“Base-Ball,” from the 1787 edition of John Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket-Book
25 June 2025
When examining the origins of a word one must be careful to distinguish between the word and the thing itself. The origin of the word is often quite different from the origin of the thing that it represents. Such is the case with baseball. In this case the word is older than the game we today know by that name.
The word baseball dates to the 1740s. What may be the oldest known use of the word is in John Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, which was the first children’s book for entertainment, as opposed to education, ever published. The book was first published in 1744, although no copies of the first nine editions survive. Baseball appears in the 1760 edition and probably appeared in the earlier editions as well. The book, originally published in London, but reprinted several times in the United States, contains the following poem, which does contain a bit of moral education and a justification for colonialism:
Base-Ball
The Ball once struck off,
Away flies the Boy
To the next destin’d Post,
And then Home with Joy.
Moral
Thus Britons for Lucre
Fly over the Main;
But, with Pleasure transported,
Return back again.
The game described in Newbery’s book bears little resemblance to the modern game of baseball other than the use of a ball and bases. Judging from the picture that accompanies the poem, they didn’t even use a bat, instead striking the pitched ball with their hand. But despite the differences, this game of English baseball is clearly the progenitor of the modern game.
The earliest undisputed use of the word appears by the English Baroness Hervey (née Mary Lepell), who mentions the game in a 14 November 1748 letter:
The town is sickly; and nothing seems prosperous but gaming and gamesters. ’Tis really prodigious to see how deep the ladies play: but, in spite of all these irregularities, the Prince’s family is an example of innocent and cheerful amusements. All this last summer they played abroad; and now, in the winter, in a large room, they divert themselves at base-ball, a play all who are, or have been, schoolboys, are well acquainted with. The ladies, as well as gentlemen, join in this amusement.
The “prince” is Frederick, Prince of Wales, the father of King George III. George was ten years old and presumably participated in the game. The irony of George III playing what would become America’s pastime is palpable. And note on this occasion the game was played indoors, much like children might do today during inclement weather.
A few years later, clergyman John Kidgell gives a somewhat more deprecatory description of the game in his 1755 book The Card:
And the younger Part of the Family, perceiving Papa not inclined to enlarge upon the Matter, retired to an interrupted Party at Base-Ball, (an infant Game, which as it advances in its Teens, improves into Fives, and in its State of Manhood, is called Tennis.)
The game of baseball was quite common in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, played by girls as well as boys. It even merits a mention by Jane Austen, who refers to the game in Northanger Abbey, published in 1818, but perhaps written as early as 1798:
It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country, at the age of fourteen, to books—or at least books of information—for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided that they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.
From these early uses it is clear that in England, at least, baseball was considered a children’s game, and not a proper pastime for older children or adults.
The earliest known American mention of the game is in a 22 March 1786 diary entry by John Rhea Smith, a student at the College of New Jersey (what would become Princeton University):
Extract from John Rhea Smith’s diary of 22 March 1786 containing the earliest known American reference to baseball
A fine day play baste ball in the campus but am beaten for I miss both catching and striking the Ball.
Smith wrote “baste ball,” probably because he had never seen the name written and, as this was only for personal use, he was not being careful about spelling or grammar. But it is clear that he was referring to baseball, as the school’s faculty saw fit to ban the game in November 1787, and in doing so they described it:
It appearing that a play at present much practiced by the smaller boys among the students and by the grammar scholars with balls and sticks in the back common of the College is in itself low and unbecoming gentlemen & students and in as much as it is an exercise attended with great danger to the health by sudden and alternate heats and colds as it tends by accidents almost unavoidable in that play to disfiguring and maiming those who are engaged in it for whose health and safety as well as improvement in study as far as depends on our exertions we are accountable to their Parents & liable to be severely blamed by them: and in as much as there are many amusements both more honourable and more useful in which they are indulged: Therefore the Faculty think incumbent on them to prohibit both the students & grammar scholars from using the play aforesaid.
From this description, it appears that the American version had already diverged from the English one. For one thing, it was being played with bats, while it is not clear that at this time the English version was. And from the use of “disfiguring” and “maiming,” while perhaps something of an exaggeration, it is clear that it was a rougher game, one not suitable for small children, or—in the sensibilities of the eighteenth century—women.
Another early ban of the game, but for a different reason, occurred on 5 September 1791, when the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts passed an ordinance to protect the newly installed windows of the town meeting house:
Be it ordained by the said Inhabitants that no person or Inhabitant of said Town, shall be permitted to play at any game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Batball, Football, Cats, Fives or any other game or games with Balls, within the Distance of eighty yards from said Meeting House.
The origin of the word baseball is also complicated by the existence of another game known as prisoner’s base or simply base. References to this game go back to the fourteenth century, but the game of base is probably not an ancestor of baseball. Base did not even use a ball, being simply a chase game. Still, researchers often confuse the two when finding early references to people “playing a game of base.”
So that’s where the word comes from, but when did the modern game of baseball come into being? There is no single defining moment. Instead, modern American baseball took a slow evolutionary journey from the roots in the English game.
There are many myths about the origin of American baseball. Perhaps the three most common are that it 1) was invented by Abner Doubleday in 1839; 2) was invented by Alexander Cartwright in 1845; and 3) derives from the English game of rounders. None of these are accurate.
The Doubleday myth got its start in 1905 when a certain Abner Graves claimed to have witnessed Abner Doubleday invent the game of (and the word) baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. Doubleday would later go on to win fame as general in the US Civil War. As we have seen, both the word and the game are older than this, and, besides, Abner Doubleday was a cadet at West Point in the spring of 1839 and could not have been in Cooperstown to invent the sport. Graves, who was only six years old at the time, probably witnessed a game of early baseball and misremembered the details—for instance, a cousin of the famous Doubleday may have played in the game and Graves later conflated the two. Graves also changed his story over the years, and as he retold it, it not only grew in detail, but he, himself, became a player in that game and not merely a witness.
Another myth is the claim that the rules for the modern game of baseball were laid down in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright and the other members of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. According to this story, the first game of modern baseball was played the following year at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. (The Knickerbockers lost that game to the New York Baseball Club.) The Knickerbocker club did indeed codify a set of rules to baseball in 1845, but Cartwright himself probably had nothing to do with it, as he did not become an officer of the club until later. And the team did play in Hoboken in 1846, but again there was nothing groundbreaking about this.
The Knickerbocker Club was not even the first to codify the rules of the game. The earliest known publication of baseball rules dates to some fifty years earlier, and in Germany of all places. In 1796, Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths described Ball mit Freystäten (oder das englische Base-ball), which translates as Ball with Sanctuaries (or English Base-ball). GutsMuths described a game that at its core resembles the modern game. It uses a bat, a ball, and a variable number of bases. The pitcher serves the ball to the batter, who has three attempts to put it into play. On hitting the ball, the batter attempts to round the bases, and batters/runners are put out if the ball is caught, they are touched with the ball, or the ball arrives at a base before them.
Nor were the Knickerbocker games of 1846 the first organized games of baseball as many believe. Organized ball was played in Manhattan as early as the 1820s, as this citation from the 25 April 1823 edition of the National Advocate indicates:
I was last Saturday much pleased in witnessing a company of active young men playing the manly and athletic game of “base ball” at the Retreat in Broadway (Jones’)[.] I am informed they are an organized association, and that a very interesting game will be played on Saturday next at the above place, to commence at half past 3 o’clock, P. M. Any person fond of witnessing this came may avail himself of seeing it played with consummate skill and wonderful dexterity[.] It is surprising, and to be regretted that the young men of our city do not engage more in this manual sport; it is innocent amusement, and healthy exercise, attended with but little expense, and has no demoralizing tendency.
Finally, there were significant differences between the Knickerbocker rules and the ones we know today. The Knickerbocker rules stated play would continue until one team scored twenty-one aces (presumably meaning runs, but the rules did not define the term) instead of nine innings. The 1845 rules had the bases approximately seventy-five feet from each other, instead of the modern ninety. Pitches were delivered underhand. And the number of players on each side was not stated in the rules (presumably it would vary from game to game). The one great innovation of the Knickerbocker rules was that they allowed for force outs and tag outs at the bases, where previously one had to throw and hit the runner with the ball to get him out. So while the Knickerbocker rules were an important milestone in the evolution of baseball, they did not constitute a watershed.
The final myth we’ll address here is that baseball derives from the English game of rounders. This is not correct. American baseball and English rounders are both descendants of English baseball, with significant changes in rules, as well as a name change, occurring over the centuries.
The name rounders does not appear until 1828, in William Clarke’s Boy’s Own Book:
In the west of England this is one of the most favourite sports with bat and ball. In the metropolis, boys play a game very similar to it, called Feeder. In Rounders, the players divide into two equal parties, and chance decides which shall have the first innings.
Rounders started out as simply a name for a regional variant of English baseball. By the time the name rounders was coined, baseball was already well established in America. Gradually, this regional name supplanted the use of baseball throughout England, so by the time that Americans began investigating the origins of their national pastime at the beginning of the 20th century, the name baseball had been all but forgotten in England, leaving only the familiar rounders.
So that’s where the term baseball comes from, an eighteenth-century English children’s game that evolved into the adult, American sport we know today.
Sources:
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey, vol. 1 of 4. London: John Murray, 1818. 7–8. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Block, David, Baseball Before We Knew It, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 50-57, 67, 140, 148–49, 178–79, 122–23.
Clarke, William. The Boy’s Own Book. Boston: Munroe and Francis, 1829, 20. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hwhlcq&seq=32 (The term rounders does not appear in the 1828 first edition of Clarke’s book. I cannot locate a copy of the second edition, also from 1828, in which the OED says it does appear. I cite here the first American edition, which is from 1829.)
“Communication.” National Advocate (New York), 25 April 1823, 2/4. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
GutsMuths, Johann Christian Friedrich. “Ball mit Freystätten. (oder das englische Base-ball).” In Speile zur Uebung und Erholung des Körpers und Geistes für die Jugend, ihre Erzieher und alle Freunde Unschuldiger Jugendfreuden. Schnepfenthal: 1796, 78–84. Google Books.
Kidgell, John. The Card, vol. 1. London: J. Newbery, 1755, 9. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Lepell, Mary. Letter, 14 November 1748. In Letters of Mary Lepel [sic], Lady Hervey. London: John Murray, 1821, 139–140. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Newbery, John. A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. London: J. Newbery, 1760, C4r. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, third edition, September 2011, s. v. baseball, n.; March 2011, s.v. rounder, n.2.
Thorn, John. “The Pittsfield ‘Baseball’ Bylaw of 1791: What It Means.” Medium.com, 3 August 2011.
Woodward, Ruth L. “Journal at Nassau Hall: The Diary of John Rhea Smith, 1786.” Princeton University Library Chronicle, 46.3. Spring 1985, 269–91 at 286–87. JSTOR.
Image credits: John Newbery, A Pretty Little Pocket Book, Worcester, Massachusetts: Isaiah Thomas, 1787, 43. Library of Congress. Public domain image; John Rhea Smith, 1786. Library of Congress. Public domain image.
