Baseball Before We Knew It

by Block, David; Wiles, Tim

• ISBN13: 9780803213395
• ISBN10: 0803213395
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

It may be America's game, but no one seems to know how or when baseball really started. Theories abound, myths proliferate, but reliable information has been in short supply-until now, whenBaseball before We Knew Itbrings fresh new evidence of baseball's origins into play. David Block looks into the early history of the game and of the 150-year-old debate about its beginnings. He tackles one stubborn misconception after another, debunking the enduring belief that baseball descended from the English game of rounders and revealing a surprising new explanation for the most notorious myth of all-the Abner Doubleday-Cooperstown story.Block's book takes readers on an exhilarating journey through the centuries in search of clues to the evolution of our modern National Pastime. Among his startling discoveries is a set of long-forgotten baseball rules from the 1700s. Block evaluates the originality and historical significance of the Knickerbocker rules of 1845, revisits European studies on the ancestry of baseball which indicate that the game dates back hundreds, if not thousands of years, and assembles a detailed history of games and pastimes from the Middle Ages onward that contributed to baseball's development. In its thoroughness and reach, and its extensive descriptive bibliography of early baseball sources, this book is a unique and invaluable resource-a comprehensive, reliable, and readable account of baseball before it was America's game.David Block is a long-time collector of early baseball books and memorabilia, and is a passionate, lifelong fan of the game and its history.

Author Biography

David Block is a long-time collector of early baseball books and memorabilia, and is a passionate, lifelong fan of the game and its history.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	x
Foreword	xiii
Tim Wiles
Preface	xix
Acknowledgments	xxiii
Uncertainty as to the Paternity	1	(21)
Rounders, Schmounders	22	(10)
Abner and Albert, the Missing Link	32	(18)
Philip Block
Was Abner Graves Telling the Truth?	50	(17)
Rules of Baseball: The Prequel	67	(13)
How Slick Were the Knicks?	80	(14)
In the Beginning	94	(11)
Stools, Clubs, Stobs, and Jugs	105	(19)
Traps and Cats	124	(10)
It's Starting to Look Familiar	134	(18)
Baseball before We Knew It	152	(11)
Early Baseball Bibliography: Roots of the Game in Pre--Civil War Literature	163	(60)
Appendix 1. Constitutions and By-Laws	223	(2)
Appendix 2. Some Comments on Sporting Journals of the 1850s	225	(4)
Appendix 3. ``A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball''	229	(23)
Thomas L. Altherr
Appendix 4. The Letters of Abner Graves	252	(5)
Appendix 5. Dr. Adam E. Ford's Letter to Sporting Life	257	(3)
Appendix 6. Battingball Games by Per Maigaard	260	(15)
Appendix 7. Nine Surviving Descriptions of Baseball-like Games Written and Published before 1845	275	(12)
Notes	287	(36)
Principal Sources Consulted	323	(2)
Index	325