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    Baseball Before We Knew It
    A Search for the Roots of the Game

    David Block (Author), Tim Wiles (Foreword by), John Thorn (Foreword by)

    9781496242693

    Paperback / softback, published 1 April 2025

    408 pages, 33 illustrations, 7 appendixes, index
    22.9 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm, 0.612 kg

    "Given North American baseball fans' nearly inexhaustible appetite for the arcana of their favourite sport, astonishingly few scholars have ever undertaken the detailed historical and anthropological research to find out where the game actually began. . . . Now, through painstaking bibliographic and archival research, on display in his extensive appendices, Block has established . . . the true forerunner of American baseball. . . . By pushing beyond baseball's reputed origins in an English children's game, David Block has discovered the game's true origins in an even older English game."-Warren Goldstein, Times Literary Supplement
    "The suggestion that America's Game might have originated somewhere besides America so 'inflamed passions and patriotism,' writes David Block, that the idea still burns us. . . . Block has produced a deliciously researched feast that lays this controversy to rest. . . . Block has assembled such a rich pile of evidence for the game's European origins that one might wonder why there ever was a controversy. . . . Block's book is a perfect delight. He has unearthed magnificent medieval manuscripts . . . That show that baseball is just the latest in a very long line of stick-and-ball games."-Charles Hirshberg, Sports Illustrated
    “Pastime Lost is required reading for anyone interested in learning more about the early origins of baseball.”-Jason Cannon, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture
    "Baseball, Block convincingly argues, was not a product of rounders, and its essential form had already been established by the late 18th century. Where, then, did baseball come from? In search of an answer, Block, a retired systems analyst and an antiquarian book collector, has attacked baseball's literary record with methodical zeal. The result is a joyfully discursive romp through the history of ball sports and a compelling new theory of the game's origins."—New York Times Book Review
    "Baseball before We Knew It is a rare piece of historical research that transforms the historical landscape. It is also elegantly written and lightened with a subtle humor. No one who makes any claim to being a baseball historian or a student of the game can go forward without Block's stunning work."—Sports Literature Association
    "Beneficial, Bountiful and Believable for baseball curators, and in the wheelhouse for a publisher like University of Nebraska Press, whose goal is making baseball stay alive with modern readable material that's been thoroughly researched, appendix-ed and indexed."-fartheroffthewall.com

    Winner of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research
    Winner of the North American Society for Sport History Book Award
    A Choice Outstanding Academic Title
     
    When Baseball before We Knew It was first published in 2005, it shattered many long-held assumptions about the pastime’s origins. No, baseball was not original to America. No, baseball did not come from the English game rounders. Yes, of course, the Doubleday story was in fact a myth, but for the first time its secret backstory had been revealed. Beyond all its myth busting, Baseball before We Knew It traveled back in time to uncover the true roots of the sport, exploring the many antecedent ball games from Britain and elsewhere that contributed bits of themselves to baseball’s evolution.

    Now, in this twentieth anniversary edition of his classic work, David Block fills in more of baseball’s origin story by summarizing the discoveries and advancements he and his fellow historians have accomplished over the past two decades. Other new contributions also appear for the first time in this 2025 edition, including a new foreword by John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball; an expanded annotated bibliography of books relating to baseball’s origins from before the Civil War; and two new essays from the author. Baseball before We Knew It is a comprehensive, reliable, and readable account of baseball’s history before it became America’s national pastime.

     

    List of Illustrations
    Foreword to the New Edition by John Thorn
    Foreword by Tim Wiles
    Preface to the New Edition
    Preface
    Acknowledgments for the New Edition
    Acknowledgments

    Base, as in Baseball
    A Pocket(book)ful of Miracles
    1. Uncertainty as to the Paternity
    2. Rounders, Schmounders
    3. Abner and Albert, the Missing Link by Philip Block
    Playing Ball at Camp Doubleday
    4. Was Abner Graves Telling the Truth?
    5. Rules of Baseball: The Prequel
    6. How Slick Were the Knicks?
    7. In the Beginning
    8. Stools, Clubs, Stobs, and Jugs
    9. Traps and Cats
    10. It’s Starting to Look Familiar
    11. Baseball before We Knew It

    Early Baseball Bibliography: Roots of the Game in Pre–Civil War Literature
    Appendix 1: Constitutions and By-Laws
    Appendix 2: Some Comments on Sporting Journals of the 1850s
    Appendix 3: “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball”: Baseball and Baseball-type Games in the Colonial Era, Revolutionary War, and Early American Republic by Thomas L. Altherr
    Appendix 4: The Letters of Abner Graves
    Appendix 5: Dr. Adam E. Ford’s Letter to Sporting Life
    Appendix 6: Battingball Games by Per Maigaard
    Appendix 7: Ten Surviving Descriptions of Baseball-like Games Written and Published before 1845
    Notes
    Principal Sources Consulted
    Index

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