Origins of baseball

Part of the History of baseball series.

Surprisingly little is known about the origin of baseball. The question has been the subject of considerable debate and controversy for more than 100 years. Baseball (and softball), as well as the other modern bat, ball and running games, cricket and rounders, developed from earlier folk games, many of which were similar to each other, but there were certainly local, regional and national variations, both in how they were played and what they were called, such as stoolball, poison ball, and goal ball. Few details of how the modern games developed from earlier folk games are known. Some think that various folk games resulted in a game called town ball from which baseball was eventually born.

A number of early folk games in England had characteristics that can be seen in modern baseball (as well as in cricket and rounders). Many of these early games involved a ball that was thrown at a target while an opposing player defended the target by attempting to hit the ball away. If the batter successfully hit the ball, he could attempt to score points by running between bases while fielders would attempt to catch or retrieve the ball and put the runner out in some way.

Since they were folk games, the early games had no 'official' rules, and they tended to change over time. To the extent that there were rules, they were generally simple and were not written down. There were many local variations, and varied names.

Many of the early games were not well documented, first, because they were generally peasant games (and perhaps children's games, as well); and second, because they were often discouraged, and sometimes even prohibited, either by the church or by the state, or both.

Aside from obvious differences in terminology, the games differed in the equipment used (ball, bat, club, target, etc., which were usually just whatever was available), the way in which the ball is thrown, the method of scoring, the method of making outs, the layout of the field and the number of players involved.

An old English game called "base," described by George Ewing at Valley Forge, was apparently not much like baseball. There was no bat and no ball involved! The game was more like a fancy game of "tag", although it did share the concept of places of safety (ie, bases) with modern baseball.

In an 1801 book entitled The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, Joseph Strutt claimed to have shown that baseball-like games can be traced back to the 14th century, and that baseball is a descendant of a British game called stoolball. The earliest known reference to stoolball is in a 1330 poem by William Pagula, who recommended to priests that the game be forbidden within churchyards.

In stoolball, a batter stood before a target, perhaps an upturned stool, while another player pitched a ball to the batter. If the batter hit the ball (with a bat or his/her hand) and it was caught by a fielder, the batter was out. If the pitched ball hit a stool leg, the batter was out. It was more often played by young men and women as a sort of spin the bottle.

In 1700, a Puritan leader of southern England, Thomas Wilson, expressed his disapproval of "Morris-dancing, cudgel-playing, baseball and cricket" occurring on Sundays. A 1744 publication in England by John Newbery called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book includes a woodcut of stoolball and a rhyme entitled "Base-ball." The book was later published in Colonial America in 1762. In 1748, the family of Frederick, Prince of Wales partook in the playing of a baseball-like game.

A 1791 bylaw in Pittsfield, Massachusetts bans the playing of baseball within 80 yards of the town meeting house.

Les Jeux des Jeunes Gar�ons is the first known book to contain printed rules of a bat/base/running game. It was printed in Paris, France in 1810 and lays out the rules for "poison ball," in which there were two teams of eight to ten players, four bases (one called home), a pitcher, a batter, and flyball outs.

Another early print reference is Jane Austen's posthumous 1818 novel Northanger Abbey.

In 1829, William Clarke in London, published The Boy’s Own Book which included rules of rounders. Similar rules were published in Boston, Massachusetts in 1834, except the Boston version called the game "Base" or "Goal ball." The rules were identical to those of poison ball, but also added fair and foul balls and strike outs.

Stoolball
Origins of Stoolball:

1) In stoolball, which developed by the 11th century, one player throws the ball at a target while another player defends the target. Stob-ball and stow-ball were regional games similar to stoolball.

In stob ball and stow ball the target was probably a tree stump, since both "stob" and "stow" mean stump in some dialects. ( "Stow" could also refer to a type of frame used in mining). What the target originally was in stoolball is not certain. It could have been a stump, since “stool” in old Sussex dialect means stump.

2) According to one legend, milkmaids played stoolball while waiting for their husbands to return from the fields. Another theory is that stoolball developed as a game played after attending church services, in which case the target was probably a church stool.

Originally, the stool was defended with a bare hand. Later, a bat of some kind was used (in modern stoolball, a bat like a very heavy ping-pong paddle is used).

Clear regional variation:

There were several versions of stoolball. In the earliest versions, the object was primarily to defend the stool. Successfully defending the stool counted for one point, and the batter was out if the ball hit the stool. There was no running involved. Another version of stoolball involved running between two stools, and scoring was similar to the scoring in cricket. In perhaps yet another version there were several stools, and points were scored by running around them as in baseball.

Because of the different versions of stoolball, and because it was played not only in England, but also in colonial America, stoolball is considered by many to have been the basis of not only cricket, but both baseball and rounders as well.

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Tip-cat, Trap Ball
Tip-cat is an early game, which was played well into the middle of the Twentieth Century, but has since declined in popularity. It involves striking a piece of wood (known as the 'cat') lying on the ground with a stick, so that it spins vertically into the air, then using a horizontal swing to strike the 'cat' on its downfall. The object is to hit the 'cat' as far as possible over three consecutive strikes, the next strike taking place where the previous strike landed. A swing that fails to connect with the 'cat', or an initial strike that fails to spin the 'cat' into the air high enough to swing at, still counts toward the three strike total. While each 'cat' is different, typically being fashioned from whatever wood was lying around at the time, a typical one would be a straight piece of stick about four inches (10 centimetres) long, one inch (2.5 centimetres) in diameter, and cut at an angle at each end to resemble a parallelogram in cross-section. When the 'cat' is on the ground, it will be possible to strike one or the other end of the 'cat' with a stick approximately 30 inches (75 centimetres) long, held one-handed, to cause it to fly up in the air so it can be hit with the stick.

Trap-ball, which developed by the 14th century, is somewhat similar to tip-cat, except that, instead of striking a cat with a stick to get it to fly in the air so it can be hit, a ball is launched from a kind of catapult.

Cat and Dog
Another early folk game was cat and dog (or "dog and cat"), which probably originated in Scotland. In cat and dog a piece of wood called a cat is thrown at a hole in the ground while another player defends the hole with a stick (a dog). In some cases there were two holes and, after hitting the cat, the batter would run between them while fielders would try to put the runner out by putting the ball in the hole before the runner got to it. Dog and cat thus resembled cricket.

Cricket
The history of cricket prior to 1650 is something of a mystery. Games believed to have been similar to cricket had developed by the 13th century. There was a game called "creag", and another game, Handyn and Handoute (Hands In and Hands Out), which was made illegal in 1477 by King Edward IV, who considered the game childish, and a distraction from compulsory archery practice.

References to a game actually called "cricket" appeared around 1550. It is believed that the word cricket is based either on the word cric, meaning a crooked stick possibly a shepherd's crook (early forms of cricket used a curved bat somewhat like a hockey stick), or on the Flemish word “krickstoel", which refers to a stool upon which one kneels in church.

There was at least one official Cricket Club open to membership, established in 1846 in the US at New York. However it appears the popularity of the sport waned during the US civil war; to which baseball became the more popular sport.

Cat, One Old Cat
A game popular in colonial America was one hole catapult, which used a catapult like the one used in trap-ball.

The game of cat (or "cat-ball") had many variations but usually there was a pitcher, a catcher, a batter and fielders, but there were no sides (and often no bases to run). A feature of some versions of cat that would later become a feature of baseball was that a batter would be out if he swung and missed three times.

Another game that was popular in early America was one ol' cat, the name of which was possibly originally a contraction of one hole catapult. In one ol' cat, when a batter is put out, the catcher goes to bat, the pitcher catches, a fielder becomes the pitcher, and other fielders move up in rotation. One ol' cat was often played when there weren't enough players to choose up sides and play townball. Sometimes running to a base and back was involved. Two ol' cat was the same game as one ol' cat, except that there were two batters.

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Early baseball
A game called "base-ball" had developed in England by the early 18th century, and it continued to be called "baseball" until after 1800. It was mentioned in a book published in 1744 called Little Pretty Pocket-Book. As is the case with all folk games, there were many variations. Similar games were played in America well before 1800.

Rules for "baseball" appeared in 1796, in a German book by Johann Guts Muths, who called the game "English base-ball". In the game described by Guts Muths, the number of bases varied with the number of players, and a single out retired the entire side.

In Northanger Abbey (written 1798), Jane Austen wrote (emphasis added): (Catherine) should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country, at the age of fourteen, to books.

In 2004, historian John Thom discovered a reference to a bylaw prohibiting anyone from playing "baseball" within 80 yards of the new meeting house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A librarian found the actual by-law in the Berkshire Athenaeum library, and its age was verified by researchers at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.

If authentic and if actually referring to a recognizable version of the modern game, the 1791 document, would be, as of 2004, the earliest known reference to the game.

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Did Abner Doubleday invent baseball?
Contrary to a once-widely promoted theory that Abner Doubleday invented baseball (presumably in 1839), there is no evidence that he did other than the testimony of one man decades after the fact. Doubleday, in fact, never claimed that he did. The legend of Doubleday’s invention was itself an invention of Al Spalding, a former star pitcher who had become a sporting goods manufacturer. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, debates raged over the origins of baseball. To end the arguments and speculation, Spalding organized a panel in 1907. The panel consisted of Spalding, two United States Senators (one a former National League president), two other former National League presidents, and two other former stars turned sporting goods entrepreneurs (George Wright and Alfred Reach). The final report entailed three sections: a summary written by Spalding of the panel’s findings, a letter by John M. Ward supporting the panel, and a dissenting opinion by Henry Chadwick. The research methods were, at best, dubious. It was not history Spalding was after, but the perfect story: baseball was invented in a quaint rural town that lacked foreigners and lacked industry by a young man who later went on to graduate West Point, and be a hero in the Mexican-American War, Civil War, and in wars against Indians.

Spalding's summary concluded that baseball had been invented by Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York in 1839; that Doubleday had invented the word baseball, designed the diamond, indicated fielder positions, wrote down the rules and the field regulations. However, no written records from 1839 or the 1840s have ever been found to corroborate these claims; nor could Doubleday be questioned, because he had died in 1893. The primary source for the panel's conclusions was the 1907 testimony of Abner Graves, a five-year-old resident of Cooperstown in 1839. Graves, however, never mentioned a diamond, positions or the writing of rules. Graves' reliability as a witness is questionable as he was later convicted of murdering his wife and spent his final days in an asylum for the criminally insane. To further cloud the panel's findings, Doubleday was not in Cooperstown in 1839. He was enrolled in West Point and there are no records of any leave time. A.G. Mills, a lifelong friend of Doubleday’s, had never heard Doubleday mention inventing baseball.

At his death, Doubleday left a considerable supply of letters and papers, none of which describe baseball, or give any suggestion that Doubleday considered himself a prominent person in the evolution of the game. An encyclopedia article about Doubleday published in 1911 makes no mention of the game.

As noted elsewhere in the text, versions of baseball rules have since been found in publications that significantly predate the alleged invention in 1839.

Jeff Idelson of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York has stated, "Baseball wasn't really born anywhere," meaning that the evolution of the game was long and continuous and has no clear, identifiable single origin.

1845 / The Knickerbocker Rules
The first published rules of modern baseball were written in 1845 for a Manhattan team called the Knickerbockers. The author of those rules, Alexander Cartwright, has come to be known as the father of modern baseball. The evolution of the so-called "Knickerbocker Rules" into the rules of today is fairly well documented. The role of Cartwright himself has been alleged by some baseball historians to be significantly exaggerated, a modern attempt similar to the Doubleday story, to try to pinpoint a single "inventor" of the game, albeit with at least some measure of substantiation. One factor that is undisputed by historians is the direct evolution from the amateur urban teams (not the Cooperstowns of America) of the 1840s to the modern professional major leagues which began in the 1870s.

Before 1845
The evolution of the game which became modern baseball prior to 1845 is unclear. The Knickerbocker Rules describe a game that people had been playing for some time. But exactly how long is uncertain, as is the question of how that game developed.

Early theorists tended to fall into two camps. One group, mostly English, asserted that baseball evolved from a game of English origin (probably rounders), while the other group, almost entirely American, argued that baseball was an American invention (perhaps derived from the game of one ol' cat). Proponents of these two views apparently saw them as mutually exclusive. Some of their conclusions seem based more on a sense of national loyalty than on any actual evidence.

American historians tended to reject any suggestion that baseball evolved from an English game, while some English observers concluded that baseball was little more than rounders without the round. The theory that baseball is based on English games (such as cat, cricket and rounders) is difficult to dispute. On the other hand, baseball has many elements that are uniquely American.

Cricket and Rounders
Baseball is almost certainly related to cricket and rounders, but exactly how, or how closely, has not been established.

The theory that baseball is derived from cricket is difficult to document, although it is certainly true that modern cricket is considerably older than modern baseball.

People have been playing games with ball and stick for centuries. These various bat-and-ball games are all, at the very least, cousins to each other. Although there are many specific differences between the games, in general they all involve throwing a ball to a batsman who attempts to hit it and run to a goal of some kind.

After 1845
In 1857, 25 Northeastern clubs sent delegates and standardized the rules. In 1858, they formed the first baseball league, the National Association of Base Ball Players. The league started giving games to the public and charged an admission.

During the American Civil War, soldiers from the Northeast, where baseball was flourishing, spread the game all over the country. After the war ended, baseball had more than 100 clubs.

In 1869, the world's first openly professional baseball team formed. All previous players were at least theoretically amateur and unpaid. The Cincinnati Red Stockings recruited the best players and no one beat the Red Stockings that year.

Regardless of this and later changes, several clubs exist in the present-day United States that play "the old game", either according to the 1845, 1858, or post-Civil War rules.

Bibliography
Henderson, Robert W. Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origin of Ball Games