Early baseball in Illinois/Predecessor Game 2

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There is considerable evidence that Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, played a bat-ball game, and that later reminiscences hinted that this was baseball. The Ken Burns baseball series hints at this. The sources are accumulted at http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2012/11/joseph-smith-and-baseball-the-evidence/ . The evidence suggests that a bat-ball game was played at Nauvoo in 1841.

Smith had grown up in upstate New York, and may have been exposed to some early form of baseball there.

Sources

http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2012/11/joseph-smith-and-baseball-the-evidence/