Category: Protoball - This Game Of Games

1870: A Match Game and a Funeral

4/18/2016

An interesting game of base ball was played on Sunday, June 12, between the Peerless and Advance, in which the former were victorious by a score of 30 to 10.

-Missouri Republican, June 13, 1870

The funeral of Mr. D.S. Grant, a soldier of 1812, took place yesterday from the residence of his son, 1107 Chesnut street. There was a large number in attendance. Deceased had attained the ripe age of ninety-four years.

-Missouri Republican, June 13, 1870

These two squibs were right next to each other in the Republican and I found the juxtaposition fascinating. It made me realize that we are, today, further in time away from the end of World War Two than the folks in 1870 were from the end of the War of 1812. That doesn't have anything to do with baseball but it does help us put everything in context.

Well, I guess if I wanted to tie it all together I can do that.

The New York game of baseball had developed, evolved, and spread across the country to the extent where it was quickly moving from pastime to a business entity in a shorter period of time than the end of World War Two to today. For that matter, the period between the first codification of the rules and 1870 was shorter than the period between the end of the Vietnam War and today. If you think about it like that, you get a sense of how far the game had come in a very short period of time. From my point of view, baseball in 1870 is essentially the modern game. There were some rule variations that still needed to shake out but if you went to a game in 1870, you would have no problem recognizing the game for what it was. And it went from this malleable, bat and ball, safe-haven game to a heavily codified, regulated, and monetized sport in the span of one lifetime. I've never thought about the evolution of the game in that way and the juxtaposition of these two squibs in the Republican helped me to see that.

An 1858 Manual of Cricket And Base Ball

8/19/2015

This is something else I've had in my bookmarks for a long time and it's about time I showed it to you. It is an 1858 manual for playing cricket and baseball. But the best thing about this little book is that when you go to page 20 and 21, which begins the description of how to play baseball, you find this:

That is not the New York game of baseball. A quick look at the publishing information shows that this book was published in Boston so what we have here is the Massachusetts game of baseball, a regional variant played, obviously, in Massachusetts and New England. It is probably the most famous of the non-New York variants and, for a long time, when people talked about town ball, this is the game they were talking about. But, interestingly, I've found no evidence that the game was ever referred to as town ball - it was called base ball, round ball, ball, goal ball, bat and ball, base, and the Massachusetts game but never town ball. This manual, of course, refers to the game as base ball and it is as deserving of that name as the New York variant.

An 1863 Reference To Baseball In Central Illinois

8/4/2015

Pioneer Pic Nic. - One of the most pleasant parties of the season, came off yesterday afternoon, at the residence of D. Morse, Esq., Foreman of the Pioneer Fire Company of [Springfield, Illinois.] At about 1 o'clock the company and invited guests, preceded by a band of music, marched to the residence of Mr. Morse. A portion of the afternoon was spent by the members of the company in playing a game of "base ball" in a beautiful lot adjoining the premises of Mr. Morse. The bright uniform of the company presented a fine contrast to the green fields and foliage of the trees, giving the whole scene the air of a military review. After enjoying the pastime for a few hours, they proceeded to the residence of Mr. Morse, where the presentation of a beautiful gold watch and chain, the gift of the company, was made to Mrs. Morse.

-Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield, Illinois), May 28, 1863

This is rather significant because we simply don't have a lot of contemporary accounts of baseball being played in Central Illinois prior to about 1866. While we know, based upon the testimony of people who grew up in the area during the antebellum era, that baseball was being played in Central Illinois, there just isn't anything in the newspapers about it. I have seen one other source that mentions a game in Central Illinois during the war but I have serious questions about it and am not comfortable citing it. This source, quoted above, is solid and is direct, contemporary evidence of baseball being played in Central Illinois during the Civil War.

Now, as usual, we don't know exactly what game was being played and there is no evidence in the source to lead us to think that this was the New York game. It just doesn't give us enough information. My general thinking is that it was possible that the New York game spread out of St. Louis and Chicago and was being played in Central Illinois during the war years but we have no evidence of that happening. It is much more likely that the New York game didn't reach the area until the war ended and the smaller towns of Illinois didn't get their first clubs until 1866-1868 period.

But we do know that there was a baseball-playing culture in Central Illinois that went back to the settlement of the area. It doesn't matter whether the game was called town ball or long ball or base ball or whatever - the folks in the Sangamon River Valley liked to play ball games. This piece is just more evidence of that.

1868: Raquette Ball

4/8/2015

Col. Sim Folsom, with forty Indians from the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes, will play their national game of Raquette Ball, on Sunday, the 28th inst., at 4 o'clock P.M., on the grounds of the Base Ball Club, near the Fair Grounds. Admission 50c, children half price.

-Missouri Republican, June 25, 1868

When researching the early history of baseball in the United States, you often come across accounts of Native American ballplaying. While those games do not appear to have had any influence upon the development and evolution of baseball, they are still fascinating and certainly need to be acknowledged when talking about the early history of ball games in America.

As to this particular game, I think we're talking about stickball. Now I'm not sure if that was a common name for the game but it appears to be what we're calling it these days. Obviously, in 1868, we find a reference to it being called raquette ball, which is interesting. It also appears that there was a version of this game that was common among Native American tribes in the southeastern United States, which included the Chickasaw and Choctaw and I would imagine that this is the version that was played in this exhibition.

Now I have no idea how all of this fits in with the history, development, and evolution of Native American ball games. That is a subject that, while it interests me, is simply outside my perview. I don't know enough about the subject to speak intelligently and I'm sure it's all rather complicated. But, as I said, when looking at the early history of baseball, these things always pop up and I think it's good to acknowledge that.

Abraham Lincoln, Great Ballplayer

12/5/2013

That Abraham Lincoln was a great ball player as the game was played in those days, is the statement of Mrs. Rachel Billington, who on February 12 celebrated her ninetieth birthday. Mrs. Billington lived only a few doors away from the LIncoln family at Springfield and also knew the statesman later as a lawyer in Decatur. "In those days," says Mrs. Billington, "the batter stood with his back to a wall and Lincoln could hit the ball every time it was pitched to him."

-Sporting Life, February 21, 1914

There is no doubt that Lincoln was a good athlete and ball-player. To me, though, the most interesting thing here is Mrs. Billington's description of the ball game. In my youth, we played a lot of ball games where the batter stood against a wall - you didn't have to have a catcher that way. It's fascinating to think that this form of the game dates back to the antebellum period.

Antebellum Base Ball In Marseilles, Illinois

12/3/2013

Base Ball -- Ottawa vs. Marseilles

Some two weeks ago the Marseilles Base Ball Club challenged the Base Ball and Wicket Club of Ottawa to a trial of skill. - The challenge was promptly accepted, and Friday of last week fixed as the day and Marseilles the place for the game. At the time appointed, although the weather was intensely hot, the game was played with great spirit, yet with the utmost good feeling throughout, on both sides...

J.H. Burlison, of Ottawa, and A.B. Thompson, of Marseilles acted as the Umpires. The time occupied in the game as 3 hours and 40 minutes.

The Ottawa boys, it will be seen, came out 21 points ahead. The Marseilles boys took their defeat in great good humor, and had prepared a grand supper at the close of the contest, which however, owing to the late hour and their fatigue, the Ottawa boys did not remain to discuss.

-Ottawa Free Trader, June 26, 1858

First, let me point out that Ottawa and Marseilles are located in LaSalle County, Illinois, on the Illinois River, about fifty miles southwest of Chicago.

I think the really interesting thing here is the existence of a wicket club in Illinois in the antebellum era. At Protoball, the Glossary of Games has an entry on wicket that describes the game as follows:

The game of wicket was evidently the dominant game played in parts of Connecticut, western MA, and perhaps areas of Western New York State, prior to the spread of the New York game in the 1850’s and 1860’s. Wicket resembles cricket more than baseball. The “pitcher” bowls a large, heavy ball toward a long, low wicket, and a batter with a heavy curved club defends the wicket. Some students of cricket speculate that it resembles cricket before it evolved to its modern form.

There isn't much evidence of the game being played west of Ohio during this era, although there was a wicket club in Iowa in 1857. Protoball has no record of any games of wicket being played in Illinois or any wicket clubs in the state but now that we know the game was played in north central Illinois and in Iowa, it's possible that the game experienced a period of popularity in the area prior to the introduction of the New York game.

Also of interest is the existence of organized base ball clubs in the area in the antebellum era. While there was certainly a culture of ballplaying in central Illinois dating back to the 1820s, evidence of organized clubs is fairly rare, prior to the introduction of the New York game. We know that there were two organized clubs in Alton, Illinois, in 1858 and members of the Morning Star club have stated that the club was active, playing a St. Louis baseball variant, by 1857 but, in general, we don't see a lot of references organized baseball clubs in the greater St. Louis area, central Illinois and Missouri prior to 1859.

Base Ball At The House Of Refuge

10/24/2013

The House of Refuge, under its present management, is an institution of which St. Louis has just reason to be proud. The president and board of managers seem to have a comprehensive idea of all the possibilities in such an institution as a reformity, and to have discarded all idea of conducting it as a place of punishment. The inmates...are tractable, obedient and industrious, and feel the place to be a home, which they not only do not try to escape from, but from which they would with reluctance be turned away. It is no unusual thing for a large number of them to be taken, under suitable circumstances, for a stroll through the woods and fields on Sunday, with only a single guard in attendance, and some times forty or fifty are allowed to play base ball under the supervision only of a monitor of their own number.

-St. Louis Republican, April 29, 1875

According to Conard's Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, the House of Refuge was "A St. Louis city institution for the detention and training of boys and girls who are otherwise uncared for, the object being to rescue them from criminal association and give them a home in which they will be supported, educated and disciplined...It was established as a city institution in 1854...In 1872 the superintendent, Gleason, was charged with cruel treatment of the inmates, tried by a court and acquitted; but fresh charges were preferred against him and investigated by Mayor Brown, resulting in the passage of an act of Legislature in 1873, placing the institution under control of a board of managers..." I would imagine that this article, talking about how wonderful the House of Refuge was, is a result of its recent history of inmate mistreatment.

It's also interesting that they played a baseball game involving "forty or fifty" players. With twenty or twenty-five per side, that's obviously not the Regulation Game but some form of pre-baseball, most likely the St. Louis town ball variant. Off the top of my head, I think this is the latest reference I've ever seen to a form of protoball in St. Louis. There are references to town ball being played in St. Louis during the Civil War but I imagined that, with the post-war popularity of baseball in the city, these games were no longer being played. This reference in the Republican makes me think that these early baseball traditions lived on for a much longer period than I had previously believed.

A Huge Game Of Ball

9/10/2013

The observance of Christmas day in Emporia was not unlike that generally practice elsewhere. The weather was mild, but the sky was o'ercast with clouds...But the feature of the observance was a huge game of “ball” in the public square. Nearly all the male bipeds of the place – old and young – participated in the sport, which commenced in the morning and continued until dark. - The fun and excitement were great, and doffing, for the time, the gravity and dignity of every-day life and business, all were “boys again,” and entered into the spirit of the game with a relish and vigor that would have done credit to their younger years. - The discussions which grew out of this revival of “the days when we were young,” have been very numerous, covering the whole range of “ball science,” and many are the learned disquisitions we have listened to in regard to the merits and demerits of “base ball,” bull-pen, cat-ball, etc., with the proper mode of conducting the game. - Nobody got mad or drunk during the whole day; and although the time might have been more profitably spent, yet taking it all in all, we believe that it was much better employed than is usual on such occasions.

-The Kansas News (Emporia, Kan.), January 1, 1859

This is an amazing article that gives us a glimpse into early baseball in Kansas prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. There isn't an earlier reference to the game in Kansas at Protoball and I have to believe that it's the earliest contemporary reference to the game in the state.

Now, while I'm normally focused on St. Louis baseball history, I've been forced to expand my focus over the years and have traced the spread of proto-baseball games across the Trans-Appalachian West prior to the Civil War. I've also poked my nose a bit further west and have looked around for some of the earliest references to baseball west of Missouri. I'm going to share a little of that with you this week.

While I'm a bit farther afield than normal, this piece from Kansas is actually a relevant to St. Louis baseball and the history of early baseball in the region. The listing of early games - base ball, bullpen and cat ball - is similar to the lists of games we see in Illinois and Missouri in the 1820s and 1830s. I find it particularly interesting to see bullpen listed with proto-baseball games because I don't think there are too many people other than me who believe it should be listed with those games. Bullpen was certainly a popular game among frontier children in the first half of the 19th century but there was no batting or pitching or things that you would normally associate with baseball. While it was essentially an early form of dodge ball, I think the game fits comfortably in the American baseball family of games.

Another really interesting thing here is the date and place of the game. Emporia is about halfway between Topeka and Wichita and about sixty miles southwest of Kansas City. It was a fairly new town, having been founded in 1857. The Boarder War was going on at this time and a group from Emporia took part in a clash at Fort Scott, on the side of a Free State militia that included John Brown, in late 1858. So it's almost certain that some of the men who took part in the ball game on Christmas 1858 were also taking part in the Boarder War. This is another example of how the history of early baseball is intertwined with the history of the Civil War.

A Historical Analysis of the 1857 Rules of Baseball

7/31/2013

From the New York Clipper of December 27, 1856

A new document in the Roots of the Rules project is up at Protoball and focuses on the rules of the game as adopted by the 1857 Convention of Base Ball Clubs. This is something I've been working on for several months and its great to see it finally published online. In a lot of ways, it's a companion to the piece I wrote on the 1845 rules and the two really complement each other. Between those two and the pieces I wrote on town ball and the Massachusetts game, I think Protoball now presents analysis of how the rules of baseball have evolved from its roots in premodern bat and ball games through the adoption of the 1857 rules, which, essentially, created the modern game. It's an ongoing project but one that's shaping up nicely.

It's an evolving document and we've set up a structure where we can get people involved in criticism and revision of the piece. So, while this draft reflects my research and analysis, I'm hoping that future versions will reflect the consensus of the larger baseball research community (with Larry McCray and myself, of course, retaining editorial control). There is a few things we'd like to add to the piece, expanding its scope a bit, but version 1.0 is up and ready for people to read, enjoy and criticise.

As always, I have to thank Larry for giving me the opportunity to do this kind of work and for all of the hard work he does at Protoball.

Bat and Ball Games in the Illinois Country

7/25/2013

I just added a five thousand word piece on bat and ball games in the Illinois Country to the Protoball section. Its a thin sketch of an outline tracing the development of pre-modern baseball in the Illinois Country from 1700 to the late 1850s that I wrote a few years back. While I've continue to research the subject and have some more sources and evidence, the findings that I present are still valid and the piece goes a good job of conveying my thinking about pre-modern baseball during the era.

There are a couple of sources that I mention in the piece and a couple that I've found since I wrote it that I'd like to write about in more detail. There are some interesting stories surrounding all of that that I'd like to share with you. I'll add all of that as time allows.