Town ball

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The term town ball, or townball, describes the bat-and-ball, safe haven games played in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, which were precursors to modern baseball. In some areas - such as Philadelphia and along the Ohio River and Mississippi River - the local game was called Town Ball. As baseball became dominant, town ball became a casual term to describe similar games which were considered old fashioned or rural. In other regions the local game was named "base", "round ball", "base ball", or just "ball". The players might be schoolboys in a pasture with improvised balls and bats, or young men in organized clubs.

Contents

[edit] Rules

The rules of town ball varied, but generally the infield was a square shape, with four bases or pegs. Similarly to baseball, the fourth base was called home base, as it was the final goal of a runner. However, differently from baseball - and more like rounders - the striker would stand between first and fourth base, while the thrower stood in the middle of the square. (Some sources describe Town Ball as having five bases, the fifth being the striker's "stand".) If a ball hit by the striker was caught in mid-air or on the first bounce, the striker was called out. If it was not caught, the batter became a runner and advanced as many bases as possible. In some varieties of the game, fielders could hit the runner with the ball and if he were not on a base he would be called out. In others, the cross-out was used: the fielder threw the ball so as to cross the runner's path, between him and the next base. A runner who reached fourth base safely was said to have achieved a "round" or "tally". The game differed from rounders in that the concept of the "strike" was introduced. In fact, many sets of rules allowed for three strikes, which carried over into baseball.

[edit] Town Ball and the Doubleday Myth

In the 1903 edition of Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide, editor Henry Chadwick, who was born in England, wrote "Just as the New York game was improved townball, so was townball an improved form of the two-centuries-old English game of rounders." (Although widely cited and widely believed, Chadwick's assertion was challenged in 2005 by researcher David Block.)

Two leading baseball men strongly disagreed with Chadwick in a controversy that had been brewing for years: John Montgomery Ward, star player and lawyer; and Albert Goodwill Spalding, star player and sports equipment entrepreneur. Both asserted that baseball's origins were American, although Ward said town ball was like rounders, and Spalding said it was not.

Al Spalding wrote an article titled "The Origin and Early History of Baseball" for the January 15, 1905 Washington Post. He described the game of Four Old Cat, in which four throwers and four batsmen stand in four corners. "Some ingenious American lad" got the idea of placing one thrower in the center of the square, wrote Spalding. "This was for many years known as the old game of Town Ball, from which the present game of baseball no doubt had its origin, and not from the English children's picnic game of 'Rounders'." [1] Later in 1905 Spalding organized a panel of experts known as the Mills Commission to investigate the issue.

Abner Graves, whose testimony was the basis of the Mills Commission claim that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839, named Town Ball as the "old" game that the boys of Cooperstown, New York played before baseball. [2]. In the Town Ball game that Graves described, the batsman struck the tossed ball with a flat bat, and ran toward a goal fifty feet away, and back again. Graves said there were generally 20 to 50 boys in the field, which generated many collisions among those trying to catch the ball.

[edit] Philadelphia Town Ball

In the book Peverelly's National Game, there is a reproduction of a story and box score from the August 11, 1860 Clipper (sports newspaper) of a game between the Olympic and Excelsior clubs. The story is headed TOWN BALL IN PHILADELPHIA, and says, "The Olympic Club dates its existence back to 1832, so that properly speaking it is the parent Town Ball organization in the city of Philadelphia."

The Olympic Ball Club played town ball - as it was called locally - across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey to avoid Philadelphia's strict laws. [3] The founding of the club is usually given as July 4, 1833, when Philadelphia enthusiasts joined with Camden players. Contemporary accounts describe Philadelphia town ball as played with eleven men on a side for either two or eleven innings. If two innings were played, the rule was "all-out, all-out", meaning that every player on a side had to be put out before their inning was over (similar to cricket). The other option was "one-out, all-out" - in which one man being put out retired the side. Typical games were high-scoring with the victorious side often topping 75 runs. In the introduction to his book Baseball, Monte Ward wrote of the Philadelphia game:

... it is recorded that the first day for practice enough members were not present to make up town-ball, and so a game of "two-old-cat" was played. This town-ball was so nearly like rounders that one must have been the prototype of the other, but town-ball and base-ball were two very different games. When this same town-ball club decided in 1860 to adopt base-ball instead, many of its principal members resigned, so great was the enmity to the latter game. - [4]

In Baseball in Blue & Gray, George B. Kirsch reports that even when Philadelphia was switching over to the modern "New York game", the old style was still being played in rural areas. In November 1860, members of Athletic of Philadelphia traveled to Mauch Chunk PA for two contests, one of Town Ball and the other of New York-style baseball. The Olympics - archrivals of the Athletics - switched to baseball around that time, but by 1864 the club had dropped out of major match play, and many of the members went back to playing Town Ball.

[edit] Town Ball in the West

  • In Cincinnati, Ohio the informal Excelsior Townball Club was formed in 1860; the players were young schoolteachers and their friends, and hospital interns. Reportedly they used a small bat which was swung with one hand, in games of four innings, with 10 to 15 players on a side. The more formal Cincinnati Buckeye Townball Club was established on 1863.

Town-ball is one of the old games from which the scientific but not half so amusing "national game" of base-ball has since been evolved. In that day the national game was not thought of. Eastern boys played field-base, and Western boys town-ball in a free and happy way, with soft balls, primitive bats, and no nonsense. There were no scores, but a catch or a cross-out in town-ball put the whole side out, leaving others to take the bat or "paddle" as it was appropriately called. - Scribner's Monthly, March 1879 [5]

  • The town of Canton, Illinois was incorporated in 1837. At the first meeting of the town trustees (aldermen), 27 March 1837, Section 36 of the Ordinances was enacted: "any person who shall on the Sabbath day play at bandy, cricket, cat, town-ball, corner-ball, over-ball, fives, or any other game of ball, within the limits of the corporation, or shall engage in pitching dollars or quarters, or any other game, in any public place, shall, on conviction thereof, be fined the sum of one dollar."[6]
  • Henry J. Philpott described himself as "a pupil and teacher in country schools within twenty miles of the Mississippi River, and about half-way between St. Louis and St. Paul." He wrote a story called "A Little Boys' Game with a Ball" for Popular Science Monthly in 1890. Philpott writes that the boys played Old Cat until they had more than eight players; then they switched to town-ball. "In 'town-ball' there was as yet no distinction between base-men [infielders] and fielders. After the pitcher and catcher had been selected, the others on that side went where they pleased; and they did not get to bat until they had put all the batters out." He writes that after baseball was introduced, town-ball "was so different that for some years the two games were played side by side, each retaining its own name." [7]

[edit] The Massachusetts Game

Main article: The Massachusetts Game

New Englanders usually called their game "base" or "round ball" (from running 'round the bases). The "Massachusetts game" or "New England game" was a formalized version with many clubs active in the Boston area. A set of rules was drawn up by the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players at Dedham, Massachusetts in 1858. This game was played by ten to fourteen players with four bases 60 feet apart and no foul territory. The ball was considerably smaller and lighter than a modern baseball, and runners were put out by "soaking" - hitting them with the thrown ball. Innings were "one-out, all-out" and the the first club to reach 100 runs was the winner. Although it had its adherents until the 1860's, the Massachusetts game was superseded by the "New York game" of baseball, with its Knickerbocker Rules which formed the basis of the modern game of baseball.

[edit] Old Fashioned Base Ball

Another term applied retroactively to precursor baseball games was Old Fashioned Base Ball. This game was generally identified as a type of baseball with large numbers on each side, where the fielders threw the ball at the runner. After the Civil War, old-timers still put on exhibitions of traditional baseball at picnics and charity events. For instance, in Mauston, Wisconsin in 1888, the festivities at The Old Settlers Jubilee included "an old fashioned base ball game" [8]Ironically, the only mention of baseball in The Chronicles of Cooperstown [9] describes an old fashioned game:

1877. A famous game of old-fashioned base ball was played here, in August — Judge Sturges heading the "Reds" and Judge Edick the "Blues" — 16 on a side. The victory was with the "Blues." It called together a large concourse of people.

Many articles were written waxing nostalgically for the old game. This nostalgia was satirized by Robert J. Burdette in his story "Rollo Learning to Play":

"And town ball," he said, "good old town ball! There was no limit to the number on a side. The ring was anywhere from three hundred feet to a mile in circumference, according to whether we played on a vacant Pingree lot or out on the open prairie... The bat was a board, about the general shape of a Roman galley oar and not quite so wide as a barn door. The ball was of solid India rubber; a little fellow could hit it a hundred yards, and a big boy, with a hickory club, could send it clear over the bluffs or across the lake. We broke all the windows in the school-house the first day, and finished up every pane of glass in the neighborhood before the season closed. The side that got its innings first kept them until school was out or the last boy died." - The Wit and Humor of America, Vol. 5 1907 [10]

Varieties of town ball remained a popular schoolyard activity, especially in rural areas, well into the 20th century. [11] In recent times the Massachusetts Rules have occasionally been used by "vintage" baseball clubs, such as the Leatherstocking Base Ball Club of Cooperstown, NY.[12]

[edit] Modern Townball (Upper Midwest)

In the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc.) ‘townball’ is a regional colloquialism for the dozens of rural amateur baseball leagues spanning the states. Typically, a town will field one or perhaps two teams made up of college students and working men from the area. These ‘town teams’ play ‘townball’ during the summer in leagues of similar teams from neighboring towns and small cities.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Ellard, Harry (1907 [2004 reprint]). Base Ball in Cincinnati: A History. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-1726-9. 
  • Alvarez, Mark (1990). The Old Ball Game (The World of baseball). Alexandria, Virginia: Redefinition. ISBN 0924588098. 
  • Kirsch, George B. (2003). Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-6911-3043-4. 
  • Block, David (2005). Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-1339-5. 
  • Freyer, John K. and, Rucker, Mark (2005). Peverelly's National Game (Images of Baseball). Mount Pleasant SC: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0738534048. 
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