Five Moments in Baseball Culture

Going into the bottom half of the eighth inning of the seventh game of the 1946 World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals were tied at three runs with the visiting Boston Red Sox. The first batter for the Cardinals was Enos Slaughter, who hit a single. This was followed by a pair of outs, and it looked like the game would be decided in its final inning - but the clean-up hitter, Harry Walker, hit a single. Slaughter, who had led off from first base substantially, rounded second and continued on to third. Then, knowing the game was down to the wire and the entire World Series was on the line, he kept going, narrowly sliding safely into home plate just before Boston's catcher had a chance to tag him out. Slaughter's "Mad Dash," as it has come to be known, would prove to be the winning run. There's now a cast bronze sculpture of Slaughter sliding into home in the North Carolina Baseball Museum, and he's been inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

Folklorists often look at the origins and development of games, and the customs of precisely how they are played, but in a world where the most important sports are those where the participants are vastly outnumbered by the spectators, the most important folklore spreads outside the field of play. Anthropologists who study ritual have likened sports fandom to religion so many times the observation is regarded as a cliche, and it's certainly true that the attachment to a single team and the powerful emotional bond a fan feels with the rest of the crowd, the players on the field, and the team colors can border on the mystical. When a film opens with Susan Sarandon's voice saying that "I believe in the Church of Baseball," the non-fan can take it as a wry moment at the start of what's going to be a comedy, while the die-hard sports fan will nod knowingly, and follow along with the entire monologue. And like any religion, baseball has its stories, its customs, and its expectations.

Development of American Safe-Haven Games

It's commonly related how baseball derives from the English sport of Rounders, or from some specific early American game such as Old Cat, but the truth is rather more complex. America has a long tradition of safe-haven games, and baseball as we know it today is not simply a product of a single branch of the family. These games, collectively, were our national pastime before we had standardized the rules in a single form, and even before we could call ourselves a nation.

The National Pastime that Might Have Been

Baseball was not, despite certain legends, invented de novo by Abner Doubleday (who never advanced any claim to being involved in its creation). Its rules instead come from a game played in the state of New York in the middle of the 19th century, which in turn derives from the same underdocumented medieval precursor as cricket. (There are in fact high medieval manuscript marginalia showing people swinging what appear to be modern baseball bats at round white balls.)

But the New York game was just what caught on beyond the region of its origin, because of the clout of New York City during the formalization of America's national sport. Other local variants existed at the time, the most prominent being one played in and around Boston. The Massachusetts version of base ball at that time (now usually known as the "Massachusetts game" but commonly called "town ball", "round ball", or "base" by its players), formalized by the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players under the name "town ball" in 1858, was different in several ways.

The Scant Evidence Available to Would-Be Reconstructors of Knattleikr

The Sagas and other early sources about Viking-age Scandinavia make it quite clear what recreational activities the authors of those sources considered most typical, and we have enough evidence to make a stab at reconstructing each one. The popular board game hnefatafl is a matter only of debate about the precise details of certain rules, which likely varied from one group of players to another anyhow, and other forms of tafl vary from it primarily in the precise size and original layout of the board. The popular sport of knattleikr, on the other hand, has far less detail available to us today from which to attempt to discern the rules. We're quite able to come up with conjectural answers, of course - but doing so rapidly becomes a perfect case study in the application (and, likely, misapplication) of outside notions of what the range of possibilities even looks like, for the details provided to us are scant.

Stoolball - the Ealdormere rules

Within the Society for Creative Anachronism (the reenactment group of which I am a part), the regional group which comprises the vast majority of Ontario has apparently revived Stoolball as a common part of their events. This is their reconstruction, which by necessity owes its rules to accounts of stoolball and other safe-haven games from well after the SCA's time period of study (which ends in 1600):

Early Safe Haven Games

"Tenessyng handball, fott ball, stoil ball, and all manner other games out churchyard." - John Myrc, ca. 1450.

The "Stoil ball" referenced in this instruction to prohibit it from being played in the churchyard is likely one of the earliest mentions of a safe-haven game, the family best known today for baseball and cricket. A mention of a game called "creag" in 1300 and a "bittle-battle" even earlier have also been suggested as possible examples of the family, but as all we know about them are their names, it's not reasonable to say so with any certainty. (There's a proposed etymological connection between "creag" and "cricket," but this is probably spurious - most sources give a Dutch origin for the latter term, while "creag" is almost certainly taken from a Celtic word meaning "fun.") "Stoil ball," however, is clearly a game played with a ball and a "bar" - probably a bat. Later descriptions of games with clearly related names are also definitely part of the safe-haven family, though one should be cautious in projecting those back to the 15th century as our first written account of how the game is played is from three hundred years later. There are, however, a few visual sources which push the safe haven games back into the 1200s, so the suggestion that "creag" could have been such a game is entirely reasonable, and identifying "stoil ball" as part of the family seems fairly well-founded.

Baseball originated in the United States, and was derived from a variety of safe-haven games that had been played in North America from the colonial period. These mostly had a large number of common features almost certainly owing to the shared similarities of what had been imported from England. Many of the common elements are also seen in cricket, the world's most popular safe-haven game today, and the history of the cricket branch of the family is far clearer, with the professional sport developing in the 1620s and the first written codification of cricket rules being published about a century thereafter. A 1744 version of the cricket rules would see widespread adoption, and is the ancestor of the modern game. However, the early references suggest that until the 1590s, cricket and other safe-haven games were not perceived as being suitable for adults - at least among the gentry. (There's some evidence of stoolball having been primarily played by adult women, especially milkmaids.) This likely contributed to the lack of written sources about its precise rules.

Despite the complete lack of written descriptions of the rules of any safe-haven game prior to the 18th century, reconstructions have been attempted. Generally, the approach seems to be to take the common aspects of safe-haven games generally, without any of the quirks of a specific early game; this ensures that the players are not introducing an ahistorical twist, but since most safe-haven games have some distinctive feature in the rules, it misses out on some of the variety the historical games afforded. It is, however, commonly suggested that prior to the start of play, representatives from the two teams should discuss what precise rules they are using, which is likely to be a historically authentic aspect of any game between players from different towns.