Origins of Base Ball and the Vintage Game

Most historians agree that baseball has its origins in the English game of rounders. Alexander Cartwright and other early members of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club began the process of formalizing the rules of “base ball” in the late 1840s and early 1850s. The Knickerbockers modeled their club after the gentlemen’s clubs that had been organized in cricket. By the mid to late-1850s, the National Association of Base-Ball Players was formed. By 1860 the number of teams playing skyrocketed as teams formed in other cities like Philadelphia and Washington. After a brief lull during the Civil War, interest in the game of base ball was rekindled, and in 1869 Harry Wright’s Cincinnati Red Stockings fielded the first openly all-professional team.

As early as 1871 the soldiers of Fort Mackinac regularly played base ball with the encouragement of the post commandant. In 1885 Lieutenant Edward Pratt helped form the Fort Mackinac Base Ball Club, and through the late 1880s Corporal Robert “Tug” Wilson reported the results of games against teams from around northern Michigan in the Cheboygan Democrat.

In 1996, 13 vintage base ball teams assembled to form the Vintage Base Ball Association. The VBBA is now comprised of over 50 teams in 15 states in the United States and Canada. “Ballists” don period uniforms and recreate the game as it was played in the late 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s. Many clubs use the rules recorded in the first Beadle’s Dime Base Ball Player, published in 1860.