1845.1 The Knickerbocker Rules — and the Long History of the One-Bounce Fielding Rule

Abstract

If a ball be struck, or tipped, and caught, either flying or on the first bound, it is a hand out.2The famous Knickerbocker rules of 1845 may not be comprehensive enough to fully define a playable game, and may not even be baseball's first written rules,3 but they did indeed survive, and they give us the first coherent picture of the roots of the New York game.At first taken as evidence of the Knickerbocker Club's knack for inventive genius, the 13 playing rules have recently been freshly reconsidered in an evolutionary context, and their reputation for originality has taken several hits.4 At this point, it appears that only three rules that endure today lack clear precedent in prior safe-haven ballgames.5 These are (1) the tag-out rule, which supplanted the plugging of base-runners to put them out6; (2) the characteristic 90-degree territory defining fair hits; and (3) the three-out inning. The three-strike rule, for example, was already in use in predecessor games-as was the dropped-third strike rule that freed the batter who whiffed to run the bases. (Such familiar modern icons as the nine-inning game, the nine-player team and the ninety-foot basepath came along more than a decade later.)It seems ironic, when discussing rule innovations, that what may have been early game's most contentious rule (the issue remained unsettled for four decades) was perhaps actually the most ancient aspect of ballplay. The basic fly rule for putting batters out seems to have been a part of ballplaying since, at least, the earliest accounts of English stoolball and cricket, centuries ago.What Know About the Prehistory of the Bound RuleThe Knickerbocker Club's rule 12, cited above, includes a provision that to baseball fans seems quaint, if not alien, today; a batter could be retired if a fair or foul hit is caught after it bounces once.There has been, until recently, reasonable speculation that this provision was another Knickerbocker innovation, and why it appeared. Over time, the weight and dimension of the ball had been evolving toward that of the cricket ball, making it heavier-and, reportedly, harder. One might surmise, then, that a fielder's hands might be better protected from pain and injury if he were afforded the option of letting the ball bounce once, and then to field it once it was spent. A closer look, however, reveals some evidence that the one-bounce rule was known even before the New York game took shape.The bound rule actually has a solid place in ball sports-and not just in the children's game of jacks and in assorted playground fungo games. It is seen today mostly in tennis and related sports like handball and squash and table tennis, where the objective is to return a ball before it bounces twice, an event that would abruptly add one to the opponent's score. For many centuries the bound rule has been an essential part of the old form of tennis, played long before modern lawn tennis was invented (keeping the bound rule) in 1873. Very early forms of collegiate football in the United States, and rugby-rules football in England, also included rules that specified what a player could and could not do when catching a ball on the bound.7But was the bound rule also part of earlier safe-haven ballgames? One baseball pioneer certainly thought so. Describing the rules set for the new Gotham Base Ball Club in 1837, William Wheaton wrote, a half-century later: We abandoned the old rule of putting out on the first bound and confined it to fly catching.8 (If true, of course, this means that the Knickerbocker Club had actually decided to reverse the Gotham Club's decision, and had reverted to the bound rule.) A second pioneer agrees: Knickerbocker mainstay Doc Adams seems to have suggested that one reason that players still liked the bound rule in 1860 was that it was a familiar feature of their boyhood ballgames.9The direct evidence on broad prior use of a bound rule is suggestive, but it is not overwhelming. …