is sometimes credited with saying that bat and ball was popular in America before the Revolutionary War, and that adults played it, but reports that scholars, himself included, have not yet confirmed such wording at this point.

 

1795.3 -- Playing Ball Cited as Major New England Diversion

 

What are the diversions of the New England people?  “Dancing is a favorite one of both sexes.  Sleighing in winter, and skating, playing ball, gunning, and fishing are the principal.”

 

Johnson, Clifton, and Carl Withers, Old Time Schools and School-Books [Dover, New York, 1963], page 41.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

 

1795.4 - Deerfield’s Fine for Playing Ball:  Six Cents

 

A long list of punishable offenses at Deerfield included six cents for “playing ball near school.”  This was a minor fine, the same sanction as getting a drop of tallow on a book, tearing a page of a book, or leaving one’s room during study.  In contrast, a one dollar assessment was made for playing cards, backgammon, or checkers, or walking or visiting on Saturday night or Sunday.

 

Marr, Harriet Webster, The Old New England Academies Founded Before 1826 [Comet Press, New York, 1959], page 142.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

 

1795.5 –Playing At Ball in the Untamed West

 

“Wrestling, jumping, running foot races, and playing at ball, are the common diversions.”  W. Winterbotham, An Historical Geographical, Commercial, and Philosophical View of the American United States, Volume 3 (London, 1795), page 235.  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 30-31.  Tom notes [ibid] that Winterbotham was writing about Federal territory south of the Ohio River.  Note:  Kentucky, maybe? Volume 3 of this work is not accessible via Google Books as of 11/15/2008.

 

1796.1 -- Gutsmuths describes [in German, yet] “Englishe Base-Ball”

 

Gutsmuths Johann C. F., Spiele zur Uebung und Erholung des Korpers und Geistes fur die Jugend, ihre Erzieher und alle Freunde Unschuldiger Jugendfreuden [Schnepfenthal, Germany] per David Block, page 181.. This roughly translates as: Games for the Exercise and Recreation of Body and Spirit for the Youth and His Educator and All Friends of Innocent Joys of Youth.

Gutsmuths, an early German advocate of physical education, devotes a chapter to “Ball mit Freystaten (oder das Englische Base-ball)” -- that is, Ball with free station, or English base-ball.  He describes the game in terms that seem similar to later accounts of rounders and base-ball in English texts.  The game is described as one-out, all-out, having a three-strike rule, and placing the pitcher a few steps from the batsman.

 

For Text: Block carries a four-page translation of this text in Appendix 7, pages 275-278, in Baseball Before We Knew It.

 

Block advises [11/6/2005 communication] that Gutsmuths provides “the first hard, unambiguous evidence associating a bat with baseball . . . . We can only speculate as to when a bat was first employed in baseball, but my intuition is that it happened fairly early, probably by the mid-18^th century.”

 

1796.2 – Williams College Student Notes Ballplaying in Winter Months

 

Tarbox, Increase N., Diary of Thomas Robbins, D. D. 1796 – 1854 [Beacon Press, Boston, 1886], volume 1, pp. 8, 29, 32, 106, and 128.  Per Altherr ref # 54.  The college is in Williamstown MA.

 

 

1796.3 -- Eton Cricketers Flogged at School for Playing Match.  Ouch.

 

Ford summarizes a bad day for Etonians:  “Eton were beaten by Westminster School on Hounslow Heath and on return to college were flogged by the headmaster; it would seem that this was for playing rather than for losing.”  See John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 20.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

1796.4 – Early Geographer Sees Variety of Types New England Ballplaying

 

“Q:  What is the temper of the New-England people?

A: They are frank and open . . . .

Q: What are their diversions?

A: Dancing is a favorite of both sexes.  Sleigh-riding in winter, and skating, playing ball (of which there are several different games), gunning and fishing . . . “

 

Nathaniel Dwight, A Short But Comprehensive System of Geography  (Charles R. and George Webster, Albany NY) 1796), page 128.  Provided by John Thorn, 2/17/2008 email.

 

1797.1 – Daniel Webster Writes of “Playing Ball” While at Dartmouth

 

Daniel Webster, in private correspondence, writes of “playing ball,” while a student at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.

 

Webster, Daniel, Private Correspondence, Fletcher Webster, ed. [Little Brown, Boston 1857], volume 1, p. 66.  Per Altherr, ref # 45.  Altherr [p. 27] puts this date “at the turn of the century.”  On 7/31/2005, George Thompson added that “Volume 17, page 66 of the National Edition of his Writings and Speeches is supposed to have a reference by one Hotchkiss to Webster playing ball at Dartmouth.”

 

 

1797.2 – Newburyport MA Bans Cricket and Other Ball Games

 

Bye-Laws of Newburyport: Passed by the Town at Regular Meetings, and Approved by the Court of General Justice of the Peace for the County of Essex, Agreeably to a Law of this Commonwealth [Newburyport, 1797], p. 1.  Per Altherr ref # 68. 

 

1797.3 – Fayetteville NC Bans Sunday Ballplaying by African-Americans

 

Gilbert, Tom, Baseball and the Color Line, [Franklin Watts, NY, 1995], p.38.  Per Millen, note # 15.

 

1797.4 – “Grand Match” of Stoolball Pits Sussex and Kentish Ladies

 

“A grand Match of Stool-ball, between 11 Ladies of Sussex, in Pink, against 11 Ladies of Kent, in Blue Ribands.”

 

Source: an undated reproduction, which notes “this is a reproduction of the original 1797 Diversions programme.”  The match was scheduled for 10am on Wednesday, August 16, 1797.  Provided from the files of the National Stoolball Association, June 2007.

 

 

1797.5 –In NC, Negroes Face 15 Lashes for Ballplaying

 

A punishment of 15 lashes was specified for “negroes, that shall make a noise or assemble in a riotous manner in any of the streets [of Fayetteville NC] on the Sabbath day; or that may be seen playing ball on that day.”  North-Carolina Minerva (March 11, 1797), excerpted in G. Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History (Chapel Hill NC, 1937), page 551; as cited in 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 29

 

1798.1 – Jane Austen Mentions “Baseball” in Northanger Abbey.

 

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 (London, 1851), page.3.  Note: The 2008 “Masterpiece” TV version of this novel included a brief scene in which Catherine, at the age of about 17, plays a baseball-like game [rounders-based, arguably] involving posts with flags as bases.  It would be interesting to know how the screenwriter arrived at this depiction.

 

1798.2 -- Cricket Rules Revised

 

Rule changes:  [A] Instead of requiring a single ball to be used throughout a match, a new rule specified a new ball for each innings.  [B] Fielders can be substituted for, but the replacement players cannot bat.  

 

Peter Scholefield, Cricket Laws and Terms [Axiom Publishers, Kent Town Australia, 1990], pages 14 and 9, respectively.

 

In addition, Ford reports that “the size of the wicket was increased to 24 inches high by 7 inches wide with two bails.”  John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 20.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

1799.1 -- Novel Refers to Cricket, Base-ball

 

Cooke, Cassandra, Battleridge” an Historical tale, Founded on facts.  In Two Volumes.  By a Lady of Quality (G. Cawthorn, London, 1799). 

 

A character recalls how, when his clerkship to a lawyer ended, a former playmate took his leave by saying:

 

“Ah! no more cricket, no more base-ball, they are sending me to Geneva.” 

 

David Block [page 183) 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.

 

1799.2 -- NY Cricket Club Schedules Match Among Members

 

“A number of members of the Cricket Club having met on the old ground on Saturday last, by appointment it was unanimously agreed to meet on Thursday next, at the same place, at half past 2 o’clock.  Wickets will be pitched at 3 o’clock exactly.”

 

Commercial Advertiser, June 18, 1799, page 3 column 1.  Submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.

 

1800C.1 – Sports at Exeter Academy include “Old-Fashioned ‘Bat and Ball’ . . . and Football”

 

Cunningham, Frank H., Familiar Sketches of the Phillips Exeter Academy and Surroundings [James R. Osgood and Company, Boston, 1883], p. 281. Per Altherr ref # 76.

 

1800.2 – John Knox Owns a “Ball Alley” and Racquets Court in NYC, 1800-1803.

 

Item from John Thorn, 6/25/04.  Note: It seems possible that a “ball alley” is for bowling, but wicket was also played on what was termed an alley.

 

1800c.3 – Col. Jas. Lee Recalls Playing Baseball as a Youth.

 

Lee was made an honorary member of the Knickerbocker Club in 1846, when he made this observation.

 

Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], p. 150.    No ref given.  Also referenced in Peterson, p. 68, but again without a citation

 

1800c.4 – Four Old Cat and Three Old Cat Well Known in MA

 

“Four Old Cat and Three Old Cat were as well known to Massachusetts boys as Round Ball.  I knew both games in 1862, and Mr. Stoddard tells me that his father knew them and played them between 1800 and 1820.  They bore the same relation to Round Ball that “Scrub” does to Base Ball now.  The main thing to be remembered is that Four and Three Old Cat seem to be co-eval with Massachusetts Round Ball, and even considered a modification of Round Ball for a less number of players than the regular game required.”

 

Letter from Henry Sargent, Grafton, MA, to the Mills Commission, May 31, 1905.

 

1800.5 – History of North America: Cricket and Football are “Universally Practiced.”

 

“The athletic and healthy diversion of cricket, football, etc. . . are universally practiced in this country.”  Edward Oliphant, History of North America  (Edinburgh, 1800), page?  Cited in Lester, A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [U Penn, 1951], page 7. 

 

1800.6 -- Children’s Story Includes Promise to Provide Bats and Balls

 

A story in this popular children’s book includes a character who, pleased with the deportment of some youths during a visit, says, “If you do me the honour of another visit, I shall endeavor to provide bats, balls, &c.”

 

The Prize for Youthful Obedience [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 183.  Note: Block notes that American editions of this book appeared in 1803 and thereafter: see #1807.1 below, for example.

 

1800c.7 -- William Cullen Bryant Remembers Base-Ball

 

“I have not mentioned other sports and games of the boys of that day -- which is to say, of seventy or eighty years since - such as wrestling, running, leaping, base-ball, and the like, for in thee there was nothing to distinguish them from the same pastimes at the present day.”

 

William Cullen Bryant, “The Boys of my Boyhood,” St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks, December 1876, page 102.  Submitted by David Ball 6/4/06

 

1800.8 -- Will Satan Snag the Sunday Player?

 

“Take care that here on Sunday/None of you play at ball,/For fear that on the Monday/The Devil take you all.”  -- Inscription oh the Church Wall of a small village in Wales.

 

Weekly Museum, April 19, 1800, Vol. 12, No. 27. page 2.  Submitted by John Thorn 4/24/06.

 

1800c.9 -- Most English Counties Play Cricket

 

“Village cricket spread widely and by the end of the century cricket had been recorded in most counties in England.”  John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 20.

 

 

1800.10 -- Hudson NY Council Prohibits Boys’ Ballplaying, Preserves Turf. Etc.

 

“An ordinance to preserve the turf or soil on the parade, and to regulate the sale of lamb in the city, and also to prevent boys playing ball or hoop on Warren or Front streets, passed the 14^th June, 1800.”

 

Hudson [NY] Bee, April 19, 1803.  Found by John Thorn, who lives 30 minutes south of the town: email of 2/17/2008.

 

1800c.1 – MA Man Recalls Games of Ball in Streets, with Wickets

 

“The sports and entertainments were very simple.  Running about the village street, hither and thither, without much aim . . . . games of ball, not base-ball, as is now [c1857] the fashion, yet with wickets – this was about all, except that at the end there was always horse-racing [p.19]. ..But as to sports and entertainments in general, there were more of them in those days than now.  We had more holidays, more games in the street, -- of ball-playing, of quoits, of running, leaping, and wrestling. [p.21]”

 

Mary E. Dewey, ed., Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. (Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1883), pages 19 and 21.  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 38.  Accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Books search for “’letters of orville.’”  Orville Dewey was born in Sheffield MA in 1794 and grew up there.  Sheffield is in the SW corner of MA, about 45 miles NE of Hartford Connecticut.  Note: [1] the “game of ball” may have been wicket.  [2] More holidays in 1800 than in 1857?

 

1801.1 – Joseph Strutt Says Stoolball Still Played in North of England; But He Slights Cricket

 

Strutt, Joseph., The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England [London, 1801]. Need page reference [is on page 102 of 1903 edition].  Strutt’s account does not portray stoolball as a running game, or one that uses a bat.  Strutt also treats cricket [but only cursorily], trap-ball, and tip-cat . . . but not rounders or base-ball.  David Block [page 183] points out that Strutt views a game he calls “club ball” as the precursor to this set of games, but notes that modern scholars are skeptical about this proposition.

 

 

1801.2 -- Chapbook Includes Engraving Depicting Trap-Ball

 

Youthful Recreations [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 184.  Versions of this short book were published in Philadelphia in 1802 and 1810.

 

1801.3 – Book Portrays “Bat and Ball” as Inferior to Cricket

 

“CRICKET.  This play requires more strength than some boys possess, to manage the ball in a proper manner; it must therefore be left to the more robust lads, who are fitter for such athletic exercises.  Bat and ball is an inferior kind of cricket, and more suitable for little children, who may safely play at it, if they will be careful not to break windows.”

 

Youthful Sports [London], pp 47-48., per David Block, page 184.  An 1802 version of this book, published in Baltimore, is similar to the chapbook at #1801.2, but does not include trap-ball.

 

1801.4 -- Cricket Challenge in GA

 

A New York paper copies a cricket challenge from a Savannah paper that notes “no legs before wickets.”

 

New York Gazette and General Advertiser, March 18, 1801, page 3.  Submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.

 

1801.5 -- Sunday Ballplaying Eyed Everywhere:  “Is This a Christian Country?”

 

“A few weeks ago I saw on a Sunday afternoon, one party of boys playing at ball in Broad-street; another at the upper end of Pearl-street; and a third in the Park.  Is this a Christian country?  Are there no laws, human or divine, to enforce the religious observance of the Sabbath? . . . . Are our Magistrates asleep, or are they afraid of losing their popularity, if they should carry the laws into execution?”

 

New York Evening Post, December 23, 1801, submitted 10/12/2004 by John Thorn.  On 8/2/2005, George Thompson spotted a similar or repeat of this piece in the Evening Post, December 31, 1801, page 3 column 2.

 

1802c.1 – South Carolina Man Lists Ball-Playing Among Local Amusements

 

Drayton, John, A View of South-Carolina, As Respects Her Natural and Civil Concerns [W. P. Young, Charleston SC, 1854], p. 88. Per Altherr ref # 83.

 

1802.2 – Wordsworth Seems to Laud “Englishness” of Cricket

 

“Here, on our native soil, we breathe once more./The cock that crows, the smoke that curls, that sound/Of bells; those boys that in yonder meadow-ground/In white-sleev’d shirts are playing; and the roar/Of the waves breaking on the chalky shore/ -- All, all are English . . .”

 

From Wordsworth’s sonnet “Composed in the valley near Dover on the day of Landing,” [1802 and 1807] The Complete Poetical Works of Wiliam Wordsworth, Volume IV (Houghton and Mifflin, Boston, 1919), page 98  Accessed via Google Books on 10/20/2008..   

 

According to Bateman, this reference is shown to be cricket because Wordsworth’s sister’s diary later contains a reference to white-shirted players at a cricket match near Dover.  See Anthony Bateman,“’More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘  Culture,, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 33, note 20: Bateman cites the diary entry as The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, vol. 2, E. de Selincourt, ed., (London, 1941), page 8.  John Thorn [email of 2/3/2008] discovers that Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary entry for July 10, 1820 observes: “When within a mile of Dover, saw crowds of people at a cricket-match, the numerous cambatants dressed in ‘whitesleeved shirts,’ and it was on the very same field where, when we ‘trod the grass of England’ once again, twenty years ago we has seen an Assemblage of Youths engaged in the same sport,so very like the present that all might have been the same! [footnote2:See my brother’s Sonnet ‘Here, on our native soil’ etc.]” 

 

1803.1 – Ontario Diarist Reports Joining Men “Jumping and Playing Ball”

 

[Playter, Ely], “Extracts from Ely Playter’s Diary,” April 13, 1803, reprinted in Edith G. Firth, ed., The Town of York 1793 – 1815: A Collection of Documents of Early Toronto [The Champlain Society, Toronto, 1962], p. 248. Per Altherr ref # 85.

 

1803.2 – Cricket Club Forms, Lasts a Year in NYC

 

An informal group called the “New York Cricket Club” is headquartered in New York City at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, No. 11 Nassau Street. The club flourishes for a year and then dies.

 

Per John Thorn, 6/15/04: The source is a Chadwick Scrapbook clip. “St. George was preceded in NYC by a club whose headquarters were at the Old Shakespeare in Nassau St.- This group was called the New York Club- it flourished for a year or so, then died.”  George Thompson has located an announcement of a club meeting in the Daily Advertiser, March 23, 1803, page 3 column 3, and another that appeared in the Commercial Advertiser on July 2 [page 3, column 2], July 7 [page 3, column 3], and July 8 [page 3, column 3.  In early 1804, the Evening Post, February 10, [page 34 column 3] called another meeting at the same Nassau Street address.  Submitted to Protoball 8/2/2005.

 

1803.3 – Cricket Reaches Australia

 

“The first mention of cricket in Australia is in the Sydney Gazette of 8 January 1804.  ‘The late intense weather has been very favourable to the amateurs of cricket who have scarce lost a day for the last month.’”

 

Egan, Jack, The Story of Cricket in Australia (ABC Books, 1987), page 6.  It is believed that the players included officers and/or men from the Calcutta, which arrived in Sydney in December 1803.  (Ibid., page 10.)

 

1803.4 –Middlebury College VT Bans Ballplaying

 

“To prevent, as far as possible, the damages before enumerated, viz. breaking of glass, &c. the students in College and members of the Academy shall not be permitted to play at ball or use any other sport or diversion in or near the College-building.”  A first offense brought a fine, a second offense brought suspension.

 

“Of the location of Students, Damages, and Glass,” in Laws of Middlebury-College in Midlebury [sic] in Vermont, Enacted by the President and Fellows, the 17th Day of August, 1803, page 14.  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 35.

 

 

1804.1 – SC School Opens, Students Play Town Ball and Bull Pen

 

At Moses Waddell’s “famous academy” established in Wilkington in 1804, “instead of playing baseball or football, boys took their recreation in running jumping, wrestling, playing town ball and bull pen.”

 

Meriwether, Colyer, History of Higher Education in South Carolina [Washington GPO, 1889], chapter II, page 39.  Per Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.  Note:  The terminology in this source appears more current than 1804, and it would be wise to consider whether it accurately depicts 1804 events. In addition, Seymour’s note does not make clear whether the play described occurred at the time of the establishment of the academy, or later in its history.

 

1804.2 -- Another Chapbook, Another Trap-ball Engraving

 

Youthful Sports [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 185.  Block reports that this book is quite different from the 1801 book by the same title.

 

1805.1 – Williams College Bans Dangerous Ball-playing

 

The Laws of Williams College [H. Willard, Stockbridge, 1805], p. 40.  Per Altherr ref # 42.

 

1805.2 – Portland ME Bans “Playing at Bat and Ball in the Streets”

 

The By Laws of the Town of Portland, in the County of Cumberland, 2^nd Edition [John McKown, Portland, 1805], p. 15. Per Altherr note #69.

 

1805.3 -- Book of Games Covers Cricket, Trap-Ball

 

Among the games described in this book are cricket and trap-ball, which has this concise account, in the form of a dialog: “you know, of course, that when I hit the trigger, the ball flies up, and that I must give it a good stroke with the bat.  If I strike at the ball and miss my aim, or if, when I have struck it, either you or Price catch it before it has touched the ground, or if I have hit the trigger more than twice, without striking the ball, I am out and one of you take the bat, and come in, as it is called.”

 

The Book of Games, or, a History of Juvenile Sports: Practiced at the Kingston Academy [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 185. 

 

1805.4 -- NY Gentlemen Play Game of “Bace:” Score is Gymnastics 41, Sons of Diagoras 34.

 

“Yesterday afternoon a contest at the game of Bace took place on “the Gymnasium,” near Tylers’ between the gentlemen of two different clubs for a supper and trimmings . . . .  Great skill and activity it is said was displayed on both sides, but after a severe and well maintained contest, Victory, which had at times fluttered a little form one to the other, settled down on the heads of the Gymnastics, who beat the Sons of Diagoras 41 to 34.”

 

New York Evening Post, April 13, 1805, page 3 column 1.  Submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.  Note: So, folks . . . was this a ball game, some version of prisoner’s base with  scoring, or what?  John Thorn [email of 2/27/2008] has supplied a facsimile of the Post report, and also found meeting announcements for the Diagoras in the Daily Advertiser for 4/11 and 4/12/1805.

 

1805.5 – The Term “Bace” Not Related to Ballplaying, in Cornwall

 

“BACE.  Prisoner’s bace (or base).  A game so called.  It is an ancient pastime mentioned in the records of Edward 3d (1327 to 1377.)”

 

Jago, Fred W. P. The Ancient Language and the Dialect of Cornwall (Netherton and Worth, Truro, 1882), page 101.  Note: cf #1805.4, above.  Can we find other reference books on usages in Surrey, Sussex, London, etc.?

 

1805.6 –In SC, Some Slaves Use Sundays for Ballplaying

 

“The negroes when not hurried have this day [Sunday] for amusement & great numbers are seen about, some playing ball, some with things for sale & some dressed up going to meeting.”  Edward Hooker, Diaries, 1805-1830: MS 72876 and 72877, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford CT; 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 29-30.  Tom [ibid, page 29] describes Hooker as a recent Yale graduate who in 1805 was a newly-arrived tutor in Columbia, SC. Tom says “this may be the first recorded evidence of slaves [p29/30] playing ball.

 

 

1805c.7 – NH Poet Recalls Ballplaying at School

 

“Oh, then what fire in every vein, /What health the boons of life endear’d, /How oft the call, / To urge the ball / Across the rapid plain, / I heard.”

 

Jeremiah Fellowes, “Irregular Ode, Written Near _____ [sic] Academy,” Reminiscences, Moral Poems, and Translations (Exeter NH, 1824), pages 144-146.  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 41.  The poetry, dedicated to the Principal of Phillips Exeter Academy, was accessed 11/17/2008 via Google Books search “fellowes moral.”  Fellowes, born I 1791, attended Exeter starting in 1803, and graduated from Bowdoin in 1810.  The verse is about the Academy, and thus the poet is recalling events from c1805.  See #1741c.1 for the first of several “urge the ball” usages.

 

1806.1 – British Children’s Book Includes Scene of “Trap and Ball”

 

English, Clara, The Children in the Wood, an Instructive Tale [Warner and Hanna, Baltimore, 1806], p. 29.  Per Altherr ref # 56.

 

1806.2 – Children’s Poem Traces Bouncing Ball

 

“THE VILLAGE GREEN.  “On the cheerful village green,/ Skirted round with houses small,/ All the boys and girls are seen,/Playing there with hoop and ball/ . . . ./Then ascends the worsted ball;/ High it rises in the air;/Or against the cottage wall,/Up and down it bounces there.”

 

Gilbert, Ann,  Original Poems, for Infant Minds, 2 volumes (Kimber, Conrad, Philadelphia, 1806), vol. 2, page 120;  Citation from Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball,” reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, see pages 241 and 242.  Altherr reports that “Gilbert described some sort of ball play as common on the village commons.”  (Ibid., page 241).  Note:  Can we determine Gilbert’s wording in calling such play common?  Does the clue that the ball was “worsted” (woolen, or made of wool cloth?) add a helpful clue as to the nature of the game played?

 

1806.3 – Mister Beldham Loads One Up

 

“Ball tampering has been around since time immemorial.  The first recorded instance of a bowler deliberately changing the condition of a ball occurred in 1806, when Beldham, Robinson and Lambert played Bennett, Fennex, and Lord Frederisk Beauclerk in a single-wicket match at Lord’s.  It was a closely fought match, but Beauclerk’s last innings looked to be winning the game.  As Pycroft recalls in The Cricket Field:

 

‘”His lordship had then lately introduced sawdust when the ground was wet.  Beldham, unseen, took alump of wet dirt and sawdust, and stuck it on the ball, and took the wicket. This, I heard separately from Beldham, Bennett, and also Fennex, who used to mention it as among the wonders of his long life.’”

 

Simon Rae, It’s Not Cricket: A History of Skulduggery, Sharp Practice and Downright Cheating in the Noble Game (Faber and Faber, 2001), page 199.  Pycroft’s account appears at John Pycroft, The Cricket Field: Or the History and Science of Cricket, American Edition (Mayhew and Baker, Boston, 1859), page 214 – as accessed via Google Books 10/20/2008.

 

1806.4 –Minister from New England Plays Ball in Western Reserve [OH]

 

Increase Tarbox, ed., The Diary of Thomas Robbins, D.D. 1796-1854, Volume 1 (Boston, 1886) pages 285 and 287.  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 32.

 

April 8:  “Visited.  Played a little ball.”

May:  “Rainy.  Played ball some.”

 

Tom says:  “This may be the earliest recorded evidence of ball play in Ohio.”  Note:  Protoball knows of no earlier reference.  It would be helpful to know where Robbins lived.  Robbins was 33 years old in 1806.   See #1796.2 regarding his earlier diarykeeping, and #1833.11 for later ones.  Volume 1 of this diary is not available via Google Books as of 11/15/2008.  To view Volume 2, which has later New England references, use a Google Books "’robbins d. d.’ diary” search.

 

 

1807.1 – Book Includes Promise to Bring Children “Bats, Balls &C”

 

The Prize for Youthful Obedience [Jacob Johnson, Philadelphia, 1807], part II, page 16.  Per Altherr ref # 59. Note: This book is an American edition book earlier published in London -- see #1800.6 above.

 

1807.2 – Games Recalled at Phillips Exeter Academy

 

In about 1889, Col. George Kent wrote this verse in response to an inquiry about student games from 1807 at Exeter:

 

“But pastimes and games of a much better sort,

Lent aid to our outdoor and innocent sport,

Such as marbles and foot ball, cat, cricket and base,

With occasional variance by a foot race.”

 

Bell, Charles H., Phillips Exeter Academy [1883?], p. 102.  Per Seymour, Harold – Notes.  the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.

 

1807.3 – Lost Poet Remembers College Ballplay, Maybe in Baltimore

 

Garrett Barry wrote in his sentimental verse “On Leaving College:”

 

“I’ll fondly tract, with fancy’s aid,/The spot where all our sports were made./ . . .

The little train forever gay,/With joy obey’d the pleasing call,/And nimbly urged the flying ball.”

 

Barry, Garrett, “On Leaving College,” in Poems, on Several Occasions (Cole and Co., Baltimore, 1807), no page given:  Citation from Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball,” reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, see pages 240.  Note:  Can we determine from biographical information where and when Barry attended college?  Is it significant that Barry reprises the phrase “urge the flying ball,” seen as a cricket phrase in Pope [see #1730.1] and Gray [#1747.1]?  Did Barry live/play in MD?  2008 update: John Thorn [email of 2/3/2008] discovers that others have been unable to determine exactly who the poet was, as there were three people with the name Garrett Barry in that area at that time. One of the three, who died at thirty in 1810, attended St. Mary’s College in Baltimore. 

 

1808.1 -- Wall Streeters Are Bearish on Ballplaying “and Other Annoyances”

 

 

The minutes of the NYC Common Council record a “Petition of sundry inhabitants in Wall Street complaining against the practice of boys playing ball before the Fire Engine House adjoining the City Hall, and other annoyances . . . “ 

 

Minutes of the Common Council of  the city of New York, 1784-1831, April 18, 1808, page 95 [Volume V.]  Volume eighteen of manuscript minutes (continued) February 15, 1808 to June 27, 1808.

 

1808.2 – First Cricket Club in Boston is Established

 

The first formally organized cricket club is established in Boston, Massachusetts.

 

Per John Thorn, 6/15/04:  The source is a Chadwick Scrapbook, Volume 20. John has found a meeting announcement for the club in the Boston Gazette for November 17,c1808

 

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.

 

1810.2 – Children’s Book Describes Trap Ball and its Benefits

 

Youthful Amusements [Johnson and Warner, Philadelphia, 1810], pp. 37 and 40.  Per Altherr ref # 61.  The same text later appeared in Remarks on Children’s Play [Samuel Wood and Sons, New York, 1819], p. 32.  Per Altherr ref # 64.  This book describes thirty games and includes an engraving of trap-ball.

 

1810.3 – Children’s Book Recommends Regular Play with “Trap, Bat, Ball,” etc.

 

Youthful Recreations [Jacob Johnson, Philadelphia, 1810], no pagination. Per Altherr ref # 62.

 

1810.4 – Union College [Upstate NY] Students Play Baseball-Like Game

 

“Union Students were playing a baseball-like game with a stick and ball of yarn in the old West College playground in 1810.”

 

Somers, Wayne, Encyclopedia of Union College History [Union College Press, Schenectady NY, 2003], page 89.  Note: Somers reports in May 2005 that he is unable to find his original source for this account.

 

1810s.5 – Harvard Library Worker Recalls Bi-racial Ball Play in Harvard Yard

 

“During my employment at Cambridge [MA] the College yard continued without gates.  The Stage passed through it; and though I was very attentive to the hour, I could not always avoid injury from the Stage horn.  Blacks and Whites occasionally played together at ball in the College yard; “

 

William Croswell, letter drafted to the Harvard Corporation, December 1827.  Papers of William Croswell, Call number HUG 1306.5, Harvard University Archives.  Supplied by Kyle DeCicco-Carey, 8/8/2007.  Kyle notes that Croswell was an 1780 Harvard graduate who worked in the college library 1812-1821.

 

 

1810.6 – Cricket a “Popular Recreation” in Sydney

 

“Cricket had become a more popular recreation by 1810. . . .  [The 1810 proclamation naming Sydney’s Hyde Park noted that the area had been previously known as “’the Racecourse,’ ‘The Exercising Ground,’ and ‘The Cricket Ground,’”

 

Egan, Jack, The Story of Cricket in Australia (ABC Books, 1987), page 10.  Egan does not give a reference for the proclamation itself. 

 

1811.1 – Book Printed in Philadelphia Gives Details of Trap Ball in England

 

The Book of Games; Or, a History of the Juvenile Sports Practiced at Kingston Academy [Johnson and Warner, Philadelphia, 1811], pp. 15 – 20.  Per Altherr ref # 63.  This book appears to be a reprint of the 1805 London publication above.

 

1811.2 -- NYCC Calls Meeting -- First Cricket Meeting Since 1804?

 

The notice was signed by G. M’Enery, Secretary.

 

New York Evening Post, September 3, 1811, page 3 column 4.  Submitted by George Thompson 8/2/2005..

 

1811.3 – NY Paper Carries Notice for “English Trap Ball” at a Military Ground

 

“At Dyde’s Military Grounds.  Up the Broadway, to-morrow afternoon, September 14, the game of English Trap Ball will be played, full as amusing as Crickets and the exercise not so violent:”

 

New York Evening Post, September 13, 1811, page 3 column 3.  Submitted by George Thompson 8/2/2005.

 

Three days later:  “The amusements at Dyde’s to-morrow, Tuesday the 17^th September, will be Rifle Shooting for he prize, and English Trap Ball.  The gentlemen who have promised to attend to form a club to play at Trap Ball are respectfully requested to attend.”

 

New York Evening Post, September 16, 1811, page 3 column 3. Submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.

 

And four days later, notice was made that “Trap Ball, Quoits, Cricket, &c.” would be played at the ground.  However, more space is now given to rifle and pistol shooting contests.

 

New York Evening Post, September 20, 1811, page 3 column 3. Submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.

 

1811.4 -- Chapbook Shows Baseball-like Game Under “Trap-ball” Heading

 

Remarks on Children’s Play [New York], per David Block, page 185-186.  Block reports that the trap-ball page included the usual rules for trap-ball, but that the accompanying woodcut depicts a game in which a batter receives a pitched ball, with no trap in sight.

 

1811.5 -- Bat-ball Recalled at Exeter

 

“Next to football, baseball has always been the most popular sport at Exeter.  Alpheus S. Packard, who entered in 1811, mentions “bat-ball” as played in his day.”

 

Crosbie, Laurence M., The Phillips Exeter Academy: A History [1923], page 233.  Submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.  Crosbie does not, evidently, give a citation for Packard.

 

1811.6 -- Women Cricketers Play for Large Purse

 

Two noblemen arrange for eleven women of Surrey to play eleven women of Hampshire for a stake of 500 guineas a side.

 

Ford, John, Cricket: and Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], pp. 20-21.  Ford does not give a reference for this event.

 

1812c.1 – Young Andrew Johnson Plays Cat and Bass Ball and Bandy in Raleigh NC

 

[At age four] “he spent many hours at games with boys of the neighborhood, his favorite being ‘Cat and Bass Ball and Bandy,’ the last the ‘choyst’ game of all.”  Letter from Neal Brown, July 15, 1867, in Johnson Mss., Vol. 116, No. 16,106. [Publisher?] Submitted by John Thorn, 6/6/04

 

1812.2 – Soldier Van Smoot’s Diary Notes Playing Catch at New Orleans

 

 

Peter Van Smoot, an Army private present at the Battle of New Orleans, writes in his diary:  “I found a soft ball in my knapsack, that I forgot I had put there and started playing catch with it.”

 

Note: Citation needed.   John Thorn, 6/15/04: “I don’t recognize this one”

 

1812.3 -- NYC Council Finds Ball Playing Among “Abounding Immoralities”

 

“Your Committee will not pretend to bring before the Board the long and offending catalogue of abounding immoralities . . . but point out some . .  . .  Among the most prevalent on the Lords Day called Sunday, are . . .  Horse Riding for pleasure . . . Skating [‘] Ball playing, and other Plays by Boys and Men, and even Horse-racing.”  Minutes of the Common Council of the city of New York, 1784-1831, March 18, 1812, page 72 [Volume VII.]  Submitted by John Thorn 1/24/07

 

1813.1 -- Newburyport MA Reminder -- “Playing Ball in the Streets” is Unlawful

 

“Parents and Guardians are also requested to forbid, those under their care, playing Ball in the streets of the town; as by this unlawful practice much inconvenience and injury is sustained.”  Newburyport [MA] Herald, May 4, 1813, Volume 17, Issue 10, page 1 [classified advertisement]. Submitted by John Thorn 1/24/07.

 

1815c.1 – US Prisoners in Ontario at End of War of 1812 Play Ball

 

Fairchild, G. M., ed., Journal of an American at Fort Malden and Quebec in the War of 1812 [private printing, Quebec, 1090 [sic; 1900?], no pagination.  Per Altherr ref # 87.]

 

1815c.2 – US Prisoners in England Enjoy “Playing Ball and the Like” at War’s End

 

[1] [Waterhouse, Benjamin], A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, Late a Surgeon on Board an American Privateer, Who Was Captured at Sea by the British in May, Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen, and Was Confined First, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, on England, and Last, at Dartmoor Prison [Rowe and Hooper, Boston, 1816], p. 186.  Per Altherr ref # 88.  [2] “Journal of Nathaniel Pierce of Newburyport, Kept at Dartmoor Prison, 1814 – 1815,” Historical Collections of Essex Institute, volume 73, number 1 [January 1937], p. 40.  Per Altherr ref # 89.  [3] [Andrews, Charles] The Prisoner’s Memoirs, or Dartmoor Prison [private printing, NYC, 1852], p.110. Per Altherr ref # 90.  [4] Valpey, Joseph], Journal of Joseph Valpey, Jr. of Salem, November 1813- April 1815 [Michigan Society of Colonial Wars, Detroit, 1922], p. 60.

 

1815.3 -- German Book Shows Batting Game

 

Taschenbuch fur das Jahr 1815 der Liebe und Freundschaft [Frankfurt am Main] per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 186.  Block reports that the April section of this yearly book has an engraving of children playing a bat-and-ball game.  Note: Does the game appear to use bases?

 

1815.4 – Six-Hour “Wicket” Match Played in Canada

 

“On the 29^th May, a grant [sic] Match of Wicket was played at Chippawa, Upper Canada, by 22 English ship wrights, for a stake of 150 dollars.  The parties were distinguished by the Pueetergushene and the Chippawa party.  The game was won in 56 runs by the former.  It continued 6 hours.

 

“The winners challenge any eleven gentlemen in the state of New York, for any sum they may wish to play for.  The game was succeeded by a supper in honor of King Charles, and the evening in spent [sic] with great hilarity.”

 

Mechanics’ Gazette and Merchants’ Daily Advertiser, June 9,1815, reprinting from the Buffalo Gazette.  Provided by Richard Hershberger, 7/30/2007.  Note:  It seems unusual for Englishmen to be playing wicket, and for wicket to field 11-man teams.  Could this be a cricket match reported as wicket?  Is it clear why a Buffalo NY newspaper would report on a match in “Upper Canada,” or whereever Chippawa is?  Do we know what a “grant match” is?

 

1815c.5 – RI Boy Did A Little Ball-Playing

 

Adin Ballou grew up in a minister’s home, and his amusements were of the “homely and simple kinds, such as hunting, fishing, wrestling, wrestling, jumping, ball-playing , quoit-pitching . . .Card-playing was utterly disallowed.  “W. Heywood, ed., Autobiography of Adin Ballou, 1803-1890 (Vox Populi Press, Lowell MA, 1896), page 13.  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 30.  The autobiography was accessed 11/15/2008 via Google Books search for “adin ballou.”  The book has no references to wicket, cricket or roundball.

 

 

1815.6 – Group at Dartmouth Ponders Worth of Ballplaying, Nocturnal Cowhunting

 

Dartmouth College in Hanover NH had a religious society, the Religiosi.  “In April, 1815, at one of the meetings, a ‘conversation was held on the propriety, or rather the impropriety, of professed [Christians – bracketed in original] joining in the common amusement of ballplaying with the students for exercise.’”  Shortly thereafter “there were many spirited remarks on the subject of nocturnal cowhunting, and the society was unanimous in condemning it.”  John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College 1815-1909 (Rumford Press, Concord NH, 1913), page 564.  Accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Books search of “’history of Dartmouth.’”  Note: Did they condone diurnal cowhunting?

 

1816.1 – Cooperstown NY Bans Downtown Ballplaying Near Future Site of HOF

 

On June 6, 1816, trustees of the Village of Cooperstown, New York enact an ordinance: “That no person shall play at Ball in Second or West Street (now Pioneer and Main Streets), in this village, under a penalty of one dollar, for each and every offence.”

 

Otsego Herald, number 1107, June 6, 1816, p. 3.  The Herald carried the same notice on June 13, page 3.  Note:  those streets intersect is a half block from the Hall of Fame, right?

 

1816.2 – Worcester MA Ordinance Bans “Frequent and Dangerous” Ball Playing and Hoops”

 

“Ball-playing” in the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts is forbidden by ordinance.

 

Worcester, MA Town Records, May 6, 1816; reprinted in Franklin P. Rice, ed., Worcester Town Records, 1801 – 1816, volume X [Worcester Society of Antiquity, 1891], p. 337. Also appears in Henderson, p. 150 [No ref given], and Holliman, per Guschov.

 

1816.4 -- “German ballgame” described in Berlin book

 

Flittner, Christian G., Talisman des Gluckes oder der Selbstlehrer fur alle Karten, Schach, Billard,Ball und Kegel Spiele [Berlin], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 187.  This book’s small section on ball games carries the Gutsmuths account of das Deutsche Ballspiel -- the German ballgame.  Note: Does the game appear to uses bases?

 

1816.5 -- In “The Year Without a Summer,” CT Lads Play Ball on Christmas Day

 

“My father [Charles Mallory] arrived there [Mystic CT] on Christmas Day and found some of his acquaintances playing ball in what was called Randall’s Orchard.”

 

Baughman, James, The Mallorys of Mystic: Six Generations in American Maritime Enterprise [Wesleyan University Press, 1972], page 12.  Submitted by John Thorn, 10/19/2004.

 

1816.6 -- Columbia College (NY) Players Use Battery Grounds

 

Haswell says that Columbia College players play at the hollow on the Battery locations “very nearly the entire area bounded by Whitehall and State Streets, the sea wall line, and a line about two hundred feet to the west; it was of an uniform grade, fully five feet below that of the street, it was nearly uniform in depth, and as regular in its boundary as a dish.” Charles Haswell Reminiscences of an Octogenarian of the City of New York (1816 to 1860) (Harper and Brothers, New York, 1896), page 82.  Citation supplied by John Thorn, email of 2/3/2008.

 

1816.7 – Lambert’s Cricket Rules Published

 

Lambert, William, Instructions and Rules For Playing the Noble Game of Cricket (1816).

 

Bateman notes that 300,000 copies of this book were sold by 1865.  Bateman, Anthony,“’More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘  Culture,, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,”  Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 36.

 

1816.8 -- Troy NY Bans Ballplaying

 

“[N]o person or persons shall play ball, beat knock or drive any ball or hoop, in, through, or along any street or alley in the first, second, third, or fourth wards of said city; and every person who shall violate either of the prohibitions . . . shall, for each and every such offense, forfeit and pay the penalty of ten dollars.”

 

Laws and Ordinances of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonality, of the City of Troy.  Passed the Ninth Day of December, 1816 (Parker and Bliss, Troy, 1816), page 42.  Citation from Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball,” reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 320.

 

1817.1 – Visitor to Philly Tells of Cricket Play There

 

“Being a commercial people, they have but few amusements: their summer pastimes are . . . fishing, batching, cricket, quoits, &c; . . . .”

 

John Palmer, Journal of Travels in the United States of America and in Lower Canada, Etc [London, 1818], page 283. Per Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.

 

1817.2 -- Riddle Game Cites “Fourteen Boys at Bat and Ball”

 

The Gaping, Wide-mouthed, Waddling Frog [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 187-188.  This chapbook comprises a rhyme resembling the song “the Twelve Days of Christmas, and one verse includes “Fourteen Boys at Bat-and-Ball, Some Short and Some Tall.”  Block also reports that it contains an illustration of several boys playing trap-ball.

 

1817.3 – Ball Play Banned in New York NY

 

“New York City outlawed ball play in the Park, Battery, and Bowling-Green in 1817.”

 

Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball,” reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 245.  Altherr’s citation [page 320]:  “A law relative to the Park, Batery, and Bowling-Green,” in Laws and Ordinances Ordained and Established by the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonality of the City of New York (T. and J. Swords, New York, 1817), page 118.

 

1817.4 – In Lewiston ME, Bowdoin College Sets 20-cent Fine for Ballplaying

 

“No student shall, in or near any College building, play at ball, or use any sport or diversion, by which such building may be exposed to injury, on penalty of being fined not exceeding twenty cents, or being suspended if the offence be often repeated.”

 

Of Misdemeanors and Criminal Offences, in Laws of Bowdoin College (E. Goodale, Hallowell ME, 1817), page 12.  Citation from Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball,” reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 315.

 

1818.1 – Yale Student Reports Cricket on Campus

 

A student at Yale University reports that cricket and football are played on campus [need cite].  Lester, however, says that he doubts the student saw English cricket, and that, given that the site is CT, it was probably wicket.  Lester notes that wicket involved sides of 30 to 35 players, and was played in an alley 75 feet long, and with oversized bats.

 

Lester, ed., A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [U Penn Press, Philadelphia, 1951], page 7.

 

1818.2 -- In Cricket, Well, It’s . . .”One Man Out”

 

Ford notes that “[William] Lambert, the leading professional of the time, banned from playing at Lord’s for accepting bribes.”  Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 21.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

1818.3 -- “Baseball” at West Point NY?

 

“Although playing ball games near the barracks was prohibited, cadets could play ‘at football’ near Fort Clinton or north of the large boulder neat the site of the present Library.  [Benjamin] Latrobe makes curious mention of a game call ‘baseball’ played in this area.  Unfortunately, he did not describe the game.  Could it be that cadets in the 1818-1822 period played the game that Abner Doubleday may have modified later to become the present sport?”

 

Pappas, George S., To The Point: The United States Military Academy 1802 - 1902 [Praeger, Westport Connecticut, 1993], page 145.  Note: Pappas evidently does not give a source for the Latrobe statement.  I assume that the 1818-1822 dates correspond to Latrobe’s time at West Point.

 

1818.4 -- Cricket Reported in Louisville KY

 

“It is not unreasonable to speculate that as the immigrants came down the Ohio River . . . they brought with them the leisure activities hat had already developed in the cities along the Atlantic coast. There are reports of a form of cricket being played in the city as early at 1818.”

 

Bailey, Bob, “Beginnings; From Amateur Teams to Disgrace in the National League,” [1999], page 1.  Note: The original source of the 1818 reference may have been lost.  Bob reports that he got the item from Dean Sullivan’s master’s thesis on baseball in Louisville, and that Dean cited Harold Peterson’s The Man Who Invented Baseball, page 24.  However, Peterson gives no source. Dead end?

 

1818c.5 – English Immigrants from Surrey Take Cricket to IL

 

“There have been [p.295/p.296] several cricket-matches this summer [of 1819], both at Wanborough and Birk Prarie; the Americans seem much pleased at the sight of the game, as it is new to them.”  John Woods, Two Years Residence on th Settlement of the English Prarie, in the Illinois Country (Longman & Co., London, 1822), pp. 295-296.

 

On page 148 of the book:  “On the second of October, there was a game of cricket played at Wanborough by the young men of the settlement; this they called keeping Catherine Hill fair, many of the players being from the neighborhood of Godalming and Guildford.”  In 1818 [page 295]: “some of the young men were gone to a county court at Palmyra, [but] there was no cricket-match, as was intended, only a game of trap-ball.” 

 

 

1819.1 – British Science Text Uses “Base-ball” Heuristic Example

 

“Emily: In playing at base-ball, I am obliged to use al my strength to give a rapid motion to the ball; and when I have to catch it, I am sure I feel the resistance it makes to being stopped; but if I did not catch it, it would soon stop of itself.

 

“Mrs B.: Inert matter is as incapable of stopping itself as it is of putting itself in motion.  When the ball ceases to more, therefore, it must be stopped by some other cause or power; but as it is one with which your are as yet unacquainted, we cannot at present investigate its powers.”

 

Jane H. Marcet, Conversations on Natural Philosophy [Publisher?, 1819], page?  Note: Mendelson,  a retired professor at Marquette University, originally located this text, but attributed it to a different book by Mrs. Marcet.  David Block found the actual 1819 location.  He adds that while it does not precede the Jane Austen use of “base-ball” in Northanger Abbey, “I still consider the quote to be an important indicator that baseball was a popular pastime among English girls during the later 18^th and early 19^th centuries.”  David Block posting to 19CBB, 12/12/2006.

 

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 (D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1904), page 257.  Reference provided by John Thorn 6/11/2007.

 

1819.3 – Herefordshire:  “Large Parties” Play Wicket (“Old-Fas hioned Cricket”)

 

[Writing of the yeoman of the county:]  “notwithstanding their inclination to religion, they meet in large parties upon Sunday afternoons to play foot-ball, wicket (an old-fashioned cricket), or other gymnastics.”

 

Source: “Manners and Customs of Herefordshire,” The Gentleman’s Magazine, February 1819.  Submitted by Richard Hershberger 8/6/2007.

 

1820.1 – Bat/Ball Game Depicted in Children’s Amusements

 

A woodcut illustration of boys playing with a bat and ball appears in a book entitled Children’s Amusements [New York and Baltimore].  David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 188, adds that it is unusual among chapbooks as “more space and detail are devoted to “playing ball” than to cricket, which at the time was a more established game.”  See also #1830.1.

 

 

1820.2 – Round Ball played in Upton, Massachusetts.

 

Henderson, p. 137, attributes this to Holliman, but has no ref to Holliman or to George Stoddard, who reported the game to the Mills Commission. Also quoted at Henderson, p. 150.

 

1820.3 – English Cricketers Play Two-Day Match Again New Yorkers

 

“The most outstanding cricket matches of the period were those in New York.  In fact, the matches of note were played in that city.  These contests took place between members of different clubs, and often the sport lasted for two days.  Great was the interest if any English player happened to be present to participate in the sport.  On June 16, 1820, eleven expert English players matched eleven New Yorkers at Brooklyn, the contest lasting two days.”  Holliman, Jennie, American Sports (1785 - 1835) [Porcupine Press, Philadelphia, 1975], page 68.

 

Holliman cites the New York Evening Post June 16, 1820.  See also Lester, ed., A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [U Penn, 1951], page 5.  Tom Melville, The Tented Field (Bowling Green U, Bowling Green, 1998), page 7, adverts to a similar Englishmen/Americans match, giving it a date of June 1, 1820.  He seems to cite The New York Evening Post of June 19, 1820, page 2 for this match, and so June 16 seems like a likelier date.]

 

 

1820.4 -- Another English Chapbook Cites Trap-ball

 

School-boys’ Diversions: Describing Many New and Popular Sports [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 189.  The woodcut shows a trap and bat in the foreground.

 

1820c.5 –  [Item deleted 10/2008 as redundant with #1819.4]

 

1820c.6 – Modified Version of Rounders Played in New England.

 

“About 1820 a somewhat modified version of the old English game of rounders was played on the New England commons, and twenty years later the game had spread and become “town ball.”  In 1833 the first regularly organized ball club was formed in Philadelphia with the sonorous title of “The Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia.”  About 1850 the game gained vogue in New York.”

 

Barbour, Ralph H., The Book of School and College Sports [D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1904] page 143.  Per Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.  Thanks to Mark Aubrey for locating a pdf of the baseball section of this text, June 2007.  Barbour does not provide sources for his text.

 

1820c.7 -- Another English Chapbook, Another Engraving of Trap-ball

 

Juvenile Recreations [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 189.  Accompanying the Trapball engraving: “Then Master Batt he did decide,/That they might one and all,/Since Rosebud fields were very wide,/Just play Trap bat and ball,/Agreed said all with instant shout,/Then beat the little ball about.”

 

1820c.8 -- Another Chapbook -- This One Celebrates the Fielder

 

Juvenile Sports or Youth’s Pastimes [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 189. The accompanying text: “With bat and trap, the Youth’s agre’d/To send the ball abroad with speed,/While eager with his open hands,/To catch him out his playmate stands.”

 

1820s.9 – In Middletown CT, “Wicket” Recalled, but Not Base Ball.

 

Delaney, ed., Life in the Connecticut River Valley 1800 – 1840 from the Recollections of John Howard Redfield [Connecticut River Museum, Essex CT, 1988], p. 35.  Per Altherr ref # 82.

 

1820s.10 – Philadelphians Play Ball, But Only Over in Camden NJ

 

A group of Philadelphians who will eventually organize as the Olympic Ball Club begin playing town ball in Philadelphia, PA, but are prohibited from doing so within the city limits by ordinances dating to Puritan times. A site in Camden, New Jersey is used to avoid breaking the laws in Philadelphia.  Note: this item needs to be confirmed or dropped

 

1820s.11 -- Cricket is Gradually “Cleaned Up;” Club Play Strengthens

 

Writing of this period, Ford summarizes:  “Much single-wicket cricket was played, and wager matches continued, but from the mid 1820s both these features gradually disappeared from the scene as cricket was ‘cleaned up.’  Of equal importance the game at club level spread and grew strong.”  John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 22.  Ford does not give citations for this account.

 

1820s.12 – Boys Are Attracted to Sports of “Playing Ball or Goal” in Bangor ME

 

Paine, Albert Ware, “Auto-Biography,” reprinted in Lydia Augusta Paine Carter, The Discovery of a Grandmother [Henry H. Carter, Newton MA, 1920], p. 240.  Per Altherr ref # 77.  Note:  Dean Sullivan [7/29/2004] observes that Harold Seymour puts the year of play at Bangor at 1836, citing both pages 198 and 240 of The Discovery of a Grandmother.  Payne was born in 1812, and was not a “boy” in 1836, so this event needs further examination.  This item needs to be reconciled with #1823c.4 below.

 

1820c.13 – Wry View of Cricket Match on Yale Campus

 

“On the green and easy slope where those proud columns stand,

In Dorian mood, with academe and temple on each hand,

The foot-ball and the cricket-match upon my vision rise

With all the clouds of classic dust kicked in each other’ eyes.”

 

This verse is incorporated without attribution in Brooks Mather Kelley, Yale: a History (Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 1974), page 214.  Kelley’s commentary:  “[Cricket] may have been a sport at Yale then [in the Colonial period].  The first clear reference to it, owever, is in one stanza of a poem about Yale life in 1818 to 1822.”  Ibid.  Is Yale shielding us from some racy student rhymes? Oh, not to worry: From a rival Ivy League source we see that Lester identifies the poet as William Cromwell – John A. Lester, A Century of Philadelphia Cricket (U of Penn Press, Philadelphia PA, 1951), page7.  Note: OK, so who was William Cromwell, and why did he endow so many chairs at Yale?

 

 

1820s.14 – New England Lad Recalls Assorted Games, Illicit Fast Day Ballplaying

 

Alfred Holbrook was born in 1816.  His autobiography, Reminiscences of the Happy Life of a Teacher (Elm Street, Cincinnati, 1885), includes youthful memories that would have occurred in the 1820s.

 

“The [school-day] plays of those times, more than sixty years ago, were very similar to the plays of the present time. Some of these were “base-ball,” in which we chose sides, “one hole cat,” “two hole cat,” “knock up and catch,” Blackman,” “snap the whip,” skating, sliding down hill, rolling the hoop, marbles, “prisoner’s base,” “football,” mumble the peg,” etc.  Ibid. page 35.  Note: was “knock up and catch” a fungo game, possibly?

 

“Now, it was both unlawful and wicked to play ball on fast-day, and none of my associates in town were ever known to engage in such unholy enterprises and sinful amusements on fast-days; [p 52/53] but other wicked boys, with whom I had nothing to do, made it their special delight and boast to get together in some quiet, concealed place, and enjoy themselves, more especially because it was a violation of law.  Not infrequently, however, they found the constable after them. . . .” “Soon after, this blue law, perhaps the only one in the Connecticut Code, was repealed.  Then the boys thought no more of playing on fast-days than on any other.”  Ibid, pp 52-53.

 

1820c.15 – Ballplaying at Bowdoin College

 

Nehemiah Cleaveland and Alpheus Spring Packard, History of Bowdoin College with Biographical Sketches of the Graduates (Osgood and Company, Boston, 1882).  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 32.

 

“The student of earlier years had not the resources for healthful physical recreation of the present day [1880s]. We had football and baseball, though the latter was much less formal and formidable than the present game” [Page 96].  Note: the precise time referenced here is hard to specify; but the authors graduated in 1813 and 1816, and the context seems to suggest the 1810-1830 period.

 

Only one of the sketches of alumni, however, mentions ballplaying of any type.  The sketch for James Patten, Class of 1823, includes this: “He entered college at the mature age of twenty-four, was a respectable scholar, spoke with a decided brogue, and played ball admirably. . . . When last heard from he was an acting magistrate and a rich old bachelor.” [Page 276]  The sketch for Longfellow, who in 1824 wrote of constant campus ballplaying [see #1824.1], does not allude to sport.

 

1820.16 – Union vs. Mechanics -- First Mention of Club Cricket?

 

On June 19, 1820, the Union and Mechanic Cricket Clubs played two matches in Brooklyn.  According to an account [a box score was also provided] in the New York Daily Advertiser of June 21, “this manly exercise . . . excited astonishment in the spectators by their great dexterity . . . . A great number of persons viewed the sport.”

 

Posted to 19CBB by Richard Hershberger, 7/31/2007.  Richard noted: “this is the earliest example I know of named cricket clubs, and is not mentioned in Tom Melville’s history [The Tented Field.]  In am 1/30/2008 email, Richard added that this game was also reported in the New York Columbia of June 19, 1820 as having “all Europeans” on both sides.  Note: does the David Sentence book cover this game?  Do we know of any earlier club play; for instance, did the Boston Cricket Club [see #1808.2 above] ever take the field in 1808?

 

1820.17 – “The Game of Ball” Banned in Area of Belfast ME

 

“Ballplaying seems to have been extensively practiced in 1820.  At the town meeting of that year, it was voted that ‘the game of ball, and the pitching of quoits, within the following limits {main Street to the beach, etc] be prohibited.’ High Street, at Hopkins Corner, was the favorite battle-ground for ball-players as early as 1805.”  Joseph Williamson, History of the City of Belfast in the State of Maine, From its First settlement in1770 to 1875 (Loring & Co., Portland, 1877), page 764.  Note: Williamson does not provide original sources for the 1820 ordinance or for the 1805 claim.

 

1820s.18 -- Syracuse NY Ball Field Remembered as Base Ball Site

 

David Block reports:  “In the lengthy ‘Editor’s Table’ section of this [The Knickerbocker] classic monthly magazine, the editor described a nostalgic visit that he and two old school chums had taken to the academy that they had attended near Syracuse.  ‘We went out upon the once-familiar green, as if it were again ‘play time’, and called by name upon our old companions to come over once more and play ‘base-ball.’  But they answered not; they came not!  The old forms and faces were gone; the once familiar voices were silent.’” Source:  “Editor’s Table,” The Knickerbocker (S. Hueston, New York, 1850), page 298.  Contributed by David Block 2/27/2008.  The Editor, Lewis Gaylord Clark, was born in 1810, and attended the Onondaga Academy.  He was thus apparently recalling ball-playing from sometime in the 1820s.  Caveat: We better data on Clark’s age while at the Academy.

 

1820s.19 – Ball-Playing in Ontario

 

"Contrary to the once commonly held belief that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839, a form of the game existed in Oxford County [ON] during the early decades of the nineteenth century that used a square playing field with four bases and eleven players a side." Nancy B. Bouchier, For the Love of the Game: Amateur Sport in Small-Town Ontario, 1838-1895 (McGill-Queens University Press, 2003), page 100.  Note: Dating this item to the 1820’s is a best guess [we are asking the author for input], based on additional evidence from N. Bouchier and R. Barney, “A Critical Evaluation of a Source on Early Ontario Baseball: The Reminiscence of Adam E. Ford,” Journal of Sport History, Volume 15 number 1 (Spring 1988).  Players remembered as attending  the 1838 event included older “greyheaded” men who reflected back on earlier play -- one of whom was on the local assessment roll in 1812.

 

 

1820s.20 -- Horace Greeley Lacks the Knack, Fears Getting Whacked

 

“Ball was a common diversion in Vermont while I lived there; yet I never became proficient at it, probably for want of time and practice.  To catch a flying ball, propelled by a muscular arm straight at my nose, and coming so swiftly that I could scarcely see it, was a feat requiring a celerity of action, an electric sympathy of eye and brain and hand . . . .  Call it a knack, if you will; it was quite beyond my powers of acquisition.

 

Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (J. B. Ford, New York, 1869), page 117.  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 30.  Tom places the time as the early 1820s.  Greeley, born in New Hampshire in 1811, was apprenticed a Poultney VT printer in about 1825.  His book was accessed 11/15/2008 via Google Books search “greeley recollections owen.”  Poultney VT is on the New York border, about 70 miles NNW of Albany NY.  Greeley does not mention the game of wicket or round ball.

 

 

1820s.21 – College Prez Was a Klutz at Ball and Cricket

 

“I could not jump the length of my leg nor run as fast as a kitten . . . . At ball and cricket I ‘followed in the chase not like a hound that hunts, but one that fills up the cry.’” 

 

Harriet Raymond Lloyd, ed., Life and Letters of John Howard Raymond, Late President of Vassar College (Ford, Howard and Hulbert, New York, 1881), page 38.  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 34.  Accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Books search for “’john howard raymond.’”  Raymond, born in New York in 1814, summered as a boy in Norwalk CT.

 

1820s.22 –MA Boy Played One Old Cat, Base Ball in Early Childhood

 

“In my early boyhood I was permitted to run at large in the [Williamstown MA] street and over broad acres, playing ‘one old cat,’ and base ball (no scientific games or balls as hard as a white oak boulder in those days) excepted when pressed into service to ride the horse to plough out the corn and potatoes.” 

 

Keyes Danforth, Boyhood Reminiscences: Pictures of New England in the Olden Times in Williamstown (Gazlay Brothers, New York, 1895), page 12.  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 38.  The book was accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Books search “’pictures of new.’”  Danforth, born in 1822, became a judge.  Williamstown MA is in the NW corner of the commonwealth, and lies about 35 miles E of Albany NY.

 

 

1821.1 -- New York Book Has Bat and Ball Poem

 

Little Ditties for Little Children [New York, Samuel Wood and Sons], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 190.  “Come on little Charley, come with me and play/And yonder is Billy, I’ll give him a call,/ Do you take the bat, and I’ll carry the ball . . . “

 

1821.2 -- Cricket Not New in SC

 

“The members of the old cricket club are requested to attend a meeting of [sic?] the Carolina Coffee House tomorrow evening.”

 

Charleston Southern Patriot, January 23, 1821, per Holliman, American Sport 1785 - 1835, page 68.

 

1821.3 -- Schenectady NY Bans “Playing of Ball Against the Building”

 

The Schenectady City Council banned “playing of Ball against the Building or in the area fronting the Building called City Hall and belonging to this corporation . . . under penalty of Fifty cents for each and every offence . .  . .” Note: citation needed.  Submitted by David Pietrusza via John Thorn, 3/6/2005.

 

1821.4 – A Three-Times-and-Out Rule in ME Cricket?

 

“’Three times and out’ is a maxim of juvenile players at cricket.”

 

Maine Gazette, November 20, 1821; submitted by Lee Thomas Oxford, 9/2/2007.  Note: What can this reported rule possibly mean?  Were beginning cricketers given three chances to hit the bowled ball in ME?  John Thorn, email of 2/3/2008, points out that three swings was sometimes an out in wicket, and that the Gazette may have erred.

 

1821.5 – NY Mansion Converted to Venue Suitable for Cricket, Base, Trap-Ball

 

In May and June 1821, an ad ran in some NY papers announcing that the Mount Vernon mansion, was now open as Kensington House.  It could accommodate dinners and tea parties and clubs.  What’s more, later versions of the ad said: “The grounds of Kensington Hose are spacious and well adapted to the playing of the noble game of cricket, base, trap-ball, quoits and other amusements; and all the apparatus necessary for the above games will be furnished to clubs and parties.”

 

Richard Hershberger posted to 19CBB on Kensington House on 10/7/2007, having seen the ad in the June 9, 1821 New York Gazette and General Advertiser.  Richard suggested that “in this context “base is almost certainly baseball, not prisoner’s base.”  John Thorn [email of 3/1/2008] later found a May 22, 1821 Kensington ad in the Evening Post that did not mention sports, and ads starting on June 2 that did.

 

1822.1 – Round Ball Played in Worcester

 

“Timothy Taft, who is living in Worcester, October 1897, played Round Ball in 1822.  The game was no new thing then.  I think Mr. Stoddard is right about the game being played directly after the close of the Revolutionary War [see c1780 entry].  At any rate, if members of your Commission question the antiquity of the game (Round Ball) we have Mr. Taft still living who played it 83 years ago, and we have corroborative testimony that it was played long before that time.” 

 

Letter from Henry Sargent, Worcester MA, to Mills Commission, June 10, 1905.  Henderson, on page 149, quotes the Commission’s press release as referring to a Timothy Tait, which seems likely a reference to Taft.  In this letter Sargent also reports that in Stoddard’s opinion, “the game of Round Ball or Base ball is one and the same thing, and that it dates back before 1845.” 

 

Note: do we have that Mills Commission release that Henderson cites?

 

1822.2 -- Round-Arm Bowling Disallowed at Lord’s Cricket Ground

 

Ford reports that “John Willes of Kent is “no-balled” for “throwing” at Lord’s for round-arm bowling.  Nevertheless William Lillywhite James Broadbridge and others continue this practice.  John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 21.  Ford does not give a citation for this account.

 

1822.3 -- Cricket Clubs, “Other Ball Clubs” Welcomed at Philadelphia PA Facility

 

In an advertisement about an outdoor recreation establishment run by John Carter Jr. on the western bank of the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia PA is included the sentence “Gentlemen are informed that the grounds are so disposed as to afford sufficient room and accommodation for quoit and cricket and other ball clubs.”  It doesn’t say what these “other ball clubs” are playing.  Saturday Evening Post, June 22, 1822, Vol. 1, Issue 47, page 003.  Submitted by Bill Wagner 1/24/2007.

 

1822.4 – Trap Ball Advertised at Inn

 

“TRAP BALL.  This entertaining game and pleasing exercise may be enjoyed every Monday afternoon, at the Traveller’s Rest, in Broad Street, between Chestnut and Walnut.  Traps, Bats, and Balls may be had for select parties or promiscuous companies at any time.  Refreshments of the first quality at the Bar.”

 

Saturday Evening Post [running ad,  summer 1822].  Provided by Richard Hershberger, email of June 26, 2007. The location is Philadelphia PA.

 

1822.5 – Ball-playing Disallowed in Front of Hobart College Residence

 

“The rules for Geneva Hall in 1822 are still preserved.  The residents were not allowed to cut or saw firewood, or play ball or quoits, in front of the building.”

 

Warren Hunting Smith, Hobart and William Smith; the History of Two Colleges (Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva NY, 1972.  Provided by Priscilla Astifan, email of 2/4/2008. 

 

 

1823.1 – National Advocate Reports “Base Ball” Game in NYC

 

The National Advocate of April 25, 1823, page 2, column 4, states: “I was last Saturday much pleased in witnessing a company of active young men playing the manly and athletic game of ‘base ball’ at the Retreat in Broadway (Jones’) [on the west side of Broadway between what nowadays is Washington Place and Eighth Street]. I am informed they are an organized association, and that a very interesting game will be played on Saturday next at the above place, to commence at half past 3 o'clock, P.M. Any person fond of witnessing this game may avail himself of seeing it played with consummate skill and wonderful dexterity.... It is surprising, and to be regretted that the young men of our city do not engage more in this manual sport; it is innocent amusement, and healthy exercise, attended with but little expense, and has no demoralizing tendency.”

 

National Advocate, April 25, 1823, page 2, column 4.  As discussed by its modern discoverer George Thompson, in George A. Thompson, Jr., “New York Baseball, 1823,” The National Pastime 2001], pp 6 – 8.

 

1823.2 – Base-ball Listed Among Games Played in Suffolk

 

Moor, E., Suffolk Words and Phrases [Woodbridge, England], p. 238.  Per RH ref 123 and Chadwick 1867.  The listed games played in Suffolk include cricket, base-ball, kit-cat, Bandy-wicket, and nine holes. Note:: But not trap-ball?  Moor muses:  “It is not unpleasing thus to see at a glance such a variety of recreations tending to excite innocent gaiety among our young people.  He is no friend to his fellow creatures who desire to curtail them; on the contrary I hold him a benefactor to his county who introduce a new sport among us.”

 

1823.3 -- Don’t Play Ball Inside the House!

 

Good Examples for Boys [New York, Mahlon Day], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 190.  A boy breaks a hand mirror with indoor ball play. With illustration.

 

1823c.4 – Young Man Recalls “More Active Sports of ‘Playing Ball’ or ‘Goal.’”

 

“Really time flies fast.  Tis but a day it seems since we three were boys . . . . But a day seems to have elapsed since meeting with our neighboring boys, we . . . engaged ourselves in the more active sorts of “playing ball” or “goal.”

 

Carter, L. A., The Discovery of a Grandmother [H. H. Carter, Newtonville MA, 1920]], pp 239-240.  Per Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.  From this note, the excerpts appear to be from a journal kept in 1835-1836 by Albert Ware Paine, born 1813. Note: This item needs t be reconciled with #1820S.12 above.

 

1823.5 -- Providence RI Bans “Playing Ball” in the Streets

 

“The Town of Providence have passed a law against playing ball in any of their public streets; the fine is $2.  Why is not the law enforced in this Town?  Newport Mercury, April 26, 1823, Vol. 62, Issue 3185, page 2.  Submitted by John Thorn 1/24/2007.

 

In August 2007, Craig Waff [email of 8/17/2007] located the actual ordinance:

 

“Whereas, from the practice of playing ball in the streets of the town, great inconvenience is suffered by the inhabitants and others: . . . no person shall be permitted to play at any game of ball in any of the publick streets or highways within the limits of this town.”

 

Rhode-Island American and General Advertiser Volume 15, Number 60 (April 25, 1823), page 4, and Number 62 (May 2, 1823), page 4.

 

 

1823.6 -- Students Play Baseball at Progressive School in Northampton MA

 

In their recollections during the 1880s, John Murray Forbes and George Sheyne Shattuck describe playing baseball during the years 1823 to 1828 at the Round Hill School in Northampton MA.  This progressive school for young boys reflected the goals of its co-founders, Joseph Green Cogswell and George Bancroft; in addition to building a gymnasium, the first US school to do so, Round Hill was one of the very first schools to incorporate physical education into its formal curriculum.

 

Forbes was writing his recollections in 1884, as reported in Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Sara Forbes Hughes, editor [Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1899], vol. 1, page 43. Shattuck is quoted in Edward M. Hartwell, Physical Training in American Colleges and Universities [GPO, 1886], page 22. Discovered by Brian Turner and submitted 7/16/2004.

 

1823.7 – Ditty:  “You Take the Bat, and I’ll carry the Ball”

 

“Now bright is the morning, how fair is the