What did sport baseball evolve from?
Surprisingly little is known about the origin of baseball. The
question has been the subject of considerable debate and
controversy for more than 100 years. Baseball (and softball), as
well as the other modern bat, ball and running games, cricket and
rounders, developed from earlier folk games, many of which were
similar to each other, but there were certainly local, regional and
national variations, both in how they were played and what they
were called, such as stoolball, poison ball, and goal ball. Few
details of how the modern games developed from earlier folk games
are known. Some think that various folk games resulted in a game
called town ball from which baseball was eventually born. A number
of early folk games in England had characteristics that can be seen
in modern baseball (as well as in cricket and rounders). Many of
these early games involved a ball that was thrown at a target while
an opposing player defended the target by attempting to hit the
ball away. If the batter successfully hit the ball, he could
attempt to score points by running between bases while fielders
would attempt to catch or retrieve the ball and put the runner out
in some way. Since they were folk games, the early games had no
'official' rules, and they tended to change over time. To the
extent that there were rules, they were generally simple and were
not written down. There were many local variations, and varied
names. Many of the early games were not well documented, first,
because they were generally peasant games (and perhaps children's
games, as well); and second, because they were often discouraged,
and sometimes even prohibited, either by the church or by the
state, or both. Aside from obvious differences in terminology, the
games differed in the equipment used (ball, bat, club, target,
etc., which were usually just whatever was available), the way in
which the ball is thrown, the method of scoring, the method of
making outs, the layout of the field and the number of players
involved. An old English game called "base," described by George
Ewing at Valley Forge, was apparently not much like baseball. There
was no bat and no ball involved! The game was more like a fancy
game of "tag", although it did share the concept of places of
safety (ie, bases) with modern baseball. In an 1801 book entitled
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, Joseph Strutt
claimed to have shown that baseball-like games can be traced back
to the 14th century, and that baseball is a descendant of a British
game called stoolball. The earliest known reference to stoolball is
in a 1330 poem by William Pagula, who recommended to priests that
the game be forbidden within churchyards. In stoolball, a batter
stood before a target, perhaps an upturned stool, while another
player pitched a ball to the batter. If the batter hit the ball
(with a bat or his/her hand) and it was caught by a fielder, the
batter was out. If the pitched ball hit a stool leg, the batter was
out. It was more often played by young men and women as a sort of
spin the bottle. According to many sources, in 1700, a Puritan
leader of southern England, Thomas Wilson, expressed his
disapproval of "Morris-dancing, cudgel-playing, baseball and
cricket" occurring on Sundays. However, David Block, in Baseball
Before We Knew It, reports that the original source has "stoolball"
for "baseball". Block also reports that the reference appears to
date to 1672, rather than 1700. A 1744 publication in England by
John Newbery called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book includes a woodcut
of stoolball and a rhyme entitled "Base-ball." The book was later
published in Colonial America in 1762. In 1748, the family of
Frederick, Prince of Wales partook in the playing of a
baseball-like game. A 1791 bylaw in Pittsfield, Massachusetts bans
the playing of baseball within 80 yards of the town meeting house.
Les Jeux des Jeunes Gar
