Welcome to Protoball

Supporting Researchers and Writers on Baseball’s Origins.

Protoball.org

(User Feedback Welcomed)

Protoball welcomes input from current and potential site users on initiatives that might make protoball.org more responsive to their research interests.

In the past decade or so, due to major data contributions from several origins researchers, the site has expanded to include sourced accounts of over 1750 chronology entries, many thousands of early games of modern base ball, over 11,000 early clubs, a registry of nearly 300 different baserunning games, a few hundred key reference works on early ballplaying, etc. Dave Anderson, Protoball’s site wizard, has found innovative ways to search and display this somewhat unruly mound of basic data. (Try playing with favorite search terms at http://protoball.org/Special:EnhancedSearch.)

We’d appreciate your candid ideas about ways to make Protoball a better tool for baseball historian and writers. Please send your ideas and views of the site’s limitations to comments@protoball.org or to Lmccray<at>mit.edu.

• Bruce Allardice
• Ralph Carhart
• Jan Finkel
• Larry McCray
• Bob Tholkes

Current Resources On Protoball.org

The Protoball Chronology covers memorable mileposts in the evolution of ballgames from Ancient Times to 1870, just before the first professional baseball league began.

Our PrePro Baseball is a working database of over fourteen thousand clubs and games, mostly in the Origins Era (before 1871). Its interactive maps may help you visualize the spread of baseball over time. It is designed so that individual club pages can link to a club's games, players, and field locations. For an example, see the Knickerbocker Club here.

The Games Tabulation (version 2.0) is a record of over 1300 ballgames in various parts of the US from 1845 to 1860. It was compiled by the late Craig Waff᾿s careful and path-breaking research. More recently, Bob Tholkes has tabulated key data from over 5000 early games, mostly from the 1860s.

1859 Base Ball Players’ Pocket Companion

The Glossary of Games provides a short description of 296 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 revived Origins Newsletter and the discontinued Next Destin'd Post. Several 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.

On a whim, we have collected information on as many baserunning games as we can find on our Glossary of Games. About half of them preceded the rise of the modern "New York" game of base ball in the 1850s.

Articles

Here are 3 of our latest articles:

1. Number of Known BB Clubs in 40 Largest US Cities, 1870 3.0 - by Bruce Allardice in
2. The Early Sporting Press in New England 1.0 - by Donna Halper in
3. Base Ball on the Field, 1858-1865 - by Bruce Allardice in

Here are 3 randomly selected articles:

5. Search Terms - by Larry McCray in
6. NER Project Overview - by Larry McCray in
7. The Massachusetts Game - by Larry McCray in
8. Wicket Ball - by Larry McCray in
9. Research Bibliography for Early Base Ball - by Bill Lyons in
10. Emperics - by Larry McCray in
11. Length of Games, 1860-1865 1.0 - by Bob Tholkes in
12. Sons of Liberty - by Tom Gilbert in
13. Ballplaying by Civil War Soldiers 1.0 - by Bruce Allardice in
14. Very Early (pre-1857) Rules on Base Advancement After Caught Fly Balls - by Richard Hershberger in
15. Baseball Making Notes - by Corky Gaskell in
16. Ten-Position Base Ball - by Mark Brunke in
17. 1854 Unified Kinickerbocker-Eagle-Gotham Rules - by Bill Hicklin in
18. Feeder and Rounders, 1841 - by Bill Hicklin in
19. La balle empoisonnée - by Bill Hicklin in
20. Rules of the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players - by Bill Hicklin in
21. 1860 NABBP Rules - by Bill Hicklin in
22. The 20 Rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club - by Bill Hicklin in
23. Englische Base-ball - by Bill Hicklin in
24. Early Evidence on Base Stealing - by Richard Hershberger in
25. The Play-Testing of Early Base Ball Rule Modifications, version 1.0 - by Richard Hershberger in
26. Cricket and the Rise of Baseball - by Bruce Allardice in
27. Beachville Deconstruction (The New York Game Comes to Canada) - by Bill Humber in
28. Uniforms - by Larry McCray in
29. The Grounds - by Marty Payne in
30. Club Makeup - by Larry McCray in
31. Playing to Win - by Larry McCray in
32. Competing Pastimes - by Larry McCray in
33. The Beneficiaries - by Larry McCray in
34. The Big Tours - by Larry McCray in
35. Gambling's Role - by Larry McCray in
36. Media Effects - by Larry McCray in
37. Accounts - by Larry McCray in
38. Predecessor Pastimes - by Larry McCray in
39. Patterns of Spread - by Larry McCray in
40. Base Ball Fever - by Jeffrey Kittel in
41. The Spread of Early Base Ball in Illinois to 1870 - by Bruce Allardice in
42. Pitchers Covering First - by Richard Hershberger in
43. Judgment! - by Richard Hershberger in
44. Called Pitches - by Richard Hershberger in
45. The Backstop - by Richard Hershberger in
46. Protoball Search Aid - by Larry McCray in
47. Spirit Letters From X, 1857-8 - by Bob Tholkes in
48. Stoolball Today -- The Rejuvenation of an Ancient Pastime - by John and Kay Price in
49. 19CBB Highlights, August September 2013 - by Bob Tholkes in
50. For Fun and Health -- That's Why She Played - by Debbie Shattuck in
51. Bruce Allardice Find Stories, October 2013 - by Bruce Allardice in
52. Richard Hershberger Interview, October 2013 - by Protoball Functionary in
53. Internet Search Tips - by Bruce Allardice in
54. Sliding - by Richard Hershberger in
55. The Spread of Base Ball, 1859 - 1870 - by Bruce Allardice in
56. Interview with 2013 SABR-Origins Chair Bill Johnson - by Protoball Functionary in
57. Next Destin'd Post, August 2013 - by Larry McCray in
58. 1857 Rules - by Jeffrey Kittel in
59. Don't Forget the Girls - by Debbie Shattuck in
60. Performing Logic Searches on Protoball - by Dave Anderson in
61. 19CBB Digest, April-May 2013 - by Bob Tholkes in
62. The Next Destin'd Post, June 2013 - by Larry McCray in
63. Sam Marchiano and the 1755 Bray Diary Find - by Protoball Functionary in
64. Interview with Bill Ryczek - by Protoball Functionary in
65. 1845 Knickerbocker Rules - by Jeffrey Kittel in
66. Randall Brown's Find of the Wheaton Account -- Before the Knickerbockers - by Randall Brown in
67. Multi-word Searches on Protoball - by David Anderson in
68. 19CBB Digest, March 2013 - by Bob Tholkes in
69. New England Woman Observes Ball Play in Norfolk, Virginia in 1802 - by Tom Altherr in
70. Interview with Peter Morris - by Protoball Functionary in
71. Next Destin'd Post, April 2013 - by Larry McCray in
72. Irish Rounders (Burman's Report) - by Howard Burman in
73. New Englander Confronts Impious Sunday Ball-playing in Virginia - by Tom Altherr in
74. Linking Clubs to Ballgames - by Dave Anderson in
75. Dave's Tip No. 1 -- Using "Site Search" and "Enhanced Search" - by Dave Anderson in
76. Postings to 19CBB, Jan. - Feb. 2013 - by Bob Tholkes in
77. Tom Altherr Contemplates His Favorite Finds - by Tom Altherr in
78. An Interview with David Block - by Protoball Functionary in
79. A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball - by Tom Altherr in
80. The Next Destin'd Post, January 2013 - by Larry McCray in
81. The Story of George Thompson’s 1823 Find --- Base Ball in New York City - by George Thompson in
82. Bob Tholkes Condenses Key 19CBB Postings in December 2012 - by Bob Tholkes in
83. A New Find on Early Wicket and Old Fashioned Base Ball - by Tom Altherr in
84. The Story of George Thompson’s 1823 Find -- "Base Ball" in NYC! - by George Thompson in
85. "A Good Many Different Kinds of Ball" - by Tom Altherr in
86. The Spread of Base Ball in the Pacific Northwest - by Mark Brunke in
87. Interview with John Thorn, Official Historian of Major League Baseball - by Protoball Functionary in
88. What Was The Massachusetts Game, Anyway? - by Jeffrey Kittel in
89. What Was Rounders, Anyway? - by Larry McCray, Jeffrey Kittel in
90. Early Championships - by Larry McCray in
91. What Was Town Ball, Anyway? - by Larry McCray, Jeffrey Kittel in
92. Ballplaying in Civil War Camps - by Larry McCray in
93. The Evolution of the Baseball Up To 1872 - by Rob Loeffler in

A 2022 Update on Protoball's Holdings

1. The Protoball Chronology: Over 1900 entries, about one-half before 1845 and one-half from 1846-1871.This collection gathered data from the Origins Cttee's early "Spread of Base Ball" project, which SABR HQ putinto a website, one that was hosted by Project Retrosheet later on. This collection was seeded by an origins timeline compiled by John Thorn and Tom Heitz.

2. The PrePro data base of early clubs and early base ball games:

About 11,000 clubs and about 3800 games. Separately, we post about 5100 early games in Bob Tholkes' "RIM" collection of interclub games, about 5% of which precede 1857 and 95% were played 1858- 1865. Richard Hershberger provided his collection of hundreds of early clubs to this data base.

3. 19C Clippings: over 9000 news clippings collected by Richard Hershberger, 1700 of them from before 1870. Now open to new additions.

4.Block's research on English ballplaying.

Over 500 finds turned up in research on David's two fine books on early English play.

5. ProtoPix: [In Process] John Thorn has offered his collection of thousands of images of early base ball.

We will likely need volunteers to help curate this collection.

6. ProtoStats:

Seven studies that rest heavily on Protoball data. Bruce Allardice is, in effect, driving this new feature.

7. Original Analytics: about 35 papers by Protoball participants.

8. The Glossary of Games:

Accounts of over 150 games (mostly baserunning ballgames) reported before base ball was codified in NewYork and Brooklyn. The file includes another 150 "daughter" games that evolved from baseball. It needs a lot of work still.

9. Rule Sets: Over 40 sets of rules, including 12 NABBP updates,

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.

Features in Development

Please tell us if you see that new features could make the site more useful to you. Would a User Forum for site-user commentary make sense? Should we highlight "Most Wanted" data?

1867 Star Club tobacco card