About the Pre-Pro Data Base

Protoball's "Pre-Pro" data base serves as a reservoir for information on games, clubs, and other information on the evolution of base ball, most of it prior to the first professional league formed in 1871. This data base originated in a suggestion from Craig B. Waff that he systematically scour archived sources to compile a Games Tabulation prior to the Civil War. Craig ultimately listed nearly 1700 early games, drawn from more than 3300 published accounts, in version 1.0 of the "Games Tab." The portal for this initial version, uploaded in 2008, is at http://protoball.org/The_Craig_B._Waff_Games_Tabulation.

SABR's Origins Committee launched is Spread of Base Ball project shortly thereafter. The idea was to record, in one place, data on the earliest known base ball games, and clubs, across the United States and around the world. When SABR later decided not to continue to support the SABRpedia, where these data were posted, the data on early games and clubs was transferred to Protoball.org.

A primary mover in creating the Pre-Pro data base has been Bruce Allardice, who has single-handedly contributed over 2500 new entries to the data base. Richard Hershberger is another major contributor; he has tabulated over early clubs and shared them with Protoball.