"Base ball" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

SABR has a 19th Century research committee (actually, everything before
1901).  Their email list is a members-only Yahoo group.  I know there
many, many references to "baseball", "base ball", "game of base", and
other related terms before the 19th century.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Joel S. Berson
> Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2010 11:55 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: "Base ball"
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
---------------
> --------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> 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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Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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