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

About the Book

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.

 

Table of 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

About the Author :
David Block is a baseball historian and antiquarian. He is the author of Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original, and Now Completely Forgotten Game of English Baseball (Nebraska, 2019). Tim Wiles is the former director of research for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and a coauthor of Baseball’s Greatest Hit: The Story of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”John Thorn is the official historian of Major League Baseball and the author of Baseball in the Garden of Eden.
 

Review :
"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