Games that preceded baseball

From SABR Encyclopedia

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Revision as of 20:15, 7 April 2010

This list is compiled from the Protoball Glossary; the full glossary contains about 200 games, chiefly baserunning running games involving balls or, sometimes, "cats" (short lengths of wood that could be hit away).

Contents 1 The major predecessor games 2 Rarer predecessor base-running games 3 More distant relatives of base ball 4 Unrelated ballgames 5 Lost Games

The major predecessor games

• Base, or base-ball or bass-ball
• Cricket (in several US regions)
• The Old-Cat games – One Old Cat (also one o’cat), Two Old Cat, Three Old Cat, Four Old Cat
• Round Ball or Massachusetts Game (eastern New England, upstate New York)
• Town Ball (Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Lous region, the South)
• Wicket (eastern New England, upstate New York, northern plains states

After about 1870, "Town Ball" or sometimes "Old Fashioned Base Ball" was used to refer retrospectively broadly to four-base variants, notably town ball and round ball, terms that would have been unfamiliar to the original participants.

Rarer predecessor base-running games

• "American Cricket" – very rare
• Bandy Wicket
• Bat ball – northeast US
• Bat-and-ball – mostly northeast US
• Chermany (Chumney, Chuminy) – US south
• Dutch Long
• Long Ball
• Long Dutch
• Long Town
• Old Hundred -- US south
• Round Cat – US south
• Round Town – US south
• Rounders – rarely reported in US
• Single-wicket Cricket
• Stoolball – rarely reported in US
• Trap-ball – only sometimes a running game
• Variant names implying the use of plugging: burn ball, patch ball, soak ball, sting ball, and touch-ball

More distant relatives of base ball

• Non-Team Games: Barn Ball, Move-Up, One Two Three, Scrub, Work-Up
• Games without Bats: Bat-ball (conjectured) Boston Ball, Kickball, Punchball
• Fungo Games: Cat and Dog, Evansville Townball, Hit-the-Bat, Indian Ball, Over-the-Line

Unrelated ballgames

• Bandy - a game resembling field hockey
• Bull Pen
• Corner Ball
• Fives – like modern (non-team) handball, racquetball
• Hand ball – like modern (non-team) handball, racquetball
• Hurley- like field hockey or golf
• Pall Mall – resembled croquet
• Shinty – resembled field hockey
• Stow Ball – resembled field hockey or golf

Lost Games

These names refer to games that were played historically, but whose nature has not yet been re-discovered.

• Ball Stand
• Base Dodge Ball
• Batton
• Drive
• GiGi-ball
• Hook-em-Snivy
• Mickey
• Norwegian Ball
• Skip
• Square Ball
• Swede Ball
• Touch-the-Ball
• Tripball
• Up-ball