Welcome to Protoball

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Supporting Researchers and Writers on Baseball’s Origins.

Current Resources

The Protoball Chronologies will cover the evolution of ballgames from Ancient Times to 1870, just before the first professional baseball league began. At present, data are entered through 1862.

The Games Tabulation (version 1.0) is a record of over 1600 ballgames in various parts of the US from 1845 to 1860 compiled by the late Craig Waff᾿s extensive research.

Base Ball Players Pocket Companion.jpg 1859 Base Ball Players’ Pocket Companion

The Glossary of Games provides a short description of 329 baseball-like games. The Glossary includes baseball's likely predecessor games and later games that derive from baseball.

The Bibliography is a list of publications you can use to explore the origins of ball games and baseball in depth. Some of these publications are available online. For sources that are in Protoball's Buzz McCray Collection, we can, via email and phone, help you determine what their content is.

A listing of fellow origins enthusiasts and contributors can be found in our Diggers section. You can read news about them and their work in the Next Destin'd Post. Some Diggers have contributed informal Essays relating to baseball's origins.

We offer an Enhanced Search for complex full-text searches on much of the information on the site. You can save your searches, pick out important articles, and share them with other researchers.

Articles

Here are 3 of our latest articles:

  1. Protoball Interview With Richard Hershberger
  2. Early Women's Baseball
  3. Notes on the History and Evolution of Stoolball

Here are 3 randomly selected articles:

  1. Origins Newsletter -- September 2021
  2. Towards A Definition Of Baseball
  3. Peanuts, But No Cracker Jack
  4. "A Plague Is Upon Us"
  5. Interview With Author Tom Gilbert
  6. Number of Known BB Clubs in 40 Largest US Cities, 1870 5.0
  7. Origins Newsletter -- May 2021
  8. Playing "Ball" In Canada In 1803
  9. Old Team Nicknames
  10. When The Game Was Not The Thing
  11. Rounders: A Game That "Gets No Respect"
  12. McKinstry vs. Brooklyn Daily Times
  13. The First Baseball Game In Mexico
  14. Such Tumbles, Such Collisions
  15. Rounders: Baseball's True Origin?
  16. Origins Newsletter -- February 2021
  17. Lost for 200 Years: John Thorn Detects Base Ball in New York in 1821
  18. Number of Known BB Clubs in 40 Largest US Cities, 1870 3.0
  19. Ethnicity in 19C Base Ball -- A General Introduction
  20. The Early Sporting Press in New England 1.0
  21. Base Ball on the Field, 1858-1865
  22. Old old games
  23. Search Terms
  24. NER Project Overview
  25. Emperics
  26. Research Bibliography for Early Base Ball
  27. Wicket Ball
  28. The Massachusetts Game
  29. Length of Games, 1860-1865 1.0
  30. Sons of Liberty
  31. Ballplaying by Civil War Soldiers 1.0
  32. Very Early (pre-1857) Rules on Base Advancement After Caught Fly Balls
  33. Baseball Making Notes
  34. Ten-Position Base Ball
  35. 1854 Unified Kinickerbocker-Eagle-Gotham Rules
  36. Feeder and Rounders, 1841
  37. La balle empoisonnée
  38. Rules of the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players
  39. 1860 NABBP Rules
  40. The 20 Rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club
  41. Englische Base-ball
  42. Early Evidence on Base Stealing
  43. The Play-Testing of Early Base Ball Rule Modifications, version 1.0
  44. Cricket and the Rise of Baseball
  45. Beachville Deconstruction (The New York Game Comes to Canada)
  46. Uniforms
  47. Club Makeup
  48. Playing to Win
  49. Competing Pastimes
  50. The Beneficiaries
  51. The Big Tours
  52. Gambling's Role
  53. Media Effects
  54. Accounts
  55. Predecessor Pastimes
  56. Patterns of Spread
  57. Base Ball Fever
  58. The Grounds
  59. The Spread of Early Base Ball in Illinois to 1870
  60. The Backstop
  61. Pitchers Covering First
  62. Called Pitches
  63. Judgment!
  64. Protoball Search Aid
  65. Spirit Letters From X, 1857-8
  66. Stoolball Today -- The Rejuvenation of an Ancient Pastime
  67. 19CBB Highlights, August September 2013
  68. For Fun and Health -- That's Why She Played
  69. Bruce Allardice Find Stories, October 2013
  70. Richard Hershberger Interview, October 2013
  71. Internet Search Tips
  72. Sliding
  73. The Spread of Base Ball, 1859 - 1870
  74. Interview with 2013 SABR-Origins Chair Bill Johnson
  75. Next Destin'd Post, August 2013
  76. 1857 Rules
  77. The Next Destin'd Post, June 2013
  78. 19CBB Digest, April-May 2013
  79. Performing Logic Searches on Protoball
  80. Don't Forget the Girls
  81. Sam Marchiano and the 1755 Bray Diary Find
  82. Interview with Bill Ryczek
  83. 1845 Knickerbocker Rules
  84. Randall Brown's Find of the Wheaton Account -- Before the Knickerbockers
  85. Multi-word Searches on Protoball
  86. 19CBB Digest, March 2013
  87. New England Woman Observes Ball Play in Norfolk, Virginia in 1802
  88. Interview with Peter Morris
  89. Next Destin'd Post, April 2013
  90. New Englander Confronts Impious Sunday Ball-playing in Virginia
  91. Irish Rounders (Burman's Report)
  92. Linking Clubs to Ballgames
  93. Dave's Tip No. 1 -- Using "Site Search" and "Enhanced Search"
  94. Postings to 19CBB, Jan. - Feb. 2013
  95. Tom Altherr Contemplates His Favorite Finds
  96. An Interview with David Block
  97. A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball
  98. The Next Destin'd Post, January 2013
  99. The Story of George Thompson’s 1823 Find --- Base Ball in New York City
  100. Bob Tholkes Condenses Key 19CBB Postings in December 2012

Some Features in Development

Our planned "Pre-pro Baseball" feature will be a working database of clubs, games, fields, and players before 1871. We plan to include have interactive maps to help you visualize the spread of baseball over time.

We are now arranging to feature a data base on the Spread of Base Ball that will show when modern base ball came to hundreds of communities in North America and other countries across the globe.

We are evaluating a user Forum for site-user commentary, our listings of "Most Wanted" data, etc.

Star club.png
1867 Star Club tobacco card

Conditions of Use

Users are encouraged to freely use information on this web site. When that information is found to be useful in drafting published work, we ask that they acknowledge the Protoball Project in their writing, and supply the site's URL -- http://protoball.org -- when possible, in their citations.

Further Information

For more information about the evolution of Protoball Project, its policies, and resources, see our About page.

Contact Larry McCray of the Protoball Project at with any questions or contributions.