"Base ball"

[George Thompson]

Richard Hershberger, a very active researcher in 19th C baseball and its prehistory has just posted to the SABR 19cBB site a link to an article on "Old Baseball" from the Sterling, Illinois Evening Gazette of March 31, 1887.
It is freely accessible at
http://sterlingpl.newspaperarchive.com/PdfViewer.aspx?img=130582403&firstvisit=true&src=search&currentResult=2&currentPage=50,

His message discusses the connexion with this game and "town ball", another precursor game.

The article also mentions the games of "old cat", and "long dutchman"  This latter game I have never heard of.

Larry McCray has created a chronological compilation of references to bat & ball games, from antiquity to the 1860s.
http://retrosheet.org/Protoball/chron.htm#Chron
One doesn't have to be a member of SABR to access this.

If I recall, the NYTimes some years ago had an article on an Egyptologist who had created a baseball trading card in honor of one of the Pharaohs, since he's portrayed in a tomb painting as striking at something with a bat.
Probably this guy: http://spinner.cofc.edu/~piccione/sekerhemat.html?referrer=webcluster&
I find a NYTimes article about him: A Very Early Sultan of Swat,  BRUCE WEBER New York Times, Mar 15, 2003; this doesn't mention a trading card, and is more recent that what I think I'm recalling -- thus violating Thompson's Rule, which is, things always happened longer ago than you think they did.

There are images from medieval European manuscripts showing bat and ball games.  I recall one from a Spanish manuscript showing a chap in clerical robes with a bat cocked over his shoulder, looking for a pitch he can drive.  Another particularly charming one, I believe English, shows 3 childlike figures, one with a bat and another seeming to be about to throw a ball.

McCray would add to the categories of bat & ball games proposed by Robin Hamilton a subset of games that involve a "safe haven", like the bases in baseball.

GAT

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

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