Sport Trivia

The distinct evolution of baseball from among the various bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. While there has been general agreement that modern baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, the book Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, published in 2006 by David Block, argues against this. The earliest known mention of the sport is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains an illustration of boys playing "base-ball," showing a set-up fairly similar to the modern game along with a rhymed description of the sport.

The earliest known American reference to the game was published in a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, statute that prohibited the playing of baseball within eighty yards of the town's newly constructed meeting house. The English novelist Jane Austen made a reference to children playing "base-ball" on a village green in her book Northanger Abbey, written between 1798 and 1803 although not published until 15 years later.