Full Description
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.
Contents
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
