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Evening Star · Washington, D.C. · 1908

Outgrowth of the Game of Town Ball

Tall newspaper column headed Outgrowth of the Game of Town Ball, with the deck A. G. Spalding Tells of His Research Into the Origin of the National Game, in which Spalding traces base ball from the colonial games of One Old Cat, Two Old Cat, Three Old Cat and Four Old Cat through town ball, quotes pioneer H. H. Waldo of Rockford on town meetings, gingerbread and cider, describes the square town ball field with goals sixty feet apart, tallies kept by notching a flat stick, and follows the Massachusetts game of base ball until it died a natural death and the New York game became the only game of base ball played anywhere in the world.
Source
Evening Star, 1908. View the original

1908: A. G. Spalding explains where base ball came from, starting with three boys and a game called One Old Cat. Also on the origin story: gingerbread, cider and too much national pride to ever admit to rounders.

Before the diamond there was a square, and before base ball there was a cat. Several cats.

A. G. Spalding, the sporting goods man whose dime library would eventually teach the whole country how to play, here explains where the game itself came from. “My rather exhaustive research and study of the subject leads me to the conclusion that base ball derived its origin from the old colonial game of ‘One Old Cat,’ which was played by three boys.” Two Old Cat took four boys, Three Old Cat six, Four Old Cat eight, and when the boys ran out the game simply grew a new size.

Then somebody put a thrower in the middle of the Four Old Cat square, divided the players into sides, and produced town ball, “which was played in this country for many years before base ball appeared.” Mr. H. H. Waldo of Rockford, Illinois remembered it from 1846: “The number of players on a side was unlimited, and it was the custom of the losing side to buy the gingerbread and cider.”

The field was a square, not a diamond, goals sixty feet apart. A circuit of the four goals counted one tally, and “the designated number of such tallies varied from 21 to 100. The score was kept by making a notch on each side of a flat stick.”

On the subject of rounders, Spalding is firm: “I never heard of rounders. We had too much national pride in those days to adopt anything that was English in our sporting life.”

The scorekeeping stick is gone and so is the gingerbread clause, which is a shame. Some traditions deserved to make the trip.

PlaceWashington, D.C.
Year1908
NewspaperEvening Star
Posted
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