"Base ball"
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jul 19 13:33:10 UTC 2010
Poss. redundant to some, but of interest to others:
1850 _Northern Star and National Trades Journal_ (Leeds, Eng.) 1 [British
Newspapers 1600-1900]: Grand Whitsuntide Chartist Holiday -- Excursion to
Gravesend and Kentish Demonstration...
[O]thers engaged in an exhilarating game of cricket, base ball, and other
recreations.
There are a good number of other hits (though none earlier). Later exx.
refer mostly (perh. exclusively) to the formal American game.
JL
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 8:57 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: "Base ball"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> George, that post alone should lift you from undeserved obscurity.
>
> I found one of those 1850s refs to the "good old-fashioned game of
> base-ball" yesterday, but the seemingly gratuitous "good" makes my style
> radar beep "gently facetious! gently facetious!" I don't think it suggests
> anything except the most general resemblances in the "rules," e.g., you
> need
> a bat, a ball, bases, and two evenly matched teams.
>
> But be that as it may. The known existence of "base-ball" from way back in
> the 18th C. and the dearth of refs. till a hundred years later sugg. to me,
> as I think it does to George, that before the Cartwright era it was a kids'
> game, rarely played by adults (who had little leisure time anyway). My
> guess
> is that when grownups played it, they frequently did so out of silliness
> and
> nostalgia.
>
> Luckily, many, maybe most, of the worst 18th C. novels by members of both
> sexes(plus, one assumes, deeply closeted gay authors) are available through
> ECCO. I count *three* over the 100 years and 100 zillion printed words in
> books of the 18th C.
> The database of Eighteenth Century Journals...ca1685-1815, another zillion
> words perhaps, reveals nada.
>
> The momentary mention in Cassandra Cooke's _Battleridge_ (1799) has young
> law clerks playing the game: "Ah,...no more cricket, no more base-ball,
> they are sending me to Geneva" (p. 2).
>
> Unfounded is Cooke's imaginative placing of the ref. twenty years before a
> date "towards the close of Oliver Cromwell's usurpation." But it does
> indicate her opinion that such a game was so familiar in her lifetime that
> it "always" existed. (Of interest: Cooke [1744-1826] was Jane Austen's
> mother's cousin. Coincidence? Hmmm....)
>
> But the general silence of the pre-modern age suggests that "base-ball"
> (like the undoubtedly inclusive "ball") was considered a very unstructured
> activity indeed, its "rules" handed down entirely by the "folk tradition."
> (Of course, how many refs and how much detail can we find in the period
> about "cricket"? Am too lazy to find out, but if there's lots....)
>
> I'll be interested in seeing those pre-history articles.
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:36 PM, George Thompson
> <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster: George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> > Subject: Re: "Base ball"
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > 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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> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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