home and home

[George Thompson]

I found the expression "home and home" referring to cricket matches in a newspaper of 1844, and supposed that it would be early enough an occurrence to be interesting:
        Cricket. -- The admirers of the manly and beautiful game of Cricket, will be pleased to learn that a "home and home" match has been definitively arranged between the St. George's Club of this city and the Union Club of Philadephia, both clubs playing their strength if they choose.  ***
        Morning Courier &New-York Enquirer, August 28, 1844, p. 2, col. 3; [notice repeated] MC&N-Y Enquirer, August 29, 1844, p. 2, col. 4

Turning to the OED Online, what to my wondering eyes should appear but:
  1800 Spokane Falls (Wash.) Globe 26 July 1/3 Six hundred baseball cranks witnessed..one of the prettiest exhibitions of ball playing that ever took place on the home grounds. 1802 Sporting Mag. XIX. 219/2 They were willing to run a match with a leash of greyhounds..or six brace belonging to each county, running home and home, for a sum to be agreed on. Ibid. 221/2 He has refused to run you home and home, or in any central county between the two.
This is under Home, B2c. Belonging to the county or locality in which a sporting contest or match takes place. home-and-home: applied to two matches, one of which is played at the home or locality of each side.  The next occurrence of "home and home" is 1892.

It's doubtful that Spokane had a newspaper in 1800, or much of anything else, for that matter.  Presumably a misprint for 1900? or a prank by some mean lexicographer who wanted to shake his reputation of being a *harmless* drudge by tying a can to cranky baseball historians?

In any event, my "home and home" is the 2nd recorded, it seems, the first with reference to a team sport played by humans, and the first in American English.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.