"Base ball"

Mon Jul 19 02:36:14 UTC 2010

I've been modestly waiting for one of my fans here to mention that I was once famous -- internationally famous -- for 72 hours for finding a paragraph in a newspaper of 1823 referring to a base ball game played on a field once part of a rich guy's country estate, in Manhattan, on the west side of Broadway, between Washington Place and Eighth street.
This was in 2001.  Since then I have sunk back into obscurity, (where I have recently been joined by Paris Hilton -- obscurity is a rather crowded spot: avoid it, if you can).

Previous to my 1823 paragraph, the earliest reference to "base ball" in the U. S. was a letter to a newspaper of Delhi, N. Y in 1825, from 9 guys from Hamden, challenging the men of a neighboring village to a base ball game.
The fact that this letter was from 9 guys does not signify that the rules of base ball then required a 9 man team.  There were only 9 guys in that village willing to spend the time to play base ball together, to say nothing of putting up a dollar each as bait to incentivize (ahem) the guys in the next village to take them up on the challenge.
Since 2001, John Thorn has found a village ordinance from western Mass., from the 1790s, forbidding boys to play base ball too near the village public building -- they were breaking the windows too often.  But my 1823 paragraph remains the earliest reference to the game played by grown-ups.

Block quotes from an encyclopedia of the games of the world, compiled in the 1790s by a learned Kraut, which has an entry on the English game of baseball, explaining how it was played (not the rules, since there was no board or association to formulate rules, and enforce them).

As for the OED on baseball, please remember that that entry was produced when James Murray was but a youth -- and he was a Limey, at that.  What would he know?

There are, I think, 4 occurrences of "base ball" in novels from ca 1790-1810 by English women, Austen and 3 others, all referring to games played by rather young girls.
Does this mean that a game for 10 or 12 year old girls, in being transported to the U. S., somehow became a game for grown men?  Maybe.  Or it means that only women novelists wrote with the sort of attention to children's life that would produce references to their playtime activities.  Or it means that that the neglected and forgotten novels by women were suppressed by patriarchy, and require rereading, to discover how wonderful they really are, while the novels by men of that era are neglected and forgotten because they are no good, and they deserve to stay that way, and their references to baseballwill never be noticed.  Or something else.

The members of SABR devote themselves to, for instance, assembling and when necessary recreating the box scores of games played in earlier decades, not necessarily in the major leagues.  Baseball fans tend to regard them as harmless crackpots.
Among the members of SABR are a group who devote themselves to the study of 19th century baseball.  The other members of SABR tend to regard them as harmless crackpots.  Among the members of SABR who are interested in 19th C baseball are a group who are interested in the prehistory of baseball.  The other members of the 19th C clique tend to regard them as harmless crackpots.

There are hundreds of references from 18th and early 19th C newspapers, diaries, letter collections, &c to "playing at ball", "a game of ball" and other such phrases.
In a few cases it's clear that they refer to a bat & ball game.  In a few cases it's clear that they refer to playing catch, or to handball -- "fives" (though there was a variation of fives which was played using a bat).  Presumably, among the rest, there are some -- a few of them, most or them, ??? -- which refer to playing a bat & ball game, with base-running.
The references in the newspapers from NYC to playing ball tend to come from angry letters objecting to it being done on Sundays, and the writers of these letters weren't concerned to state clearly the rules of the game they are frothing over.

The supposition that the game of "base ball" played in New York in 1823 was not in principle very different from the game being played in New York in the 1850s is supported by the couple of references from the 1850s to "the good old-fashioned game of baseball".

There were two basic variations on baseball in prehistoric times, one now referred to as the New York game and the other as the Massachusetts game.  The NY game was played with 4 bases arranged in a square, with the beginning and ending base at one corner.  The Mass. game was played with the bases arranged in a square, but with 5 bases, the fifth, the beginning and ending point, being in the middle of one side of the square.

A journal, Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, has in preparation a special issue devoted to the prehistory of the game, due, I believe, in 2011.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Date: Sunday, July 18, 2010 1:32 pm
Subject: Re: "Base ball"
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> Is baseball an American game?  The modern rules were essentially laid
> down
> by Alexander Cartwright and his teammates in 1845.
>
> Is there any early description of the rules of Anglo-Irish
> "base-ball"?  I
> suspect that they were largely adlibbed by the kids who mainly played
> it.
>
> IAC, I'd split the def. into two numbered senses.
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 1:26 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >
> > 1755 John Kidgell _The Card_  I (Dublin: Sam. Price) 8:
> > The younger part of the Family, perceiving Papa not inclined to _enlarge_
> > upon the Matter, retired to an _interrupted_ Party at _Base-Ball_ (an
> > _infant_ game, which as it advances in its _Teens_, improves into _Fives_,
> > and in its State of _Manhood_ is called _Tennis_.
> >
> > I take the connection to tennis to be facetious.  Of interest is
> that the
> > game was evidently also known in Ireland at this date.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 12:54 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> >> ---------------------- 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
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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