Chronology:Baste Ball

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1863.139 Soildiers play "Baste ball" in Virginia

Tags:

Civil War

Age of Players:

Adult

The Richmond (IN) Palladium, May 8, 1863, prints a letter from a soldier in the 19th Indiana, datelined April 20 in camp near Belle Plaine, which says his regiment and the 7th Indiana "have many a game at baste-ball--that has been our chief amusement..."

Belle Plaine is near Fredericksburg, where Hooker's Army of the Potomac was camped. The game played might be a mis-spelling of "base ball." 

Sources:

The Richmond (IN) Palladium, May 8, 1863

Year
1863
Item
1863.139
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1874.2 Tennessee Visitor Lauds Local "Base-ball, Shinny, Baste Grounds"

Age of Players:

Unknown

 

"Chattanooga possesses some advantages that sister towns cannot boast of.  For base-ball, shinny, baste grounds and shanty buildings, she can not be surpassed."

(Attributed to a visiting editor of the Cleveland Banner.)

 

 

Sources:

Knoxville Press and Messenger, March 18, 1874, page 5 

Comment:

As of February 2017, data on early ballplaying in the Chattanooga area are sparse.  They include five accounts of soldierly play during the Civil War and brief mentions of area base ball clubs after the war

Protoball believes "shinny" to be a game resembling field hockey and ice hockey, and not a baserunning game.

Protoball has only two other reports of the game of "baste" in a Princeton student's diary in 1786 and in a biography of Benjamin Harrison on his teenage activities in the Cincinnati area.  A good guess is that baste was a variant spelling of "base," a base ball precursor.

The Cleveland Banner is a newspaper in Cleveland TN.

 

 

Year
1874
Item
1874.2
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