Base-Ball: How to Become a Player | Page 3

in the minds of the game's first
organizers that they were dealing with a purely American production,
and the firmness of this conviction is evidenced by everything they said
and did. An examination of the speeches and proceedings of the
conventions, of articles in the daily and other periodical publications, of
the poetry which the game at that early day inspired, taken in
connection with the declarations of members of the first clubs still
living, will show this vein of belief running all the way through. The
idea that base-ball owed its origin to any foreign game was not only not
entertained, but indignantly repudiated by the men of that time; and in
pursuing his investigations the writer has discovered that this feeling
still exists in a most emphatic form.
In view of the foregoing we may safely say that base-ball was played in
America as early, at least, as the beginning of this century.
It may be instructive now to inquire as to the antiquity of the "old
English game" from which baseball is said to have sprung. Deferring
for the present the consideration of its resemblance to base-ball, what
proof have we of its venerable existence? Looking, primarily, to the
first editions of old English authorities on out-door sports, I have been
unable to find any record that such a game as "rounders" was known. I
may have been unfortunate in my searches, for, though I have
exhausted every available source of information, I have not discovered

any mention of it.
The first standard English writer to speak of rounders is "Stonehenge"
in his Manual of Sports, London, 1856. Since then almost every
English work on out-door sports describes the "old [with an emphasis]
English game of rounders," and in the same connection declares it to be
the germ of the American base-ball; and yet, curiously enough, not one
of them gives us any authority even for dubbing it "old," much less for
calling it the origin of our game. But in 1856 base-ball had been played
here for many years; it had already attracted attention as the popular
sport, and by 1860 was known in slightly differing forms all over the
country. To all these later English writers, therefore, its existence and
general principles must have been familiar, and it is consequently
remarkable that, in view of their claim, they have given us no more
particulars of the game of rounders. Are we to accept this assertion
without reserve, when an investigation would seem to indicate that
baseball is really the older game? If this English game was then a
common school-boy sport, as now claimed, it seems almost incredible
that it should have escaped the notice of all the writers of the first half
of the century; and yet no sooner does base-ball become famous as the
American game than English writers discover that there is an old and
popular English game from which it is descended. Many of the games
which the earlier writers describe are extremely simple as compared
with rounders, and yet the latter game is entirely overlooked!
But upon what ground have these later writers based their assumption?
Many, doubtless, have simply followed the writings from this side of
the Atlantic; others have been misled by their ignorance of the actual
age of our game, for there are even many Americans who think
base-ball was introduced by the Knickerbocker and following clubs; a
few, with the proverbial insular idea, have concluded that base-ball
must be of English origin, if for no other reason, because it ought to be.
It is not my intention to declare the old game of rounders a myth. There
is ample living testimony to its existence as early perhaps as 1830, but
that it was a popular English game before base-ball was played here I
am not yet ready to believe. Before we accept the statement that

base-hall is "only a species of glorified rounders," we should demand
some proof that the latter is really the older game. In this connection it
will be important to remember that there were two English games
called "rounders," but entirely distinct the one from the other. Johnson's
Dictionary, edition of 1876, describes the first, and presumably the
older, as similar to "fives" or hand-ball, while the second is the game
supposed to be allied to base-ball. "Fives" is one of the oldest of games,
and if it or a similar game was called "rounders," it will require
something more than the mere occurrence of the name in some old
writing to prove that the game referred to is the "rounders" as now
played. And if this cannot be shown, why might we not claim, with as
much reason as the other theory has been maintained, that the "old
English game of rounders" is