Lemonade, made in the shade (1890); Base Ball (1835)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Is this really the kind of "baseball" we're familiar with?  "Cricketers" are mentioned, but is "base-ball" being played with a bat? Or just a tossed ball with trees (?) for bases ?

  Do the earlier English exx. (like Jane Austen's) explicitly involve bats ?

  Must we revise history again ?

  SWAG: Until "baseball" was more or less codified nationally, there seems to be no reason why kids wouldn't apply the name to any game involving a ball and a base.

  It's not called *batball, after all.

  JL

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Bapopik at AOL.COM
Subject: Lemonade, made in the shade (1890); Base Ball (1835)
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The first 1835 "baseball" is from about 1885.
...
...
5 May 1890, Morning Oregonian, pg. 12, col. 1:
Ice cream, lemonade--"ice cold, made in the shade, and stirred with a
spade"--and every kind of refreshments were on the grounds in superabundance.
...
...
3 August 1835, New-York Spectator, pg. 3, col. 2:
What can be prettier than this, unless it be the fellow-group of
girls-sisters, I presume, to the boys--who are laughing and screaming round the great
oak; then darting to and fro, in a game compounded of hide-and-seek and
base-ball. Now tossing the ball high, high amidst the branches; now flinging it low
along the common, bowling as it were, almost within reach of the cricketers;
not pursuing, now retreating, running, jumping, shouting, bawling--almost
shricking with ecstacy;...

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