Neal Ball items on Antique roadshow that belong to his great niece.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by z28jd

While I disagree with Ball having the first unassisted triple play after scouring through reports about Paul Hines and his triple play in 1878, that doesn't take away how cool these items are, and it's great that she shared them.

The Hines triple play was an interesting read John I don't remember ever reading about that before.

There are a few different versions of what exactly happened on the play but if the rules involved in the play were basically the same as todays rules which they seemed to be from the reports at that time it wasn't an unassisted triple play under any of the versions I read.

The people that claim it was an unassisted triple play put Sutton who was initially on second base past third base behind Manning who was on third base initially and was between third and home on the play. They claim that when Hines stepped on third he completed the unassisted triple play but that would be incorrect if the rules were the same as today's. Two players can't occupy the same base so you can't get two people out by simply stepping on a single base Hines would have had to tag Sutton for the unassisted triple play or step on second base but he threw the ball to Sweasy at second to complete the triple play.