1st childrens book on "modern" baseball

[Archive]

Posted By: Jason Mishelow

Following Barry's lead here are some scans from the 1st (correct me if I am wrong) children's book on Modern Baseball. Published in 1864 The American Boy's Book shows
how quickly the games was becoming a major part of American Life.
The section on baseball is one of the longest sections in the book and one of the four color plates is devoted to an early game. Already baseball was "the game" for
America youth or at least the publisher's thought so. This is probably the book that taught the game to the pro's of the 1870's and 80's

* Note by modern baseball I want to make a distinction between this book and the variuous chapbboks that published simpler early rules of the baseball/rounders type games.






edited size

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

Jason- your 1864 book is the first in America to have a color plate of a baseball game, and is a favorite of mine. But the first American children's book to feature baseball was Robin Carver's 1834 The Book of Sports.

I should add that as you said the rules were more rudimentary in Carver, but they slowly evolved over time and I don't believe the 1864 rules represent any touchstone in baseball history. I realize though that they are more comprehensive than in Carver.

[Archive]

Posted By: Wesley

What is the significant of the 1744 A Little Pretty Pocket-Book? First mention of the game? I remember REA had a copy of this book for sale a few years ago.

[Archive]

Posted By: Jason Mishelow

The Little Pretty Pocket Book was the first time that the word baseball appeared in print. The book which is very, very rare was one of the first books to illistrate children's games. Each page of the book had an illistration of the game a "poem" about the game and a morality lesson (which was included so that the book would not be considered two frivolus). The page about baseball had an illistration with three boy's each standing by a stone post. one of the boy's appeared to be about to toss the ball to one of the boy's who looked as if he was about to swing at it with an open palm. The Poem that accompanied the text was "The Ball Once struck off, away flies the boy, to the next defined post, and then home with joy" So while important the book described a games called baseball but a game still very simple and without formal rules. It is not clear what other rules applied to this game of "baseball"

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

The 1744 edition is a British book, published by Thomas Newberry. It was republished in America by Isaiah Thomas, and it's the 1787 edition that is the only one that is ever found (and it's the next "destined" post).

[Archive]

Posted By: leon

Neat book...thanks for sharing........also I hope you don't mind that I edited the pic sizes.....regards

[Archive]

Posted By: Jimmy

I have sold many books with kids at play and titles with kids playing early games with balls and bats - but this is real neat and the illustrations are great and very early for information about baseball

Jimmy

[Archive]

Posted By: Max Weder

A Little Pretty Pocket Book is scanned and available on line.

Here is the Base-Ball page



The entire book starts at

http://tinyurl.com/3664jc


Max

[Archive]

Posted By: Bruce Babcock

I obtained both of these books from Barry. I would have to look up the years they were attributed to but Barry probably remembers.

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

1840-50 would be a reasonable range. They aren't dated so we have to guess.