Reference to Baseball in 1755
 

Patrick Preece sent this over to post for him.(Thanks Pat) It's an interesting piece from a diary. It's always neat to see things referencing baseball back in the 1700's. Here is the intro to it:

"William Bray was 18 years old when he wrote in his diary. Hs diary was found in a barn in a small town in England not too long ago. The original is in the small town's historical society museum. Attached is a typed copy of his entries with the baseball reference on Monday March 31, 1755."

As a collector of vintage baseball AND historical diaries, it doesn't get much better than this!

I'm suprised at the mention of actually playing "base ball". Most early mentions are of just playing "ball". No telling what version of ball this would be but still fascinating.

Probabaly just a British forgery though in an attempt to take away from our National Game!! :-)

Rob M.

This was mentioned in a really good program on the MLB network from 2008 or so. It may show up in a tivo listing, or be available online somewhere. The documentary was titled Baseball Discovered. It was particularly interesting as it compared and contrasted the early rules of base ball, cricket, rounders, and other ball games of British origin. I highly recommend it.

How can we tell how big the diary is without one of Leon's tuppences for reference ? :D

Wow, That is astonishing ! I never knew it was so cloudy back in the 1700's...

that is an awesome piece. Thanks Leon.

It appears the laser printers of 1755 were spot on.............just joking. Neat piece. Would be great to see the actual pages.........

Here's a link the mini site with some excerpts.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/mediacenter/baseball_discovered/

In the late 1700's North America was nearly 50 years from coming out of the Little Ice Age, temperatures were a few degrees lower than normal, doesn't sound like much but it changed the global climate for well over 300 years. The United States did not come out of this unitl the early 1830's. In 1816 the "year without a summer" occured, it snowed in June in many states. Largely this was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora, but the ice age was a huge factor of life and death in the 1700's.