"Base ball"

[Shapiro, Fred]

It is interesting that the earliest "base ball" citation is routinely dated 1744 by baseball historians, but will presumably be dated 1760 by the OED because there are no existing copies of pre-1760 editions.

Fred Shapiro




________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Shapiro, Fred [fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2010 1:02 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Base ball"

Block's citations are legitimate and probably known to the OED already.  I think I gave the 1799 one to Block.

Fred



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Joel S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2010 12:54 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "Base ball"

A correspondent alleges the following references to "base ball" prior
to 1800.  Are these useful?  Useless?  Presumably unrelated to the
American game, but so -- I assume -- is the OED's c1815 Jane Austen
quote.  They would be at least instances of the use of the phrase.

I would look in the ADS-L archives except that there are over 1800
messages with the word "baseball" in them -- and that's only since 1999.

Joel


>There are several references to base ball in England before  in
>writing  before 1800.
>
>David Block, in his Baseball Before We Knew It mentions them in
>several places, most notably in chapter10..

[Apparently all the following are taken from Block and Wiles  GB, Preview.


>A book intended for children, A Pretty Little Pocket Book, mentions
>a game for children in which they struck a ball and ran around bases.
>
>Lady Hervey ( aka Mary Lepel) writes of the royal children playing
>at base ball in a letter of November 1748. They played indoors with
>aristocratic children and lords and ladies in waiting, it is assumed.
>
>Then Jane Austen, writing in the 1790s, mentions that her heroine
>Catherine preferred baseball to studies.

[I read, actually first published in 1817, although probably written
1798-1799 and the OED cites c1815.]


>In 1875 , in Jolly Games for Happy Homes describes a game without a
>bat but which included running around bases. It was a game girls could play.
>
>Also mentioned is a quote from a character in a book of 1799,
>Battleridge in which a man bemoans being sent to Geneva because, "No
>more cricket, no more base-ball."

Cooke, Cassandra.  Battleridge: an historical tale, founded on facts
... By a lady of quality ... .  London, G. Cawthorn,
1799.  [Apparently in ECCO.]

Joel

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