Freshmen shall furnish Batts, Balls, and FootBalls, for the use of the students, to be kept at the Buttery.1Early Harvard records refer more often to football than to and its forebears. What early Harvard references exist, however, illuminate the story of college sports.Certain kinds of athletic activity were never discouraged at Harvard, even in Puritan times. One Harvard father advised his son in 1670, Recreate your Self a little, and so to your work afresh, as long as the recreation be violent.2 Starting in the late 1700s at least, Harvard students played bat-and-ball games for such recreational purposes, though formalized would appear at Harvard only in 1858.The earliest report of bats and balls at Harvard is in the diary of Sidney Willard. His father graduated from Harvard in 1765 and then became steward of the Buttery, which, as Sidney explains, in part a sort of appendage to Commons.... Besides eatables, everything necessary for a student was there sold, and articles used in the playgrounds, as bats, balls, c Sidney is writing about his father's youth ninety years earlier. But a direct confirmation of bat-and-ball games at Harvard appears in what we would, today, call the minutes of faculty meetings.4 Among the entries for the year 1781 is a list of The antient [sic] Customs of Harvard College, established by the Government of (i.e., by the faculty). These are ground rules for inter-student behavior: Freshmen should dofftheir hats; freshmen must consider all other classes their seniors, but freshman shall be detained by a senior when not actually employed on some suitable errand; and so on. Rule 16 states: The Freshmen shall furnish Batts, Balls, and FootBalls, for the use of the students, to be kept at the Buttery.Does this suggest bat-and-ball games at Harvard long before Willard's father served as Butler? Perhaps. But this record is from 16 years after the father's graduation, and in a college, can be long enough to make past events seem ancient.What kind of game was played with this equipment? We have few clues. Writing of his own undergraduate years, 1797-1801, Sidney Willard writes, ...we wrestled and ran, played at quoits, at cricket, and at games of bat and ball, whose names perhaps are obsolete, and leaped and jumped in rivalry.5 So the bat-and-ball games were surely not cricket and may have been no more formalized than running. Willard also describes his realization, as a child, his eyesight was too poor to follow the consid- erable trajectory of a hit ball. could not distinguish different birds, or see them at the same distance as other boys did ... and on the play-ground [they] would watch and seize the ball, when beaten to an unusual distance, before I could trace it.6 Willard was born in 1780, so this childhood memory is from around 1790-1795.Scrutinizing 19th century records, researchers encounter problems of creative memory. Once it became the national game, men recalled playing baseball early in the century, though they had not recorded any games at the time. great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, for example, is described in several late-19th century sources (but not in his biographies) as having played at Harvard.7 ultimate source of this legend may be a history published in 1891.8 There seems to be no doubt, writes the editor with groundless confidence, that was played in the United States as early at least as the beginning of this century. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was graduated from Harvard in 1829, said, a few years ago, was one of the sports of his college days.Alas, this is merely what Holmes is said to have said as an old man. Perhaps more reliable are the recollections of George F. Hoar, sometime senator from Massachusetts. Writing of his boyhood in Concord (he was born in 1826, so these memories are from around 1835-1840), Hoar recalls playing various games of ball. …