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G
<p>Another name for early base ball, perhaps confined to certain areas. Usage of the name is known in New England. As of June 2012, the Protoball Chronology lists 10 references to the game of Goal Ball or Goal, or games in which bases are term "goals." All refer to play in the six New England states, and all but two are found before 1850. A new reference to the game "gould" in 2020 may denote the same game (see [[1854.23]]).</p>
<p>On 11/3/2020 Brian Turner added the following clarification: "<span>As best I can tell based on examples I've put together for an article I'm doing for <em>Base Ball</em>, "gould" (AKA "gool") are regional pronunciations of "goal." The region in which those terms occur includes western Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, mostly in rural communities where (I surmise) old-time game names may have survived into the 19th century. Peter Morris has identified two instances associated with Norway, Maine, where "gool" is used as synonymous with "base" as late as the 1860s, but when one of those the incidents was recalled in the 1870s, it's clear that the use struck the lads of Bowdoin attending the game as risible. The use of "goal" for "base" is consistent with Robin Carver's 1834 inclusion of the term in </span><em>The Book of Sports</em><span>. One must be cautious about anointing every use of "goal" or "gool" or goold" as synonymous with base and therefore "base ball," since, like base by itself, goal can be used to describe other sorts of games. By itself, "base" can refer to Prisoner's Base, a running game that seems to resemble a team form of tag. So too "goal" by itself."</span></p>
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<p>per Wieand. This is a game with pitching and batting but no running. A caught fly ball results in an out, and the batter then goes to the outfield, or grutz, to begin his rotation back to the batting position. If a ball is not caught, the fielder tries to return it to home through an arch made by the batter.</p> +
<p>An apparent non-running relative of tip-cat. A batter hits a gulli (a six-inch cat) with a danda, and is out if a fielder catches it. If it falls to the ground, a fielder throws it back, trying to hit the danda, which is laid on the ground. It is not clear if this is a team game, or if the gulli is pitched on simply fungoed. There is no running. The geographical range of its play is unclear.</p> +
H
<p>Thomason (1975) recalls Half-Rubber as a 1930s school recess game involving a sponge-rubber ball sliced cleanly in half and a sawed-off broomstick as a bat. Thrown side-arm, the ball had good movement, and was difficult to field. There was no running, but outs and innings were recorded and (virtual) base advancement depending on the lengths that the ball was batted.</p>
<p>(A 1997 newspaper article recalls a similar game recalled as Half-Ball being played in the Philadelphia area.)</p>
<p>This game emerged in about 1910 in the SC/GA area of the south, and retained strong popularity into the 1970s.</p> +
<p>per McLean. McLean notes that hand-in and hand-out was among the games banned by King Edward IV in 1477. She identifies it as “probably a kind of trick catch.” The 1477 ban spelled the game name as “handyn and handout.”</p> +
<p>A form of Roly Poly (or Roley Poley or Roll Ball) that substitutes hats for holes in the ground. Newell says this game was played among the Pennsylvania Dutch.Brewster says that Hat Ball variants are known in many countries, and include Petjeball [Dutch] and Kappenspiel [German].</p> +
<p>A fungo game in which a ball is hit to a group of fielders. If one of them can roll the ball back and hit the bat so that the ball hits the ground before the batter can catch the ricochet, the two exchange places.</p>
<p>Baserunning and pitching are not part of this fungo game.</p>
<p>[As recalled in Central New York in the 1950s]</p> +
<p>per Culin. A team game resembling Kick the Ball, but using a simple catapult to put into play a 3-inch stick instead of a ball. Fly outs retire the batsman. The bases are the four street-corners at an intersection.</p> +
<p>Our single reference to this game comes from an 1847 Alabama newspaper in its attempt to describe curling to southern readers: “Did you ever play ‘bass ball,’ or ‘goal,’ or ‘hook-em-snivy,’ on the ice?” Its nature is unknown. “Hookum-snivy” is slang for adultery, not that it matters.</p> +
<p>Only known from Francis Willughby’s 17th century <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Book of Games</span>, hornebillets is played with a cat (fashioned from animal horn), which is thrown toward holes defended by players with dog-sticks. When they hit the cat, batters run to the next hole, placing the stick in the hole before the cat can be retrieved and be put into the hole. The number of holes depends on the number of players on each team.</p> +
<p>per Jamieson (1825.) Two teams of two boys, defend their holes with a sticks, described as like a walking sticks, against a cat (“a piece of stick, and frequently a sheep’s horn”) thrown “at some distance” by their opposite numbers.</p> +
<p>Scotland - per MacLagan. The Scots name for the ordinary English game of Rounders. Pitched balls are struck by hand.</p> +
<p>Confected in 2009 at an unidentified school in Howland, Ohio, this game (“usually played from May to September”) melds baseball and rounders. Teams of six players populate an area with an infield in the form of an isosceles triangle [two sides are 83 feet long, and the base is 62 feet long, with home set at the angle at the right side of the base, and foul lines extending from home through the two running posts]. The counterparts to balls and strikes are influenced by whether a pitch lands in a net to the rear of the home square. Apparently, a batter cannot stay at a base, but must try to complete a round before the fielders can return the ball to the net. A local league is reported to play the game.</p> +
I
<p>Per Brewster, 1953: A down-sized, non-running baseball variant. Two teams of five players form. A regular softball is pitched underhand to the batter. Outs are recorded for caught fly balls and ground balls cleanly fielded inside the baselines. Unlimited swings are permitted. Three-out-side-out innings and five-inning games are prescribed. The playing field is represented in a figure showing a fair ground of less than 45 degrees.</p>
<p>See also the text of "Teach Your Kids to Play Indian Ball!," below. The variant of the non-running game Indian Ball described in this 2013 article entails pitching by a member of the batting team, strikes called on all balls that are not hit fair (including pitches not swung at), outs on short fair hits, home runs for suitably long fair hits, employment of a baseball or tennis ball, and ghost runners. The author, at playcorkball.com, stresses that players can play this game without adult supervision.</p>
<p>An account of Indian Ball as played in St. Louis in 2008 is found at <a href="http://www.stlmag.com/St-Louis-Magazine/July-2008/What-the-Is-Indian-Ball/">http://www.stlmag.com/St-Louis-Magazine/July-2008/What-the-Is-Indian-Ball/</a>. </p>
<p>The O'Leary article below has the "rules" of the game, and a diagram. The field is triangular, and the game is said to be a variant of stickball when you have less than 18 players, and with as few as three.</p>
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<p>Evolving from an 1887 innovation in Chicago involving a broomstick as a bat and a boxing glove as the ball, indoor baseball is described in a 1929 survey as particularly popular in gymnasiums in the US mid-west in the early 20th century. The game of softball traces back to indoor play.</p>
<p>Origins -- On Thanksgiving Day at te Farragut Club in Chicgo in 1887, a participant recalled, "[T]he fellows were throwing an ordinary boxing glove around the room, which was struck at by one of the boys with a broom. George W. Hancock suddenly called out, 'Bpys, let's play baseball!'" Hancock was later known as the Father of Indoor Baseball.</p>
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<p>A name for Scrub used in Philadelphia in the 1930s and possibly before/after that.</p> +
<p>A communication received from Peadar O Tuatain describes what is known of the ancient game of Irish Rounders. Details of the old game are apparently lost to history, but some rules encoded in 1932 were used for a revival in 1956, and the revival version, which resembles baseball much more than it does English rounders, is still being played. It employs a hurling ball and a game comprises five three-out innings. The game is played without gloves and, perhaps unique among safe-haven games, batted balls caught in the air are not outs.</p> +
J
<p>Lowth (1855) describes Jellal, encountered among the people of Upper Eqypt, as resembling “in some of its parts our old game of Rounders” as he knew it in England. There was hitting and “getting home,” but a difference that he noted was that one boy hit the ball and another ran.</p> +
K
<p>According to Brewster, Kappenspiel is the German word for Hat Ball.</p> +