Talk:Origins of baseball

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Other related games

I added the mention about oina since it is unfair not to mention this sport in the history of the game of baseball. Oina is a very old pastoral game. It would be interesting to know how much influence had this game to the actual baseball game. It is a long overdue trend to identify the history of everything which is nowadays American to the old British/colonial customs. Let's not forget that America was formed by immigrants and they brought good and bad when they came. To return to the oina game, a big Transylvanian community immigrated in the begining of the 19th century in America. I am not arguing in any ways that they had any influence at all, but the amazing similitudes of those two games require a further investigation into this matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.168.44.28 (talk) 21:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Real tennis, its descendant lawn tennis and croquet are also related to baseball, but more distantly than cat, rounders or cricket. Grassynoel (talk) 17:12, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Needs Better Research

Roman kids played #Baseball in the street - Year 1669 (lower right: pitcher, batter, and catcher) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Willem_Reuter_-_A_Roman_Market.jpg DrWJK (talk) 05:23, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Palant

British historian Norman Davis in his book "God's playground" says: "More certainly, in October 1608, an emigrant ship, the Mary and Margaret, carried among its passengers the first Polish settlers into Jamestown, Virginia. [list of names and their origins]. Ten years later the Polish artisans of Jamestown were said to be responsible for the continent's first industrial strike and, in their game of http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palant, for the invention of Baseball." This is page 205, http://books.google.com/books?id=9Tbed6iMNLEC&lpg=PA205&ots=h-pgExnT22&pg=PA205#v=onepage&q=palant&f=false.

Whether or not Palant can be taken as an early form of base-ball, as opposed to (e.g.) deutsche Ballspiel, Jamestown's Poles had no lasting influence since they departed the following year. There are no other mentions of bat-and-ball games other than cricket and barn-ball in the colonial South. Solicitr (talk) 17:19, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

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Miss Mitford's sketch

If nobody objects, I'm going to move "Miss Mitford's" A Village Sketch from the American to the British section, since the author was in fact the English writer Mary Russell Mitford, who published a very popular series of "Village Sketches" in the English Ladies' Magazine from 1821 onward (later collected and published as Our Village) and the Maryland paper simply reprinted the introductory section of her story "Jack Hatch." (It's noteworthy that Mitford, in keeping with other early-19th century English sources, suggests that "base-ball" was a game played by little girls.) Solicitr (talk) 17:59, 23 January 2016 (UTC)17:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Every country in Britain

Is it necessary to say that examples of early Britain are "England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales?" I feel like that is redundant. 80.150.65.186 (talk) 07:08, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Where in the article are you referencing? Ckruschke (talk) 14:09, 27 March 2017 (UTC)Ckruschke

The second sentence in the introduction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.182.194.250 (talk) 16:32, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

done Ckruschke (talk) 18:18, 30 March 2017 (UTC)Ckruschke

Thanks! 2601:184:4980:DBAD:D87D:D8B8:5A80:AA6 (talk) 01:24, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

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Rounders

A lot of original research and unsubstantiated speculation in the Rounders section.

Whilst rounders might not have been Tudor in origin, it certain dated from 1744. This article seems fixated on the name, but the 1744 publication described the game is much closer to modern rounders than it was to modern baseball.

Mauls (talk) 10:38, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

So what is your suggested change? Ckruschke (talk) 17:46, 6 March 2018 (UTC)Ckruschke

New source

User:Human Taxonomist has been adding baseball as an English invention to English people. Besides the fact that his source, David Block, mentions Wales as an early source of precursors {as does The Prehistories of Baseball, I'm not sure we can state that as a fact. I've found another source, Sport Histories: Figurational Studies in the Development of Modern Sports with a chapter by Daniel Bloyce, Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport and Exercise and Co-Director of the Chester Centre for Research into Sport and Society at the University of Chester, UK. The chapter is called "Baseball:Myths and modernization" - some excerpts "It is impossible to be as exact about the origins of baseball as, for instance, Seymour would suggest; indeed to embark on a search for such precision would be misguided. Rather, a more adequate explanation would suggest that baseball, in its ‘modern’ form, was derived from a number of interdependent sources and from an amalgamation of a number of different folk bat-and-ball games." "and, while the primacy of rounders in this process is not certain, it does seem likely that British people, developing closer ties with the USA on a broad range of fronts, introduced the game, along with a variety of other, similar, bat-and-ball games to America. At this time, however, these bat-and-ball games remained very basic. Rules were not yet standardized or codified and, as Foster notes, ‘informality prevailed’ (1995: 45). Indeed, it was not until the 1830s that we see the emergence of more explicitly codified bat-and-ball games in the USA, particularly in the northeastern states; it is impossible to date the beginnings of this process more precisely. However, what we can say with some certainty is that during the 1830s, the rules for a variety of bat-and-ball games became more formalized, began to be committed to written form and that the games themselves became more organized." "Guttmann 1978; Tyrrell 1979), the first remnants of organized baseball can be traced to 1840s America. In other words, this period and this place saw the ‘incipient modernization’ of the game."[1] Doug Weller talk 11:52, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Doug Weller - forgive my stupidity, but I don't see any of his edits on this page. What specifically are you referring to? The section on "British Baseball" on this page is one para and the later sections about the origins of American ball only mentions it in passing. Ckruschke (talk) 20:18, 3 December 2019 (UTC)Ckruschke

@Ckruschke: sorry, see User talk:Human Taxonomist and [2]. Doug Weller talk 21:09, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

In reply to Doug further above, I would say that yes, the codified, modern rules were further put in place in the 1840s, but the invention and origin of the game itself comes from much earlier, in the colonial days of America. Its precursor is specifically said to have been brought by English colonists. Its development was also specifically in English America or Anglo-America by Anglo-Americans. I am not doubting that the modern game developed in an independent United States, but this still does not negate its earlier English invention and cultural origins (which are the cultural origins of early America in general). Perhaps a caveat can be noted in the form of "the precursor or earliest form of baseball", which was without a doubt invented by the English and later the English colonists, rather than the codified modern form. I would again note that even the codified form was done so by Anglo-Americans in the colonial heartland of English (Yankee) America in the northeast (New England and New York). Human Taxonomist (talk) 01:24, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with User:Doug Weller's analysis. This is analogous to the situation with Ice hockey, which was formalized in Canada but had precursor stick games (on and off ice) elsewhere. Meters (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

That was not Doug Weller's analysis, and the situation is not analogous at all to ice hockey. Canada was British at the time ice hockey was formalized, but it is distinct. Baseball was a game already existing when brought over to the English colonies. Ice hockey was invented in British North America, mostly by Scots in Nova Scotia who were playing shinty (Canadians call informal hockey still as 'shinny'), before Canada even existed in anyway as an independent nation. Being invented in Canada did not make it any less British or Scottish. Baseball was an English game invented by Englishmen in England and in the English colonies. It wasn't invented by the French, native peoples, Spanish, etc. It was a game of English America. Human Taxonomist (talk) 23:03, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not interested in discussing semantics with you. I agree with the sentiments Doug Weller was expressing above. And I think this is very much analogous. Both sports were formalized in North America, and both sports had precursor informal athletic activities in Britain. We edit by consensus, and there is no consensus for your repeated addition [3] that baseball should simply be described as an English invention. Meters (talk) 00:19, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Baseball was not formalized or invented in North America like ice hockey was. But 'formalization' is not even what is being discussed here, but invention. The game was invented before it was brought by Englishmen to the English colonies in America. At the time it was being developed further in America, it was still done so in English colonies and by English men, in the English cultural area of the Thirteen Colonies. Lacrosse was invented in America too, but that does not mean it wasn't specifically an invention by the aboriginal cultures (Iroquois, Ojibwe, Cherokee, etc.). No one simply says lacrosse is 'American', and always mention it as an invention by indigenous American peoples/nations. Separating baseball from its English origins and heritage is like separating pizza from its Italian origins, despite it too being further developed by ethnic Italians in America. The best thing you can say for your case was that baseball was further developed or formalized by English-Americans or Anglo-Americans, but this in no way denies the fact the game was originally an English invention. Human Taxonomist (talk) 04:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

References