Now this is interesting -- and a welcome relief from the endless news of atrocities that's par for this week. (Others have blogged more eloquently about it than I can.) A baseball historian discovered a document that pushes the origins of baseball back as far as 1791. The place is interesting, too -- Pittsfield, MA, just half an hour from my alma mater. Naturally, the document mentions baseball only to damn it:
For the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House no Person or Inhabitant of said Town, shall be permitted to play at any Game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Batball, Football, Cat, Fives or any other Game or Games with Balls, within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House.
Baseball is an indigenous American mutation of an imported cultural pursuit -- like, say, the blues, or country music, or apple pie. This document shows that it goes back at least as far as the early American republic and, I would imagine, a good bit earlier. Not surprising, really, but definitely thought-provoking.
Posted by Chris at May 13, 2004 07:34 AM