Baseball in 1791?????

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 12 May 2004, Sam Clements wrote:

> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-BBO-Baseballs-Birthplace.html
>
> Move over George Thompson.

If all we know is that this game was called "baseball," it is not the
earliest such evidence.  There are references to "base ball" in a 1748
letter and in a 1760 children's book whose first edition, which presumably
contained the same reference, was published in 1744.

Fred Shapiro


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