Welcome to Protoball

Supporting Researchers and Writers on Baseball’s Origins.

Current Resources

The Protoball Chronologies will cover the evolution of ballgames from Ancient Times to 1870, just before the first professional baseball league began. At present, data are entered through 1862.

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

1859 Base Ball Players’ Pocket Companion

The Glossary of Games provides a short 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 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 Next Destin'd Post. Some 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.

Articles

Here are 3 of our latest articles:

1. Protoball Interview With Richard Hershberger
2. Early Women's Baseball
3. Notes on the History and Evolution of Stoolball

Here are 3 randomly selected articles:

5. Origins Newsletter -- September 2021
6. Towards A Definition Of Baseball
7. Peanuts, But No Cracker Jack
8. "A Plague Is Upon Us"
9. Interview With Author Tom Gilbert
10. Number of Known BB Clubs in 40 Largest US Cities, 1870 5.0
11. Origins Newsletter -- May 2021
12. Playing "Ball" In Canada In 1803
13. Old Team Nicknames
14. When The Game Was Not The Thing
15. Rounders: A Game That "Gets No Respect"
16. McKinstry vs. Brooklyn Daily Times
17. The First Baseball Game In Mexico
18. Such Tumbles, Such Collisions
19. Rounders: Baseball's True Origin?
20. Origins Newsletter -- February 2021
21. Lost for 200 Years: John Thorn Detects Base Ball in New York in 1821
22. Number of Known BB Clubs in 40 Largest US Cities, 1870 3.0
23. Ethnicity in 19C Base Ball -- A General Introduction
24. The Early Sporting Press in New England 1.0
25. Base Ball on the Field, 1858-1865
26. Old old games
27. Search Terms
28. NER Project Overview
29. Emperics
30. Research Bibliography for Early Base Ball
31. Wicket Ball
32. The Massachusetts Game
33. Length of Games, 1860-1865 1.0
34. Sons of Liberty
35. Ballplaying by Civil War Soldiers 1.0
36. Very Early (pre-1857) Rules on Base Advancement After Caught Fly Balls
37. Baseball Making Notes
38. Ten-Position Base Ball
39. 1854 Unified Kinickerbocker-Eagle-Gotham Rules
40. Feeder and Rounders, 1841
41. La balle empoisonnée
42. Rules of the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players
43. 1860 NABBP Rules
44. The 20 Rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club
45. Englische Base-ball
46. Early Evidence on Base Stealing
47. The Play-Testing of Early Base Ball Rule Modifications, version 1.0
48. Cricket and the Rise of Baseball
49. Beachville Deconstruction (The New York Game Comes to Canada)
50. Uniforms
51. Club Makeup
52. Playing to Win
53. Competing Pastimes
54. The Beneficiaries
55. The Big Tours
56. Gambling's Role
57. Media Effects
58. Accounts
59. Predecessor Pastimes
60. Patterns of Spread
61. Base Ball Fever
62. The Grounds
63. The Spread of Early Base Ball in Illinois to 1870
64. The Backstop
65. Pitchers Covering First
66. Called Pitches
67. Judgment!
68. Protoball Search Aid
69. Spirit Letters From X, 1857-8
70. Stoolball Today -- The Rejuvenation of an Ancient Pastime
71. 19CBB Highlights, August September 2013
72. For Fun and Health -- That's Why She Played
73. Bruce Allardice Find Stories, October 2013
74. Richard Hershberger Interview, October 2013
75. Internet Search Tips
76. Sliding
77. The Spread of Base Ball, 1859 - 1870
78. Interview with 2013 SABR-Origins Chair Bill Johnson
79. Next Destin'd Post, August 2013
80. 1857 Rules
81. The Next Destin'd Post, June 2013
82. 19CBB Digest, April-May 2013
83. Performing Logic Searches on Protoball
84. Don't Forget the Girls
85. Sam Marchiano and the 1755 Bray Diary Find
86. Interview with Bill Ryczek
87. 1845 Knickerbocker Rules
88. Randall Brown's Find of the Wheaton Account -- Before the Knickerbockers
89. Multi-word Searches on Protoball
90. 19CBB Digest, March 2013
91. New England Woman Observes Ball Play in Norfolk, Virginia in 1802
92. Interview with Peter Morris
93. Next Destin'd Post, April 2013
94. New Englander Confronts Impious Sunday Ball-playing in Virginia
95. Irish Rounders (Burman's Report)
96. Linking Clubs to Ballgames
97. Dave's Tip No. 1 -- Using "Site Search" and "Enhanced Search"
98. Postings to 19CBB, Jan. - Feb. 2013
99. Tom Altherr Contemplates His Favorite Finds
100. An Interview with David Block
101. A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball
102. The Next Destin'd Post, January 2013
103. The Story of George Thompson’s 1823 Find --- Base Ball in New York City
104. Bob Tholkes Condenses Key 19CBB Postings in December 2012

Some Features in Development

Our planned "Pre-pro Baseball" feature will be a working database of clubs, games, fields, and players before 1871. We plan to include have interactive maps to help you visualize the spread of baseball over time.

We are now arranging to feature a data base on the Spread of Base Ball that will show when modern base ball came to hundreds of communities in North America and other countries across the globe.

We are evaluating a user Forum for site-user commentary, our listings of "Most Wanted" data, etc.

1867 Star Club tobacco card

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.