Short Overviews of Baseball's Beginnings

A summary introduction to the origins of baseball appears on the Wikipedia page "Origins of Baseball".

A compact timeline crafted by Tom Heitz and John Thorn, called "Early Bat and Ball Games", is found on the SABR UK Chapter website. It had been put together before several recent major finds came to light, but it captures the basic evolutionary story line at a glance. . . and it inspired the sprawling Protoball Project, a collaborative site for and by active origins researchers.

From 1993 to about 1999, the doughty members of the British chapter of SABR pursued any English roots of baseball they could  locate. Their findings have since been greatly expanded by later work by Block and others, but the chapter’s pursuit is a good read, and can be found on their website, in The Examiner.

You can learn more by following the links for Learning more about Origins and Researching Origins. 

Books on Origins -- Some Classics

• Henderson (1947) – Robert W. Henderson, Ball, Bat, and Bishop: the Origin of Ball Games (Rockport Press, 1947). Henderson ventures back to the Egyptians and Greeks, and features three chapters on the origins of base ball. He brought thorough scholarship to origins research, and was dismissive of the Abner Doubleday theory of baseball’s roots.

• Seymour (1960) – Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years (Oxford University Press, 1960). Seymour was the first academic researcher to concentrate on baseball, and this book includes over 50 pages on the evolution of the game up to the establishment of the professional leagues.

•  Block (2005) – David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game (University of Nebraska Press, 2005). Having turned up hundreds of sources, David Block paints a new picture of baseball’s origins, with special depth in the antecedents of American baseball that were played in Britain.

• Morris (2006) – Peter Morris, A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball (Ivan Dee, 2006), two volumes. A major reference work based on much new material, this book may be thought of as a thorough compendium of “baseball firsts,”  both for on-field play and off-field practices, each with a discussion that puts the innovation into perspective. Mr. Morris also maintains a list of updates to the book at his website, petermorrisbooks.com. “The nature of a book of firsts,” he explains, “is that it is always a work in progress.”

• Ryczek (2009) – William J. Ryczek, Baseball’s First Inning: A History of the National Pastime Through the Civil War (McFarland, 2009). The most recent summary of what we know about baseball’s beginnings, this book includes the many new finds from recent months and years.

Video Documentary:  Base Ball Discovered

Base Ball Discovered is a one-hour documentary that examines the roots of baseball, focusing particularly on its similarities and departures from stoolball, cricket, trap ball, and rounders in England.  The film, written and directed by Committee member Sam Marchiano, received the award for Baseball Excellence at the 2008 Baseball Film Festival at Cooperstown.  For details, go to http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/mediacenter/baseball_discovered/.  The documentary, filmed in 2007 with substantial input from David Block and other SABR members, debuted on the Baseball Channel in 2009.  Plans for future rebroadcasts are uncertain, but MLB.com is currently exploring additional online and offline distribution options.