Let's Play Ball!
Origins of Baseball
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 2006 book Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, argues against that notion.
Several references to "baseball" and "bat-and-ball" have been found in British and American documents of the early eighteenth century.
The earliest known description is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of boys
playing "base-ball," showing a baseball set-up roughly similar to the modern game, and a rhymed description of the sport.
The earliest known unambiguous American discussion of "baseball" was published in a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, town bylaw that prohibited the playing of the game within 80 yards (70 m) of the town's new meeting house.
The English novelist Jane Austen made a reference to children playing "base-ball" on a village green in her book Northanger Abbey, which was written
between 1798 and 1803 (though not published until 1818.
Baseball is touted as our National Pass Time but Football has made huge progress in becoming the number one watched sport in America.
Six (6), 9" BaseBalls are
included with the Machine
