In early 2010, SABR’s Committee on the Origins of Baseball launched a project to give interested individuals a chance to contribute to a new and open compilation of data on the local origins of the game.  The idea is to add to what we now know about when and how the "New York" game of baseball arrived locally, and what earlier games it displaced.

The project is part of the SABR Encyclopedia. We have uploaded some already-published information on the arrival of baseball in many localities, and would welcome additional data for your town, and other places of special interest to you.  In a lot of cases we fully expect to find earlier "first games", and earlier clubs, than are now listed as the known local firsts.

See the project now:

• Go to the Spread of baseball project page in the SABR Encyclopedia
• Go right to the list of earliest games by state
• Go right to the list of earliest clubs by state
• Or find a location of interest on the project map (below)

About the Spread Project

Modern baseball is first seen in the Knickerbocker Rules, which were written in 1845 in New York City. By the late 1860s, “baseball fever” had carried the “New York game” far and wide in North America, and worldwide spread was beginning.  We hope that an open-ended community effort to dig up facts on the game's arrival in many diverse areas will allow us to see how (and eventually, why) baseball reached some areas right away and others later.

For each locality, we hope to learn:

• When was the first game played by modern rules
• When did the first local baseball club form?
• What game or games preceded modern baseball in the area?

Even in the mid-1850s, US newspapers were reporting much more cricket play and horse-racing than baseball. That all soon changed, and dramatically. We’re basically asking when, how, and why, baseball so suddenly ensconced itself as America’s national pastime.

Your Contributions Are Welcome

If you can add to – and correct – what we have, you can submit it to the current online collection directly. Details and how-to guidance are found on our other project pages in the Encyclopedia:

• What we know about the spread of baseball
• What's left to learn?
• Some tips for doing research on the spread of baseball
• How to submit new data to the project