Base Is Not Always Baseball

Abstract

In some recent accounts of early baseball-type games, historians have been allowing their enthusiasm to outrun the evidence. As David Block warned Baseball Before We Knew It, References to 'a game of base' or 'playing at base' the early texts have sometimes been assumed to be evidence of baseball, without the presence of corroborating indicators. Some writers have gone so far as to promote as a distant antecedent of baseball.1 It will perhaps be useful for scholars of early baseball to have a thorough review of what base may or may not have been.For example, his 1997 PBS documentary film, Lewis & Clark, Ken Burns had his narrator declare that on June 8, 1806, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and other members of the Corps of Discovery played a game of bat and ball with the Nez Perce what is now Idaho. soundtrack ran as follows: The men ran foot races with the Indians and taught them a new stick and ball game called base.2 But even a cursory consultation of the primary sources reveals that Lewis and Clark et al. did not play a baseball-type game. They played a game called prisoner's a longtime children's game that much more resembled hide-and-seek than baseball. Both Lewis and Clark their respective journals were clear about what recreation they enjoyed that day. Here is the actual excerpt from Meriwether Lewis:Sunday June 8th 1806Drewyer returned this morning from the chase without having killed anything. ... several foot races were run this evening between the indians and our men. indians are very active; one of them proved as fleet as Drewer and R. Fields, our swiftest runners. When the racing was over the men divided themselves into parties and played prison base, by way of exercise which we wish the men to take previously to entering the mountain; short those who are not hunters have had so little to do that they are getting reather lazy and slouthfull. ... after dark we had the violin played and danced for the amusement of ourselves and the indians....3William Clark's entry was somewhat less detailed, but it clearly agreed with Lewis's:Drewyer returned this morning from the chase without killing any thing. ... the evening Several foot races were run by the men of our party and the Indians; after which our party divided and played at prisoners untill night. After dark the fiddle was played and the party amused themselvves danceing.4Sergeant John Ordway, his journal entry for the same day, noted the same activities: Our party exercised themselves running and playing games called base.5 next day the assembly continued their gamboling. As Lewis penned about his grouping on June 9: [T]hey have every thing readiness for a move, and notwithstanding the want of provision have been amusing themselves very merrily today runing footraces pitching quites [quoits], prison basse &c.6 Clark echoed him his own journal entry: ...amuse themselves by pitching quates [quoits], Prisoners bast running races &c.7 None of the other Corps of Discovery journals covered this day or time period or discuss the athletic events of these days. Elijah Harry Criswell suggested his 1936 dissertation on Lewis and Clark's linguistic influences that Clark used a newer version of the term (prisoner's base) and Lewis stuck with the older term (prison base).8 But clearly prison base/prisoner's was not a baseball-type game.Similarly, many sports historians have celebrated a diary entry by a soldier at Valley Forge 1778 as evidence of early baseball North America. George Ewing, a New Jersey ensign, recorded his journal that April that between attending to military exercising, the men in the intervals playd at base....9 Without corroborating evidence that the game involved a bat and a ball, it is just as likely that the Valley Forge troops played base.10A 1550s poem by English vicar Thomas Crowley may present comparable problems. …