Rule Sets
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| Official Rule Sets
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| Early New York Club Rules
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| 1845 Knickerbocker Rules
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| 1848 Knickerbocker Rules
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| 1852 Eagle Rules
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| 1854 Unified Knickerbocker-Eagle-Gotham Rules
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| 1856 Putnam Rules
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| 1857 Convention Rules
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| National Association of Base Ball Players Rules
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| 1858 NABBP Rules
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| 1859 NABBP Rules
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| 1860 NABBP Rules
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| 1861 NABBP Rules
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| 1863 NABBP Rules
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| 1865 NABBP Rules
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| 1866 NABBP Rules
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| 1867 NABBP Rules
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| 1868 NABBP Rules
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| 1869 NABBP Rules
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| 1870 NABBP Rules
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| Chadwick's Summary of Rules Changes, 1871
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| Massachusetts Rules
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| 1858 Dedham Rules
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| 1863 New Marlboro Rules
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| Published Descriptive Rule Sets
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| Gutsmuths' Englische Base-ball 1796
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| La balle empoisonnée (Poisoned Ball) 1815
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| Rounders 1828
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| Base, or Goal-ball 1834
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| Base Ball 1835
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| Feeder and Rounders, 1841
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| Rounders ca. 1860
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| Informal descriptions
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| Base Ball, upstate New York (1820s)
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| Town Ball, Georgia (1830s)
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| Gotham Club Rules (1837)
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| Baseball, Ontario (1838)
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| Round Ball, Massachusetts (1840s)
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| “A Game of Ball”, Massachusetts (1853)
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| Townball, Cincinnati (1860s)
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| Round Town, Virginia (1890s)
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| Related games
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| Cricket
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| The Laws of Cricket (1774)
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| Longball
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| Gutsmuths' Deutsche Ballspiel
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| German Schlagball
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| Polish Palant (Pilka Palantowa)
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| Danish Longball (Langbold)
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| Russian Lapta
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| Roundball
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| Swedish Brännboll (Burn-ball)
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| German Brennball (Burn-ball)
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| Norwegian Dødball (Dead-ball)
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| Finnish Pesäpallo
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| Irish Rounders
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| British Baseball
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| Add a Rule Set
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The Knickerbockers first published their Rules in 1848 (By-laws and Rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. New York: W. H. B. Smith Book and Fancy Job Printer) They were very largely unchanged from 1845, but with one signal difference, reported by Peverelly:
- “The rule was adopted, that the player running to the first base was out, if the ball was held by an adversary on that base before the runner reached it. The previous rule applied to all the bases.”
Under the original 1845 rules, an out occurred if the ball was thrown to any base a runner was attempting to reach, whether he was “forced” by a runner behind him or not; now the automatic out only applied at first, as it does today. The modern force-out at other bases still lay in the future (cf. Rule 8 of the 1854 Unified Rules).
Oddly, the 1848 edition omitted the language “it being understood, however, that in no instance is a ball to be thrown at him.”
