SPORTS: Nationalism and Internationalism--Soccer and Baseball
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has the story of baseball's
"invention" in America, as foisted on the public by a sports goods
manufacturer. For many years the rule book sold in the U.S. was from
England. When young, in Australia, I also played rounders; it is the same
as baseball. In fact the word `baseball' was an English import into
America.
Some time ago I read that there is a Russian game called lapta in
which a batter hits a ball and members of the team run around four
"stations." There is an entry in the Great Russian Encyclopaedia. This
seems to be generic baseball, too. If the game was known in Eastern
Europe, perhaps this was the source of rounders in England.
I am going to combine this conjecture with another input from New
York, where games known as one-cat and two-cat are played by kids in the
street when there are not enough kids or there is not enough space for the
full set of four bases. Your NY friends will confirm that in this case TWO
bases suffice.
I suggest therefore that cricket itself is a DEGENERATE FORM OF
BASEBALL!
In support of this original deduction I cite the histories of
cricket which refer vaguely to a boy defending a tree (the ur-wicket) with
a stick against a thrown ball. Not much detail. The idea that you are out
if a struck ball is caught is already present in another form of European
game in which the striker himself tosses a ball upward, hits it on the
way down, and tries to avoid being caught by the rest of the encircling mob.
For all I know the origins of baseball may go back to the Roman
legions, but I have not heard that it left descendants in the Roman
provinces. (The Romans did however introduce football, a brutal version of
which is preserved in Florence and engaged in annually under the name
calcio in costume.)
Therefore, I propose that further historical research concentrate on
another possibility: that the game arrived with the Mongols.
Ronald Hilton - 10/23/00
Ron Bracewell is the Walking Australian Encyclopedia. He writes:
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