Son of Money Ball
The Counselor recently submitted the following quote:
“When the English migrated over to the United States in the 17th century, they brought with them the earliest form of cricket known as 'rounders'. The game of 'rounders' incorporated a pair of stumps, two bases, a bowler, and a batsman. However, because the game became more popular, it evolved into baseball in order to accommodate the increasing participation and interest.”
Then, in a hushed but shocked tone, he discretely asked, “Do we have definitive historical evidence that baseball was not invented in the United States? That it is in fact a derivative of rounders?”
Hmm ... Well, I suspect there's quite a bit of bogus crap splayed out in that short quote. But we've been fed a lot of lies (*) over the years regarding the origins of baseball. Just like the thin layer of dust covering our own national ancestry, which didn't form all that long ago relatively speaking, it's sometimes hard to uncover the truth.
Sounds like another cleaning job for Bamboo ... time to crack open a few books of the dead.
Ahh ... Actually, it says here what the Europeans brought to American shores in the 17th century was a lighthearted game called “stoolball”. Stoolball originated around the Sussex area and typically used milk stools or even tree stumps as wickets. Like Cricket, Rounders and Baseball, Stoolball players slapped at pitched leather balls with a wooden bat of sorts and scored runs by running around the wickets. (So, yeah, they are all versions of the same game...the first recorded being called Stoolball.)
Stoolball remained an informal young person's game until the late 1800's. Because both male and female players often played this game together, gaily frolicking about in the English countryside or whatever, the name of the game also applied as a sexual euphemism for a while.
Soon after, formalized and manly Cricket took off as a fancier hybrid of lowly Stoolball and it was popularized by British aristocrats. Cricket quickly became a betting game for the wealthy like the horse races that were so stylish at the time. Thus, to put some order behind all the wagers, the Laws of Cricket were codified in 1744. By 1840, there were even several “professional” Cricket clubs in NYC, Philly and Chicago.
Sometime before 1800, a Stoolball descendant called Rounders was played by English school kids. It was not the same as Cricket and was never adopted by the elite English landowners. By the end of the 1800's, informal Rounders rules often called for a 9 man teams which batted around in innings but sometimes allowed 6 man teams and offered all kinds of other odd exceptions. The bats were more like today's baseball bats rather than flat cricket bats. Still, it was loosely based on Stoolball, as well.
About the same time, along the east coast of the US, the kids there took up a casual version they called “Town Ball” or “Goal Ball” or “Base”. Town Ball replaced the wickets with bases or goals formed by the natural surroundings and allowed any kind of stick for a bat. Truly another distant evolution of Stoolball, it was called Town Ball in America mostly because the kids often played it on the nearby city greens while the older folks met for Town Hall meetings.
American Town Ball, sometimes also called “One Old Cat”, was essentially what we know today as an informal pick-up game like stick ball. It could be played in a field like Stoolball, in an open lot or even on the streets. It could be played with one pitcher (or bowler), one batter, one catcher and one base. If more kids showed up, then it became “Two Old Cat” and more bases were added and so on.
Now, see that the original quote is wrong on several counts. Cricket did not directly descend from Rounders. It came from Stoolball along with Rounders. And neither the game described in the quote nor the fashionable Town Ball game we have just defined is Rounders because there aren't enough players. If there were enough kids to make sides, which could and did occur, then I agree the game begins to mirror Rounders more or less with or without wickets. So, in the first place, let's be straight that the originator of all this playing around on the American eastern seaboard was Stoolball, not Rounders.
Today there are a few confusing differences to hang our ball caps on between Stoolball, Rounders, Cricket and American Town Ball. Town ball, staying just a kids game, did mix some select rules used in Stoolball and Rounders. (Kids around the world think these kinds of rules up naturally, as I recall.) In some circles, runners could be called out if the fielder could hit them with a thrown ball (sometimes known as “soaking”). Stoolball versions sent wicket runners running like cricket players but Rounders and Town Ball runners ran their bases either clockwise or counter-clockwise. In each, the pitch was typically underhand and the batters could hit the ball off the bowler's bounce like modern Cricket. No gloves, the balls were fashioned to be softer and cruder than Cricket balls.
In the early 1800's, this kids game casually known as Town Ball naturally became the latest fad at those places most known for advertising the latest fads: American colleges. A Boston man named Robin Carver even published the rules of “Goal Ball” in “The Book of Sports” in 1834. Screwing up the clinical definitions for many generations to follow, according to at least one ref, Carver basically took a previous publication of British Rounders rules and reprinted them word for word.
But the rules of modern Baseball were guided more by the childhood fondness for the informal pick-up game Town Ball of the early 1800's while borrowing bits from all of these Stoolball descendants and was definitively not created just to “accommodate increasing participation” blah, blah, blah.
The first modern rules for American Baseball were written and published by a man named Alexander Cartwright in 1845 while he was a member of the NY Knickerbockers Club. This fact is indisputable and makes the earliest true version of baseball as the world knows it a purely American child, born apart from its various British cousins.
My fellow Americans, please, there's no reason to get all snooty about this undeniable proof. Not surprisingly, the facts suggest Cartwright was somewhat of a common, impulsive American vagabond for those heady times of change. Not satisfied with his invention, a few years later he urgently followed the California gold rush and finally ended up in Hawaii.
(But let me just conveniently add evidence in the middle here as I return to the historical first page of this story. The honorable Wm. Bradford, early Gov of Plymouth Colony, is on record declaring that “stoole ball”, along with other frivolous pastimes such as “tossing ye barr” [throwing javelins], was banned from “ye streets” of New England in the 1640's. As I feared, if it had been up to the predominately British puritans who settled the east coast in the 1600's, I'm confident we would have no sporting games in this country at all. As it turned out, we owe a lot of our gaming spirit to the rebellious Dutch of New Amsterdam, instead. So, not sure where the source of the quote got such misinformation, but any arrogant English bastards can take a hike on the subject of baseball's origin, as far as my boiling Norwegian blood is concerned!)
The very American Cartwright got rid of the dangerous soaking rule once and for all in 1845 but probably the most significant thing he defined was the size of the field and pitch. For the first time, even if decided rather arbitrarily, the bases were firmly set out in a diamond shape 90 feet apart. He gave such precise symmetrical order to this because his game, rather than relying on the casual rules for some afternoon diversion, was soon going to borrow something more tangible from professional Cricket.
In 1845, it was decided, Base Ball was going to be a money maker.
He had to codify the rules because the club needed to earn enough money to pay rent for their new ball park at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. Clearly, just as in Cricket and any other old horse race, you can't have everybody playing by different rules with somebody else's money on the line.
This collaborative intent is probably most evident in brothers George and Harry Wright who both traded in their pro club wickets for later starring roles with baseball's Gothams and Red Stockings. Their father, Harry Sr., ran NY's St. George's cricket club which also played and practiced at those same Elysian Fields in Hoboken at the same time ... the damning early influence of pro cricket on the greed-infested, money-grabbing future of today's pro baseball cannot be discounted.
Thinking about it now, I imagine it was a bit of a struggle as more refined and distinctive baseball rules were developed over the course of this sanguine era. In one ref, I noticed a Knickerbockers box score on 6/19/1846 where the first batter in the line up, a man named Davis, was at some point in the game “fined 6 cents for swearing” ... as I feverishly poured over conflicting accounts of baseball's origins in the books of the dead, I could easily feel his pain.
But, of course, that's not the end of it. The modern game's 9 innings standard wasn't settled until a Player's Association meeting in NYC in 1857. Before that, games often went on for a cricket-like 21 innings. While increasingly popular, even the name of the game still took some getting use to and would be vaguely argued about for several years to come. Just a couple years before that inaugural rule-setting player's meeting, a modest American journalist complicated the matter by writing, “Base Ball, which is essentially Rounders or Town Ball ... has promise to become our national pastime.”
(Following that revelation, I scribbled a barely legible note which I think says, "Right. Many thanks for clearing all that up for us, Jerkwad.")
As we all know, by whatever name it was called, the grand old game soon traveled cross country, Civil War units gladly carried it around with them, the original Cincinnati Red Stockings were established in '69, we were all lied to (*) repeatedly about Abner Doubleday, and yada, yada, yada.
Baseball owes its ancient roots to Stoolball, as do the games of Cricket, Rounders and Town Ball. The influence among them is circularly contributive, surely at one time more Town Ball than Rounders, eventually wagered on to be more Cricket than Stoolball, but the Immutable Law of Baseball is definitely an American child. With the emergence of Japanese and Mexican Leagues, professional players in places like Korea, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, the modern game can't be called purely American any more than the cricket played around the world can be called purely English. But, from whatever far-off corner you may be sitting in right now, let this truth be known—baseball grew up in Hoboken, not Sussex (*nor, for that matter, was it ever born in Cooperstown).
Cheers,
Mb
“When the English migrated over to the United States in the 17th century, they brought with them the earliest form of cricket known as 'rounders'. The game of 'rounders' incorporated a pair of stumps, two bases, a bowler, and a batsman. However, because the game became more popular, it evolved into baseball in order to accommodate the increasing participation and interest.”
Then, in a hushed but shocked tone, he discretely asked, “Do we have definitive historical evidence that baseball was not invented in the United States? That it is in fact a derivative of rounders?”
Hmm ... Well, I suspect there's quite a bit of bogus crap splayed out in that short quote. But we've been fed a lot of lies (*) over the years regarding the origins of baseball. Just like the thin layer of dust covering our own national ancestry, which didn't form all that long ago relatively speaking, it's sometimes hard to uncover the truth.
Sounds like another cleaning job for Bamboo ... time to crack open a few books of the dead.
Ahh ... Actually, it says here what the Europeans brought to American shores in the 17th century was a lighthearted game called “stoolball”. Stoolball originated around the Sussex area and typically used milk stools or even tree stumps as wickets. Like Cricket, Rounders and Baseball, Stoolball players slapped at pitched leather balls with a wooden bat of sorts and scored runs by running around the wickets. (So, yeah, they are all versions of the same game...the first recorded being called Stoolball.)
Stoolball remained an informal young person's game until the late 1800's. Because both male and female players often played this game together, gaily frolicking about in the English countryside or whatever, the name of the game also applied as a sexual euphemism for a while.
Soon after, formalized and manly Cricket took off as a fancier hybrid of lowly Stoolball and it was popularized by British aristocrats. Cricket quickly became a betting game for the wealthy like the horse races that were so stylish at the time. Thus, to put some order behind all the wagers, the Laws of Cricket were codified in 1744. By 1840, there were even several “professional” Cricket clubs in NYC, Philly and Chicago.
Sometime before 1800, a Stoolball descendant called Rounders was played by English school kids. It was not the same as Cricket and was never adopted by the elite English landowners. By the end of the 1800's, informal Rounders rules often called for a 9 man teams which batted around in innings but sometimes allowed 6 man teams and offered all kinds of other odd exceptions. The bats were more like today's baseball bats rather than flat cricket bats. Still, it was loosely based on Stoolball, as well.
About the same time, along the east coast of the US, the kids there took up a casual version they called “Town Ball” or “Goal Ball” or “Base”. Town Ball replaced the wickets with bases or goals formed by the natural surroundings and allowed any kind of stick for a bat. Truly another distant evolution of Stoolball, it was called Town Ball in America mostly because the kids often played it on the nearby city greens while the older folks met for Town Hall meetings.
American Town Ball, sometimes also called “One Old Cat”, was essentially what we know today as an informal pick-up game like stick ball. It could be played in a field like Stoolball, in an open lot or even on the streets. It could be played with one pitcher (or bowler), one batter, one catcher and one base. If more kids showed up, then it became “Two Old Cat” and more bases were added and so on.
Now, see that the original quote is wrong on several counts. Cricket did not directly descend from Rounders. It came from Stoolball along with Rounders. And neither the game described in the quote nor the fashionable Town Ball game we have just defined is Rounders because there aren't enough players. If there were enough kids to make sides, which could and did occur, then I agree the game begins to mirror Rounders more or less with or without wickets. So, in the first place, let's be straight that the originator of all this playing around on the American eastern seaboard was Stoolball, not Rounders.
Today there are a few confusing differences to hang our ball caps on between Stoolball, Rounders, Cricket and American Town Ball. Town ball, staying just a kids game, did mix some select rules used in Stoolball and Rounders. (Kids around the world think these kinds of rules up naturally, as I recall.) In some circles, runners could be called out if the fielder could hit them with a thrown ball (sometimes known as “soaking”). Stoolball versions sent wicket runners running like cricket players but Rounders and Town Ball runners ran their bases either clockwise or counter-clockwise. In each, the pitch was typically underhand and the batters could hit the ball off the bowler's bounce like modern Cricket. No gloves, the balls were fashioned to be softer and cruder than Cricket balls.
In the early 1800's, this kids game casually known as Town Ball naturally became the latest fad at those places most known for advertising the latest fads: American colleges. A Boston man named Robin Carver even published the rules of “Goal Ball” in “The Book of Sports” in 1834. Screwing up the clinical definitions for many generations to follow, according to at least one ref, Carver basically took a previous publication of British Rounders rules and reprinted them word for word.
But the rules of modern Baseball were guided more by the childhood fondness for the informal pick-up game Town Ball of the early 1800's while borrowing bits from all of these Stoolball descendants and was definitively not created just to “accommodate increasing participation” blah, blah, blah.
The first modern rules for American Baseball were written and published by a man named Alexander Cartwright in 1845 while he was a member of the NY Knickerbockers Club. This fact is indisputable and makes the earliest true version of baseball as the world knows it a purely American child, born apart from its various British cousins.
My fellow Americans, please, there's no reason to get all snooty about this undeniable proof. Not surprisingly, the facts suggest Cartwright was somewhat of a common, impulsive American vagabond for those heady times of change. Not satisfied with his invention, a few years later he urgently followed the California gold rush and finally ended up in Hawaii.
(But let me just conveniently add evidence in the middle here as I return to the historical first page of this story. The honorable Wm. Bradford, early Gov of Plymouth Colony, is on record declaring that “stoole ball”, along with other frivolous pastimes such as “tossing ye barr” [throwing javelins], was banned from “ye streets” of New England in the 1640's. As I feared, if it had been up to the predominately British puritans who settled the east coast in the 1600's, I'm confident we would have no sporting games in this country at all. As it turned out, we owe a lot of our gaming spirit to the rebellious Dutch of New Amsterdam, instead. So, not sure where the source of the quote got such misinformation, but any arrogant English bastards can take a hike on the subject of baseball's origin, as far as my boiling Norwegian blood is concerned!)
The very American Cartwright got rid of the dangerous soaking rule once and for all in 1845 but probably the most significant thing he defined was the size of the field and pitch. For the first time, even if decided rather arbitrarily, the bases were firmly set out in a diamond shape 90 feet apart. He gave such precise symmetrical order to this because his game, rather than relying on the casual rules for some afternoon diversion, was soon going to borrow something more tangible from professional Cricket.
In 1845, it was decided, Base Ball was going to be a money maker.
He had to codify the rules because the club needed to earn enough money to pay rent for their new ball park at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. Clearly, just as in Cricket and any other old horse race, you can't have everybody playing by different rules with somebody else's money on the line.
This collaborative intent is probably most evident in brothers George and Harry Wright who both traded in their pro club wickets for later starring roles with baseball's Gothams and Red Stockings. Their father, Harry Sr., ran NY's St. George's cricket club which also played and practiced at those same Elysian Fields in Hoboken at the same time ... the damning early influence of pro cricket on the greed-infested, money-grabbing future of today's pro baseball cannot be discounted.
Thinking about it now, I imagine it was a bit of a struggle as more refined and distinctive baseball rules were developed over the course of this sanguine era. In one ref, I noticed a Knickerbockers box score on 6/19/1846 where the first batter in the line up, a man named Davis, was at some point in the game “fined 6 cents for swearing” ... as I feverishly poured over conflicting accounts of baseball's origins in the books of the dead, I could easily feel his pain.
But, of course, that's not the end of it. The modern game's 9 innings standard wasn't settled until a Player's Association meeting in NYC in 1857. Before that, games often went on for a cricket-like 21 innings. While increasingly popular, even the name of the game still took some getting use to and would be vaguely argued about for several years to come. Just a couple years before that inaugural rule-setting player's meeting, a modest American journalist complicated the matter by writing, “Base Ball, which is essentially Rounders or Town Ball ... has promise to become our national pastime.”
(Following that revelation, I scribbled a barely legible note which I think says, "Right. Many thanks for clearing all that up for us, Jerkwad.")
As we all know, by whatever name it was called, the grand old game soon traveled cross country, Civil War units gladly carried it around with them, the original Cincinnati Red Stockings were established in '69, we were all lied to (*) repeatedly about Abner Doubleday, and yada, yada, yada.
Baseball owes its ancient roots to Stoolball, as do the games of Cricket, Rounders and Town Ball. The influence among them is circularly contributive, surely at one time more Town Ball than Rounders, eventually wagered on to be more Cricket than Stoolball, but the Immutable Law of Baseball is definitely an American child. With the emergence of Japanese and Mexican Leagues, professional players in places like Korea, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, the modern game can't be called purely American any more than the cricket played around the world can be called purely English. But, from whatever far-off corner you may be sitting in right now, let this truth be known—baseball grew up in Hoboken, not Sussex (*nor, for that matter, was it ever born in Cooperstown).
Cheers,
Mb
posted by M.E. Bamboo at
4:40 PM
2 Comments:
fascinating. Is the basic conclusion here that baseball is an American derivative of stoolball but not rounders? I don't think these things matter that much. The bloodlines of the whole world run through America so being derivative of something "foreign" is fine. In fact, it's kind of our modus operandi, right?
p.s. - "boiling Norwegian blood"???? WTF? You ain't no Englishman?
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