Welcome to Protoball

Supporting Researchers and Writers on Baseball’s Origins.

Resources

The Protoball Chronologies cover the evolution of ballgames from Ancient Times to 1870, just before the first professional baseball league began.

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

Our Pre-pro Baseball section is a working database of clubs, games, fields, and players before 1871. We have interactive maps to help you visualize the spread of baseball over time.

1859 Base Ball Players’ Pocket Companion

The Glossary of Games provides a 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 will help you determine what their content is.

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

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

Contributions

We invite you to add your own research, insights, and queries to the Protoball site.

Register to add an early Ballgame, Club, or Field from your own town or region. Have your say in the Forum.

Many pages have a Comments section; we invite you to add yours.

1867 Star Club tobacco card

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.