Early baseball in New Hampshire/Game 1

From SABR Encyclopedia

SABR Origins Committee project on the
Spread of baseball
Key pages
Project home page Project map History of early baseball Research needs in the spread of baseball
Lists
Earliest games by state Earliest clubs by state All games  ·  All clubs Predecessor games Other firsts in baseball
Help
Researching early baseball Submitting research online

From Protoball Entry #1860.34 – Disparate Ball Games Seen in New Hampshire

In adjacent brief clippings in the Mears Collection (dated "May 1860" by hand), disparate intramural games are described for two clubs. In one, "the stars of the East" played an in-house 28-23 game under National Association Rules – nine players, nine innings, the usual fielding positions neatly assigned. The other was a two-inning contest with twelve-player sides and a [smudge-obscured] score of about 70 to 70. This latter game does not resemble contours of the Massachusetts game – it's hard to construe it having a one-out-side-out rule –, but it's not wicket, for the club is named the "Granite Base Ball Club." The run distribution in the box score is consistent with the use of all-out-side-out innings. Note: What were these fellows playing? Both NH game accounts were in The New York Clipper. Facsimiles from the Mears Collection provided by Craig Waff, September 2008.