1796.1 German Book Describes

Abstract

One plays the game with two teams, of which one is serving the and the other batting.... Likewise the process is as in the German game: hitting, running, etc.It was one of the most satisfying moments of my hunt for the roots of baseball, and one of the most unexpected. In 2001, while searching for other pastimes within an old German book on games and sports, I came across seven pages describing a game called das englische Base-ball.1 Written by the physical education pioneer J. C. F. Gutsmuths, the 1796 book offers the earliest known detailed explanation for how baseball was played.In my own book, published in 2005, I cited Gutsmuths' description while making my case that the 18th century game of English baseball was the immediate forerunner of American baseball.2 At the time, I interpreted Gutsmuths' use of the term English baseball as an indication that he was describing the same form of baseball that occasionally appeared by name in English works of the 18th and 19th centuries. Because Gutsmuths described a as being part of the game, I extrapolated that English baseball was generally played with a bat, even though that fact had not been detailed elsewhere.In my book I also theorized on the origin of the English game of rounders. When rounders first appeared in the early 19th century, seemed to share the same basic characteristics as English baseball, or at least the way I understood English baseball to be from Gutsmuths' description; i.e., a game played with a bat. From this I postulated that rounders and English baseball were one and the same, with the name rounders replacing the older name of baseball in the 1800s.In the years since my book was released, researchers, including myself, have made new discoveries about both English baseball and rounders. The knowledge gained from these findings has caused me to revise some of my earlier thinking regarding the relationship between the two. The new information shows that English baseball had a much longer lifespan in the 19th century than was previously believed; that was played as late as the 1890s; and that coexisted with rounders for seven decades or longer.3 Except for one doubtful example, none of the new references to English baseball indicates, or even suggests, that the pastime was played with a bat. By contrast, the newest discoveries about rounders only confirm what has been long documented about it-that is always played with a bat. Taking into account the total body of evidence available, I now believe that English baseball and rounders were separate games, distinguished principally by the use of a in the latter. Furthermore, a strong gender division characterized the two pastimes throughout much of the 19th century, with English baseball having been played predominantly by girls and young women, and rounders by boys and men.4Because of their similarities, seems probable that rounders was a direct offshoot of baseball. It may have been a natural and obvious thing for boys in the late 18th century to experiment using a to strike a baseball instead of using their bare hands. Bats were certainly very familiar and available to them from the popular games of trapball and cricket. (A parallel process may well have transpired in North America, where use seems to have been adapted to baseball during the colonial era.) I speculate that was during this stage, when youngsters were introducing play to baseball and beginning to form incipient rounders, that Gutsmuths captured his information about English baseball and memorialized in his book.Coincidence or not, at this same time a game called simply bat and ball began to appear in English writings. A 1790 book listed a young man's amusements as including marbles, and [and] hop-step-and-jump.5 A 1797 newspaper article, praising the layout of a new school ground, noted it affords ample space for cricket, for and ball, or any other school-boy exercise. …