Early baseball in Massachusetts/Predecessor Game 18

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Spread of baseball: Home -> Massachusetts -> Early baseball in Massachusetts/Predecessor Game 18
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Location Massachusetts
Year 1800
City Sheffield
State MA
Country US
Name of game game with wickets

"The sports and entertainments were very simple. Running about the village street, hither and thither, without much aim . . . . games of ball, not base-ball, as is now [c1857] the fashion, yet with wickets – this was about all, except that at the end there was always horse-racing [p.19]. ..But as to sports and entertainments in general, there were more of them in those days than now. We had more holidays, more games in the street, – of ball-playing, of quoits, of running, leaping, and wrestling. [p.21]"


Mary E. Dewey, ed., Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. (Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1883), pages 19 and 21. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), page 38. Accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Books search for "'letters of orville.'" Orville Dewey was born in Sheffield MA in 1794 and grew up there. Sheffield is in the SW corner of MA, about 45 miles NE of Hartford Connecticut. Note: [1] the "game of ball" may have been wicket. [2] More holidays in 1800 than in 1857?


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