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The Origin of Baseball
By FRPenn
There is very little known about the origins of baseball. There appears to be a historic mish-mash of very early games that may very well have ties to modern baseball.The idea that baseball evolved from any of these sources turns out to be
conjecture or theory. Like most history, if it goes back far enough, details start
to get quite fuzzy. By its very nature, baseball has been a game that has
thrived on legends and myth.
There is evidence that baseball is strictly American, as many of its features are
unique. Conversely, many cling to the long held belief that baseball was
derived from rounders, a British game. This claim is somewhat hard to
dispute. Almost everything except the shape of the field is similar to baseball.
Rounders uses posts instead of bases, and there are four posts, but the field is
arranged in a pentagon, with one side open. There is no foul territory, and if a
batsman swings at a pitch, or if the pitch is deemed inside the "batting square"
and there is no swing, they must attempt to run to the first post, even if they
don¡¯t make contact with the ball.
A fielder produces an out by tagging the runner with the ball, tagging the post
the batsman is running toward with the ball, or catching the hit ball on the fly. A
batsman advances to the first post if three pitches are delivered by the
"bowler," 28 feet away, outside of the batting square. A batsman can also
advance on a ball hit behind the field arrangement, an area that is considered
"foul territory" in baseball, but only to the first post. There are nine players to a
team, just like in baseball, but there are nine outs per inning, and two innings
comprise a complete game.
There is no evidence of a direct connection of baseball to rounders other than
early sports writers (mostly British) saying so. Still, others believe that baseball
was developed from a very old folk game known as stool ball (1085 A.D., also
British). This is a stretch, as the game has many dissimilar features. We know
that in 2000 B.C. ball and stick type games were played by ancient cultures,
and Egyptian hieroglyphics describe an ancient game similar to baseball in
1500 B.C.
Baseball historians have tried to connect everything from these ancient games
to "tip-cat" to "base" as a claim to baseball¡¯s ancestry. Many theorists from
England claim that baseball was taken from rounders, which has many
similarities, but it also has features dissimilar to baseball. Most of these
theories are questionable at best and downright ridiculous at worst.
In tip-cat a "batter" strikes the end of a whittled "cat," a piece of wood about 4
inches long that is similar to a parallelogram or pyramid on each end. It is
struck with a long stick which also serves as the bat. The "cat" is catapulted
into the air, then struck on its down flight with the bat. A player gets three
"strikes" at the cat, and the greatest accumulated distance wins. Does this
sound anything like baseball?
The game of base is just more-or-less "tag" with a base where you are safe.
The "base" is the only similarity to the game of baseball. Many of the earlier
folk games that go back as far as the 1300¡¯s in England had some similarities
to baseball, cricket, rounders and other games. These games went by various
names, including stob-ball, stow-ball, stoolball, poison ball, tip-cat, and the list
goes on to infinity. Many baseball historians have stated these early games
were more direct ancestors of cricket and rounders.
Stoolball, most notably, had many similar features to rounders and cricket. In
stoolball, a batter defended an object (a stool or a stump) by striking a pitched
projectile of some sort. If the batter hit the projectile and it was caught by a
fielder, or missed hitting the ball and it struck a stool leg or a stump, the batter
was out. There is also some evidence, although not clearly, that these types of
games were social games and also had some similarities to "spin-the-bottle".
Stob-ball and stow-ball were regional spin-off games similar to stoolball. In the
year 1700, Thomas Wilson wrote down his disapproval of "morris dancing,
cudgel-playing, baseball and cricket." Some sources claim this statement was
"stoolball" rather than baseball.
In 1744, a small book by John Newbery called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book
provides us a woodcut model of the field in stoolball. It includes a rhyme that
mentions base-ball. The book was later republished in Colonial America. It
was also documented that in 1748 Frederick, the Prince of Wales, played in a
game similar to baseball. There were many other early British and Colonial
American games that have been thrown into the controversial "chicken or the
egg" argument of baseball¡¯s origin. Perhaps rounders came from stoolball, or
perhaps baseball came from rounders? Some have even recently suggested
that rounders and cricket came from baseball.
Really, all that we do know for a fact is that the terms base-ball and stoolball
were used interchangeably on many occasions. We know for sure that the first
written rules for modern baseball appeared in 1845. We also know that one of
the reasons they were written was, once again, the rules were changed.
These "original" rules laid out the foul lines and eliminated the "plug out"
(hitting the runner with the ball to gain an out, if not on a base). This document
also included the first account of the tag-out and the force-out. There were also
no "innings" in the Knickerbocker or New York game. The first team to reach
twenty-one, allowing equal number of at-bats, won the game. Cartwright may
have written the modern rules, but there are still differences from the modern
game.
What¡¯s important is that for the first time in baseball history these changes
were clearly documented, as were subsequent adjustments to the modern
rules of baseball. The evolution of baseball is a long and complex path, which
has snaked its way through a large number of similar games.
About the Author
This article was written by FR Penn sponsored by http://www.stubhub.com. If you're looking for tickets to see your favorite team live in action, look no further than Stubhub.com where fans buy and sell the hottest baseball tickets. Reproductions of this article are encouraged but must include a link back to http://www.stubhub.com.
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| Some other articles by FRPenn | Early History of Baseball in America
It is difficult to pinpoint when baseball was first played in America. The early development of baseball is chronicled more in myth and legend rather than in facts and history. The first and earliest ...
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