The SABR Committee on the Origins of Baseball: Structure and Program

This document undertakes to describe SABR’s Origins Committee and its program. It was last updated in January 2009, and serves as the committee's 2008 annual report. Comments, corrections, and offers to contribute time to the Committee are welcome: contact Committee Chair Larry McCray at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or at 781-862-2976.

Where did baseball come from? And what factors determined its general shape, its rules, its many customs, and its ability to rise to become America’s national pastime?

Not long ago, most Americans -- and many baseball writers -- thought the answers to these questions were mostly in hand: they revolved around a certain individual in a certain field in a certain upstate New York village . . . or maybe around another individual at another field not too far to the south. However, recent researchers, some of them becoming masters at exploiting the new search capacity for online sources, have begun painting a quite different picture, one that is much more complicated, that goes back further, and that is actually more interesting, than the Single Inventor theory. Our field has seen the recent publications of books and articles that bring to light a larger heap of relevant facts, by far, than was available even ten years ago. Our Committee membersare thoroughly enjoying the current tumult, and are looking for ways to facilitate further progress through SABR.

A. Who We Are and How We Operate

The Committee comprises about 250 members of SABR. We have in common an interest in research on the origins of baseball, on the folk games that preceded it, on the early evolution of its key rules and practices, and on its spread to new areas. Most of our members’ interests lie within the period from about 1750 to about 1870, when the first professional league was on the horizon. Our primary objective as a Committee is to facilitate origins research.

The Committee has no operating budget, and its program depends entirely on the volunteered time of its members. Available Committee members meet once a year at the annual SABR convention. Many members participate in the 19CBB listserve, a lively venue that covers both baseball’s origins and professional baseball in the Nineteenth Century. Daily traffic runs at about 3-6 messages a day. Appendix 2 has advice on signing up.

Since late 2007, the Committee program has been coordinated by the current chairman and a start-up Steering Committee that includes David Block, Skip McAfee, Larry McCray [chair], and John Thorn. [Basic operating premises for the Committee are found below in Appendix 1.]

B. Formal Committee Activities

In 2008 we canvassed the membership to elicit ideas about projects that the Committee might undertake. About 20 members provided input, and several potential initiatives were identified. Of those, one [the monthly Committee newsletter, Originals] is now under way – the others await the mobilization of sufficient volunteer effort.

Originals is edited by Bob Tholkes, and is distributed electronically once a month to all SABR members who have designated origins as an area of interest. The newsletter typically summarizes the month’s liveliest exchanges on origins research appearing on the 19CBB listserve.

Bob welcomes other contributions. Please contact him if you’d like to provide material for inclusion in the next issue of Originals: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it C. Other Potential Committee Initiatives.

Please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you would like further background on the following ideas, or would like to participate in bringing one of them to fruition.

1. A Committee Website? A SABR Origins site could describe the committee’s scope, tell people about the 19CBB list-serve, tell people how to reach Committee leadership, serve as a repository for past issues of Originals, and be the home of a good guide to available research resources [see next item] that are useful to origins researchers.
2. A Resource Directory? A helpful directory might acquaint members – and the public – with already-existing research sources relating to Origins. This could include links to relevant publications and newsletters [e.g., Base Ball, National Pastime, Protoball’s Next Destin’d Post], websites [e.g., Peter Morris’ site, Eric Miklich’s site, the Protoball site], and information on doing state-of-the-art internet searches.
3. A SABR Guide to Doing Local [and Other] Origins Research? It may be useful to put together a guide to doing origins research, one that is user-friendly for new researchers in particular local areas. Much of the focus might be on making fullest use of local resources, although tips on electronic and other data sources might easily be added. The guide could also suggest interesting origins-related questions that local diggers can help answer. Nominally, we might aim this material at the less- experienced researcher, not excluding SABR members who are willing to look in their communities and regions for new finds. Such a guide might take shape by collecting tips and instructive stories of actual new finds from our most active members – diggers who know the ins and outs of local libraries, historical societies, newspaper archives, etc. Such material may find its best home on an Origins Committee website.
4. A Data Base on “First Uses” of Key Baseball Terminology? Paul Dickson’s Baseball Dictionary has tracked first uses of baseball terms, and a new edition is in preparation, with substantial contributions by Committee member Skip McAfee. The advent of ever more powerful electronic search capacity likely means that many new first uses may be identified.
5. Public Acknowledgement of Top Research Advances? The Committee could publicly acknowledge what it sees as “the best” or “its favorite” new books, articles, and/or research finds annually. An elaborate form of this idea would be to provide monetary prizes for the contributions that are selected.
6. Examining Baseball-Like Games Beyond the English-Speaking Areas? The Committee could take steps to foster research in sources not written in English. There appears to be at least fragmentary evidence of the existence of baseball-like games in Poland, France, Germany, Hungary, and northern Africa. However, language barriers impede current research on such origins. Could we find ways to surmount these hurdles?

Note: Members of the SABR Origins Committee are encouraged to suggest additional committee initiatives. Please contact Committee Chair Larry McCray at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or at 781-862-2976. Larry’s postal address is 125 Vine Street, Lexington MA 02420.

Appendix 1: Basic Premises

1. Special Projects are optional for the Origins Committee. SABR does not require its research committees to undertake projects. However, when a project is approved, it should operate in reference to a simple but practical plan that lays out next steps and a completion schedule for them
2. Projects undertaken by the Committee are intended to supplement and enhance the work of origins researchers, and not to compete with the work or active plans of those researchers.
3. The Committee will undertake new projects only when it is clear that there are adequate commitments of time and energy to the project. If such commitments later dissipate, the default action is to suspend the project until new commitments can be arranged.
4. We need to maintain and foster the current easy and comfortable relationship with the SABR 19th Century Committee, with which we share interest in several years of baseball history.
5. It is highly desirable to re-kindle the energies of the SABR-UK Chapter, which conducted spirited origins research in the 1990s and is ideally situated to pursue predecessor games in the British Isles. A committee of two [McCray and Block] will work with SABR-UK leadership and members to facilitate this.

Appendix 2: The 19CBB Listserve

Advice from Cliff Blau, who maintains the 19CBB listserve, on signing up: “One goes to https://edit.yahoo.com/registration?.intl=us&new=1&.src=ygrp&.v=0&.done=http %3a//groups.yahoo.com and puts in his/her personal information, chooses an ID and password and otherwise follows the instructions on that page, checks the box that says the Terms and Conditions are acceptable, and then he/she is registered. After that, there may be a hitch in signing up for the group, because it doesn't come up when you put the name in the Yahoo Group search. But if there is a problem in this step, they can e-mail me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and I will send them an invitation.”