Early mentions and drawings of "ball"

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Posted By: Bruce Babcock

Congrats to Hal on winning REA LOT 661: 1787 A Little Pretty Pocket Book-First Book To Mention Baseball

I have a couple of later (mid-19th century) chap books, both acquired from Barry Sloate, which mention or depict games of ball. Sidney Babcock is not related, but is actually notorious for printing and distributing a family history and a coat of arms in 1844, which were both proven to be false by one of my relatives in 1903.

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Posted By: Josh K.

It seems the first book appears to describe the game of cricket rather than baseball. Still a very cool item.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Doing research of sports equipment I saw that the unique thing about basketball was that it didn't evolve from another sport, but was invented by one person at a point in time. An instructor at a YMCA was asked a YMCA director to come up with a game that could be played indoors during winner, so this instructor invented the game of basketball. The week before he invented it, basketball didn't exist.

The inventor of baskeball, James Naismith, asked the YMCA janitor to get a pair of boxes to nail to the gymnasium rafters. The janitor couldn't find boxes and came to Naismith with two baskets. Thus, the sport became basketball.