Batting, Running, and ‘Burning’ in Early Modern Europe: a Contribution to the Debate on the Roots of Baseball

Home , Baseball in Germany, History of sport, Origins of baseball, Rounders, Schlagball

The International Journal of the History of Sport

ISSN: 0952-3367 (Print) 1743-9035 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fhsp20

Batting, Running, and ‘Burning’ in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the Debate on the Roots of Baseball

Isak Lidström & Daniel Bjärsholm

To cite this article: Isak Lidström & Daniel Bjärsholm (2019) Batting, Running, and ‘Burning’ in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the Debate on the Roots of Baseball, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 36:17-18, 1612-1624, DOI: 10.1080/09523367.2020.1714597 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2020.1714597

Published online: 05 Feb 2020.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 438

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fhsp20 THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 2019, VOL. 36, NOS. 17–18, 1612–1624 https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2020.1714597

Batting, Running, and ‘Burning’ in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the Debate on the Roots of Baseball

Isak Lidstrom€ a and Daniel Bj€arsholma,b aDepartment of Sport Science, Malmo€ University, Malmo,€ Sweden; bDepartment of Sport Science, Linnaeus University, V€axj€o, Sweden

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS A common topic of discussion among baseball historians is the Baseball history; bat-and- question whether baseball is the ancestor of rounders or not. In ball games; history of ball order to shed new light on this debate, historians need to expand games; baserunning games; rounders the limited knowledge about the old bat-and-ball games of Continental Europe in order to develop a more cogent consideration of the origins of baseball. Traditional European bat-and-ball games, known by names such as ‘longball’, schlagball, meta, palant or lapta, have been overlooked in previous studies on the roots of baseball. Bycomparingvariantsofthisgameandbaseball,asdescribedby Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths in the late eighteenth century, resemblances and connections between English bat-and-ball games and counterparts in Continental Europe are highlighted.

‘It is a popular belief that modern sports and games originated in England’,sports historian Heiner Gillmeister once stated.1 An illustrative example of this statement is found when studying the historiography of pre-modern baseball. In the late 1930s, Robert W. Henderson refuted with source-critical precision the myth that Abner Doubleday had invented baseball in the USA a decade earlier. Instead, Henderson argued that the national pastime of America derived from the English game of rounders.2 In 2005, the history was rewritten once again when David Block published his comprehensive masterpiece Baseball before We Knew It. With additional empirical evidence, Block’s conclusion was a modification of Henderson’s claim: Baseball did not derive from rounders, but the origin of rounders was baseball!3 As a synthesis of the long-standing discussion, Richard Hershberger stated in 2009 that attempts to place the games in a chronological order are misleading, as pre-modern baseball and pre-modern rounders of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, were nothing more than two different labels for one uncodified game with locally varied rules.4 The discussion of whether rounders preceded baseball or not has been much debated. However, very little attention has been paid to the old games that flourished outside the British Isles that share some features with baseball and rounders.5 There

CONTACT Isak Lidstrom€ [email protected] Department of Sport Science, Malmo€ University, Malmo€ 205 06, Sweden ß 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 1613 has been a tendency for previous research to focus unilaterally on old English games in the search for the predecessors of baseball. Two of these games are Tut-ball and Stool-ball. With their ancient roots in England, they are, according to David Block, the most prominent games from which baseball has evolved.6 That baseball has its origin in England is a common scholarly assertion. Considering the insular location of the British Isles, the game has been able to develop and adopt new forms in isolation, relatively free from external European influences. However, a European outlook on other bat-and-ball games of the early modern period complicates the picture of how the earliest versions of baseball evolved. Europeans during this period played a specific bat-and-ball game under a multitude of names, such as schlagball, meta, palant or lapta. In the Scandinavian countries it has been called ‘longball’ (Danish: langbold;Swedish:långboll). Since there is no uniform name of the game, it is hereafter called ‘the two-base bat-and-ball game’, which summarizes the main characteristics of the pastime. By comparing old versions of this game with pre- modern baseball, a couple of similarities between the games emerge, indicating that they are closely related to each other. This relationship illuminates how baseball’s roots stretch beyond North America and the British Isles as well. Most of the empirical data originates from the Scandinavian countries, Sweden in particular. This data offers new perspectives on findings of previous international historical studies on bat-and-ball games that have sought to unravel the mysteries surrounding the origins of baseball.7 The Swedish version of the two-base bat-and-ball game långboll is today almost extinct, but in the late nineteenth century it was probably the best-known game involving bat and ball.8 Although there were many variants, the game usually started with dividing the participants into two teams. Thereafter, an interesting ritual was performed in order to determine which team should start batting. First, one of the team captains threw the bat to the other team captain, who caught it with one hand. After that, the two captains alternately placed their hand above the opponent’s until the top of the bat was reached. If those who reached the top of the bat managed to swing it around their head three times without losing it, the competition was over and their team started at the batting position.9 The following description summarizes the elementary rules of the two-base bat-and- ball game, as it has been played historically: The playing field had the shape of a rectangle, approximately 30–50 m long, in which the short sides marked the borders that distinguished two bases – the home base and the running base – from the fielding area. Two teams positioned themselves at the bases, the batting team at the home base and the fielding team at the running base. The aim of the fielding team was to win the position of the batting team, while the aim of the batting team was to defend its position at the home base. The game started when a pitcher of the fielding team, standing in the home base, tossed the ball to a batter of the batting team who, after a successful hit, started running from the home base to the running base. If someone from the fielding team managed to catch the ball before it touched the ground, the teams switched bases. At both bases, the batters and their team members were considered safe, but as soon as they ran on the field between the two bases, they risked being tagged or ‘burned’, which happened when they were hit by the ball thrown by any member of the fielding team. As soon as this happened, the teams switched sides.10 1614 I. LIDSTRÖM AND D. BJÄRSHOLM

These are the general rules of lapta, schlagball, palant, longball or any other variant of the two-base bat-and-ball game.11 In general, the characteristic feature is a struggle for the position as batting team. Additionally, the names of the teams often symbolized a social hierarchy, as in Estonia, where the team at the batting position was called ‘the lords’, who tried to defend the town (the home base) from the peasants (the fielding team).12 In Germany, likewise, the two teams were called, according to Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths, ‘the rulers’ and ‘the servants’.13 Although the game spread throughout large parts of Europe, people had a very limited knowledge of its spread outside their own country. Several countries or regions of Europe have claimed to be its birthplace. Viktor Balck, a pioneer of the Swedish sports movement, argued in 1885 that longball was to be considered a ‘Scandinavian ball game’.14 Even the ethnologist Johan Gotlind,€ one of the most eminent Swedish scholars of traditional games and sports, considered longball as the ‘premier and most widespread of the old ball games of the Nordic countries’.15 Long before, in the late eighteenth century, GutsMuths, the pedagogue, presented a comprehensive description under the heading ‘The German ball game’.16 The German variant has subsequently been played under the name of schlagball. In Russia, the two-base bat-and-ball game is known by the name of lapta and is considered to be very old. It is said to have been very popular as early as the reign of Peter the Great (1672–1725).17 It is also worth noting that the strong connection between bat-and-ball games and national identity became apparent in the 1950s when an emotional discussion arose after it had been claimed that baseball derived from Russian lapta, a statement which, probably and not surprisingly, was rejected from an American point of view. However, this indicates that even the history of ball games could affect the already frozen relationships between East and West during the Cold War.18

Nordic Bat-and-Ball Games in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries In the Nordic countries, the history of games with bat and ball stretches back to ancient times. Knattleikr, which was played during the Viking Age, is the most prominent example. Although it occurs several times in the Icelandic saga literature, little is known about its rules. Nevertheless, it is clear that the participants used a stick, which seems to have been employed both for hitting and catching the ball. The latter has caused a long-standing discussion of whether there might be a connection between knattleikr and lacrosse as a result of a cultural exchange between Vikings and native Americans.19 Despite the similarities regarding a ball and a wooden stick, knattleikr has long since been extinct and should not be considered as a precursor of longball. Although the name longball (långboll) was not established in Sweden until the second half of the nineteenth century, the game had been played long before. Some of its most prominent variants were s€alta (a traditional Swedish word that simply means ‘bat’20),s€ot och sur (‘sweet and sour’) and tre slag och r€anna (‘three strikes and run’).21 In Denmark, the word langbold appears as early as in an eighteenth-century dictionary describing it as ‘a game played with ball, in which the ball is to be hit high and far, and caught by the one to whom it was thrown’.22 This short description THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 1615 corresponds to an account from Lapponia (The history of Lapland), written by John Scheffer and published in 1673. The book is a comprehensive description of the Sami – an indigenous population residing in an area that stretches across the borders of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia – and provides a beautiful note on how a group of Sami of northern Sweden, both men and women, used to play with bat and ball: Some games are common to men and women, such as one with the ball which is big as a fist, made of leather, and stuffed with hay. The men and women, who have gathered together, divide into two sides. One side takes this place, the other another place opposite to and at some distance from the first place. Then, each member of the first side in turn hits the ball with a club into the air as hard as he can. When it falls, those on the other side try to catch it. If anyone catches it in his hand before it touches the earth, the game changes and his side hits the ball. The other side must catch it. In this manner, men and women, as well as boys and girls, play together, and the men are little [if at all] superior to the women.23 As illustrated in the quotation, the description includes one of the basic features of the two-base bat-and-ball game, namely the division of the players into two teams of which one team tries to catch the ball struck into the air with a club by the other team. However, the game seems fairly simple, with no base running included. Moreover, certain information has unfortunately been omitted, such as whether it is the batters themselves who throw the ball before striking it, or whether this is done by a pitcher representing the fielding team. Worth noting is that the game is very similar to what Hippolytus Guarinoni (born in 1571) witnessed in Bohemia.24 Another similar, although briefer, description of a Sami ball game is found in an account written by Giuseppe Acerbi, who travelled through Sweden and Finland to North Cape in Norway in 1798 and 1799. Acerbi writes as follows: ‘Besides this diversion, they have another with a leathern ball stuffed hard, which is struck in the air, and caught before it falls to the ground’.25 A better-informed note on how the Sami in northern Norway played with bat and ball is provided by Knud Leem in A Description of the Sami People in Finnmark, published in 1767: They amuse themselves with a ball game of this sort: part of them take a position here, part of them a position there, facing the others. Then someone of either side throws the ball, which is covered with hide and stuffed with hair, straw, rags, or the like. His neighbour hits it into the air with a stick. When this has happened, someone of the bunch facing them jumps up, seeking to catch it before it falls to the ground. In the same moment, he who has hit the ball aloft [therefore, the striker] runs into the field of his opponent in order to occupy the place of the latter, who has run from his position in order to catch the ball. If the receiver can catch the ball and can tag the one who wants to occupy his [the receiver’s] place before the striker can reach this place, then he [the receiver] has won. Places are then exchanged.26 Since this depiction involves base-running, it describes a more sophisticated game than those of the previous examples. The practice meets all the main features of the two-based bat-and-ball game. With the ‘position here’ and the ‘position there’ Leem seems to refer to the home base and the running base. Although he also describes a pitching procedure, it is not clear whether the pitcher, or the ‘neighbour’, as termed 1616 I. LIDSTRÖM AND D. BJÄRSHOLM by Leem, represents the batting or the fielding team. Thereafter, a detailed description is provided on how a member from the fielding team tries to catch the ball with the aim of tagging the batter doing the base-running. If the batter is tagged, the positions of the teams change.27 In an account from 1775, Carl R. Berch describes how he witnessed a group of boys playing a game with bat and ball when walking on the island of Djurgården in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. Apparently, this was not a new practice, since Berch recounts how in the ‘old times’, during springtime, it was common among students and youngsters to ‘stand with the bat in hand, to hit the ball, and to run’ [stå med saltran€ i handen, slå sina slag, och r€anna].28 Although the description is too brief to draw any certain conclusions, the words saltra€ and ‘slag och r€anna’ seem to refer to an old version of the Swedish two-base bat-and-ball-game called tre slag och ranna€ .

Meta – A Transnational Word within Pre-Modern Bat-and-Ball Games When the mid-eighteenth-century Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus mentioned the two-base bat-and-ball game, he called it ‘playing meta, catching the ball struck by the bat’ (leka meta, taga bållen af s€alltr€adet slagen).29 The word meta is worth noting, as it is not Swedish but Latin. It occurs in a dictionary, printed in Cologne in 1477, in which catzenteyker, metarius refers to the markers of the chases in pre-modern tennis.30 The Swedish professor of Natural History Carl Fredrik Fallen also mentions the word when he recounts in his memoirs how he and his schoolmates used to play with bat and ball in the town of Karlstad in the 1780s. According to Fallen, meta is a circle that represents a base in which a player cannot be tagged by the ball thrown by the opposite team. Consequently, the meta can be compared to a safe zone.31 As meta means ‘goal’, or something measured, the word was used in Sweden to describe a marker in skittles or ball games. 32 In the latter case, it is reasonable to assume that it referred to the border that separated the base from the fielding area. In Swedish ethnographic descriptions, several examples are given in which the word meta appears in variants of the two-base bat-and-ball game as late as the start of the twentieth century. In Timrå parish in the province of Medelpad a variant was played in which the goal of the field was a plank which was called matan€ .33 In the town of V€axjo,€ the home base was called f€orsta metan (the first meta) and the running base andra metan (the second meta).34 In Madesjo€ parish in the province of Småland the terms were m€atan uppe (the upper m€ata)andm€atan nere (the lower m€ata).35 A look at the rest of Europe indicates that the word has been used among the Serbs, where the two-base bat-and-ball game has also been known as Meta.36 In former Czechoslovakia the game was known as Dhla meta,37 while in Hungary it was called Meta or Longa Meta.38 The connections regarding both etymology and how the games were practised provide a clue to the origin of the prefix ‘long’ (Danish: lang; Swedish: lång) in longball. In a poem written by the Swedish poet Schroderus in 1639 the word långmeta signifies the ‘end point’ in relation to a running race: ‘The THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 1617 runners move at speed from the goal [måhl] to the end point [långmetan], and the first get the prizes’.39 Based on the aforementioned poem and the various ethnographic descriptions presented above, the word meta seems to have represented the home base, whereas the word långmeta (or Longa Meta) referred to the end point, or the running base, to which the players of the batting team were supposed to run when playing the two- base bat-and-ball game. This indication is further strengthened when considering the game of långbo, which was a variant of the two-base bat-and-ball game played on the Swedish island of Gotland. In the mid-nineteenth century, the ethnologist Per Arvid S€ave provided a detailed account of how långbo, sometimes called långbod or langbod, was played by young schoolboys in the town of Visby. Even today, Gotland is a relict area in regard to traditional games.40 Two distinctive features of långbo appear in S€ave’s account. First, the game was played without a bat. Instead, the pitcher tossed the ball to the batter who hit it with their bare palm. To categorize långbo as a two-base bat-and-ball game might therefore appear misleading. Second, after a successful hit, all members of the batting team were supposed to run together towards the running base of the field. In the most common variants of the two-base bat-and-ball game, only those members of the batting team who had already been at the batting position were supposed to run between the bases. However, what is most noteworthy about this peculiar Gotland game is not its practice as much as its name. Unlike Swedish longball, ‘bo’ in Långbo does not refer to the Swedish word for ball (boll), but to the home base, which, according to S€ave, was ‘marked by stones or a border on the ground’. Additionally, the two team-leaders were called Bo-karl,orBo-herre, which means ‘master of the base’.41 In short, the word bo seems to refer to the same thing as the Latin word meta. Långbo on Gotland and Longa Meta in Hungary thereby demonstrate striking similarities regarding both the names and the practice of the games.

The Myth of the Stone Age Ball Game To try to determine the age of the widely spread two-base bat-and-ball game and to find out where it has its origin is a delicate task, which is beyond the aims of this study.42 Indeed, historians have already made a couple of conspicuous attempts at drawing chronologies that illustrate the difficulties involved. In the 1930s and 1940s, a discussion arose about the origin of bat-and-ball games, which has subsequently affected the historiography somewhat misleadingly. The discussion began in 1937, after Corrado Gini, an Italian professor of Statistics and Sociology, directed a ‘scientific expedition formed for studying the remains of blondness still found among the Berbers of Libya’.43 When Gini conducted his field studies, a couple of ball games caught his interest, especially the one called ta Kurt om el mahag. Even though he was not well-versed in bat-and-ball games, Gini immediately realized the striking similarities between the Berber game and baseball. He therefore concluded that he had found the ancestor of the national pastime of America. However, as he would not ascribe the invention of the game to the Berbers, he claimed that it was of European origin. Consequently, both the ball game and the blond hair of the Berbers 1618 I. LIDSTRÖM AND D. BJÄRSHOLM were, in his view, to be understood as remnants of a migration from Europe which took place ‘some thousands of years before our era’.44 Although this noticeable conclusion was not dismissed, it was nevertheless questioned by Per Maigaard, a Danish student of bat-and-ball games, who in 1938 attended a conference in Copenhagen where Gini presented his findings. After reading the detailed account of om el mahag, he was in no doubt that Gini had witnessed a variant of the two-base bat-and-ball game, as it followed the general procedures of pitching, batting, base-running and tagging. Not surprisingly, Maigaard immediately noted the striking similarities between om el mahag and longball.45 The Berber game involved all the rules that he was so familiar with. Although Maigaard maintained that om el mahag was a variant of the two-base bat-and-ball game, he agreed with Gini’s claim about its age, which was not to be counted in centuries but in millennia. Maigaard was also slightly more specific on where the two-base bat- and-ball game originated. Although he reflected on the risk that his conclusion could be accused of displaying a nationalist bias, he claimed that its birthplace was most probably Sweden or Denmark. He made this claim in a 1941 article in the Genus journal.46 In an often-cited article published in 1948, the Austrian sports historian Erwin Mehl continued the discussion and concluded that what Gini had studied was ‘a precious remnant of a game from the Old Stone Age’.47 What appears most striking about these speculations is that none of the three scholars ever reflected on the possibility that the ball game could have been introduced at a later stage in history, or even considered whether it was of European origin.48 As the two-base bat-and-ball game and its many variants have been spread throughout a large part of Europe and beyond for centuries, it is not difficult to imagine that it has been played in northern Africa as well. That the game should have been introduced to the Berbers during the Stone Age, as suggested, is a highly speculative statement which lacks empirical evidence.

Resemblances between the Two-Base Bat-and-Ball Game and Pre- Modern Baseball In the long-standing debate about how baseball emerged, little attention has been paid to the ball games of Continental Europe. Per Maigaard believed that the two- base bat-and-ball game was the ancestor of all games played with bat and ball, of which baseball and rounders formed mixtures.49 As he did not present any accounts or empirical evidence, the statement was subsequently questioned by the baseball historian David Block.50 However, in a Danish-language article published in 1940, Maigaard mentioned one of his most prominent sources, which was a detailed ethnographic study of the spread of palant (i.e. the Polish name of the two-base bat- and-ball game) provided by the Polish professor Eugenjusz Piasecki.51 Worth noting is that palant had also reached North America in the early seventeenth century, as is evident from an account describing how a group of Polish craftsmen at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia engaged in pilka palantowa during a break from work.52 THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 1619

Without claiming that the two-base bat-and-ball game is the source of all bat-and- ball pastimes, it is nevertheless obvious that, in large parts of pre-modern Europe, games which included the same elementary features were played. These were the pitching procedure, the batting procedure, the base running between the home base and the running base and, finally, the tagging of the players of the batting team. Due to the great spread of the two-base bat-and-ball game, it is remarkable that it never seems to have been played in the British Isles. The most prominent feature that distinguishes British pre-modern versions such as baseball and rounders from the back- and-forth running between two bases in the two-base bat-and-ball game is the circular base running. Apart from the difference in the base running procedure, pre-modern rounders and baseball, as described by Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths in 1796, seem to be similar to the two-base bat-and-ball game, especially since pitching, batting and base running are key features in baseball, rounders and the two-base bat-and-ball game. Nevertheless, the most updated theory on the evolution of baseball – based on Block’s research – reveals a development in which baseball emerged out of older pastimes in the British Isles. In his comprehensive review of all games that can be treated as ancestors, siblings and cousins to baseball, Block mentions several English branches which to varying degrees affected the emergence of baseball. These are Trap-ball, Cat, Stool-ball and Tut-ball. Longball is also included in Block’s sketch of the evolution of baseball, although only in the distant periphery dating back to ancient times.53 An analysis of an odd feature in GutsMuths’ description can, however, provide a somewhat different picture of the relationship between baseball and the two-base bat- and-ball game. First, it should be mentioned that one of the earliest eighteenth- century descriptions of a game named baseball – which Block and others have carefully studied – illustrates something fairly simple, sometimes played without a bat and sometimes played indoors.54 The description of ‘Ball mit Freystaten€ (oder das Englische Base-ball)’, provided by GutsMuths in 1796, is in comparison much more sophisticated. It involves pitching, batting with a bat, circular base running and other features comparable with modern baseball and rounders.55 It may be appropriate to mention that the pitching procedure differs somewhat between the two-base bat-and-ball game and rounders/baseball. In the latter, the pitcher stands at the centre of the field, in front of the batter, whereas in the two- base bat-and-ball game, the pitcher stands at the home base (where the batting team is positioned) next to the batter at a very short distance and tosses the ball to them. There is a noteworthy resemblance indicating a connection between the two-base bat- and-ball game and the version of pre-modern baseball described by GutsMuths as follows: If team A, already in the hitting position, loses the at-bat in any one of the ways mentioned in 1, 2, and 3 above, then, from that moment on, the team that was formerly serving is seen as the batting team. Thus, all of the members of team B who are still standing on the field must run into the home plate area the moment they get the out, for if someone from team A gets hold of the ball and touches any member of team B who is still outside of the home plate with it, then B has once again lost the at-bats, and A is once again the batting team. Similarly B has, once again, the right to touch any member of A with the ball, and if they do, then they once again become the batting team. In this way a fun, short-lived fight ensues, and the team that wins at the end is the one that has the last throw. This is the reason why when one catches the ball one must throw it backward, and why when one burns or touches a runner for an out, the 1620 I. LIDSTRÖM AND D. BJÄRSHOLM

ball must be thrown such that no one from the opposing team can grab it and thus throw it again.56 The account reveals a struggle that occurs when a member of the batting team is tagged by the ball. At this point, the batting team has lost its position at the home base, but it has still a chance to remain there if the ball that recently tagged one of the team members can be caught quickly and be successfully thrown at someone from the fielding team who has not yet reached the ‘home plate area’.57 The ‘retaliation rule’58, as Block has called this ‘short-lived fight’, is also present in the 1815 French account of la balle empoisonee (poisoned ball) – a game played without a bat but nevertheless very similar to pre-modern baseball – but it is absent in later accounts of baseball and rounders of the early or mid-nineteenth century.59 In that way, the retaliation seems like a relic of previous versions of bat-and-ball games. This rule is of particular interest here, since it also appears in several descriptions of the two-base bat-and-ball game. A prominent example of this is the previously mentioned Libyan ball game om el mahag. Gini writes as follows: Meantime the fielding team (B) has placed its men back or aside of the mahag or the running base. They come nearer or spread out according to the strength of the batter. They try to catch the ball as it flies past or else pick it up from the ground as swiftly as possible. If the ball is caught in the air the inning finishes with the victory to the fielding team (B), which now goes to bat. If the ball is picked up, the picker tries to hit one of his opponents who is running to or from the mahag. If he succeeds, the fielding team run immediately to the home base, because a member of the batting team (A) may pick up the ball and hit one of the fielders with it. If he does so and saves himself on the mahag or on the home base, the earlier advantage to the fielding team (B) is forfeited.60 The retaliation rule is also present in Gotlandic långbo as well as in the game played in the Swedish town of Karlstad in the 1780s, both mentioned above. The latter is described by Carl Fredrik Fallen as follows: All divide into two parties, of which one [party] runs while the other is engaged with catching the ball that has been struck in the air with a bat. If it then happens that someone, having caught the ball, manages to hit one of the previous [party] with the same [ball], before he reaches the erected goal, then everybody is required to hurry into a drawn circle, called meta, to be protected from being once again burned [hit] with the same ball. If this does not occur, the parties switch positions [so that] those who previously ran across the playing field now have to catch the ball.61 It is striking that Gini and Fallen describe the same feature.62 The meta and the mahag seem to be the same running base to which the members of the fielding team run after tagging a member of the batting team. Even in twentieth-century physical education literature in Swedish, the retaliation rule is included in the written rules of the two-base bat-and-ball game.63 In his comprehensive study The Evolution of Major Games, Dani€el Hartman Craven provides further examples of variants of the two-base bat-and-ball game, part of which is the retaliation rule.64 Thus, a conspicuous relationship has been found between British and other European bat-and-ball games. This relationship indicates that the two-base bat-and-ball game and pre-modern baseball are more closely related to each other than has been demonstrated in previous research on early baseball history. THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 1621

Baseball and Its European Roots After this short overview of a widespread game known by names such as longball, schlagball, meta, lapta, palant or ta kurt om el mahag the roots of baseball can be viewed from a somewhat different perspective. This is what Block writes about the origin and the predecessors of baseball: Base-ball’s youthful founders were most likely attempting to imitate features of other games they witnessed in the English countryside, activities that were the domains of older youth or adults. Undoubtedly the pastime most mimicked was stool-ball, which in its varied forms had crisscrossed the English landscape for centuries. Children observing the frolicking pleasures of the multiple-base version of stool-ball may have been inspired to adapt its features to their own capabilities and scale.65 Contrary to the suggestions of some of the historians of the roots of baseball, including Block, the empirical findings from Europe suggest that baseball did not evolve solely out of older British pastimes before it was spread to America. Even if it is still unknown when and how the hybridization of English and European bat-and-ball cultures emerged, it is reasonable to think that baseball and rounders developed on the one hand, as stated by Block, from older British ball games in which movement around a circle of bases was a prominent part. On the other hand, baseball and rounders clearly share some features with several variants of the two-base bat-and-ball game. These variants date back to pre-modern times and were spread throughout large parts of Europe. One conclusion is thus that it seems unlikely that these shared features emerged and were developed simultaneously, independently of each other. The retaliation rule is one of the most prominent examples of such a common denominator between variants of the two-base bat-and-ball game and the version of baseball described by GutsMuths. There are further indications supporting this statement. According to Block, ‘the act of throwing a ball at a runner [in baseball] to get him out replaced the more difficult task of having to hit the home base (or stool) with the thrown ball’.66 Getting tagged or ‘burned’ with the ball while running between the bases was considered as an invention in the version of baseball, according to GutsMuths. Nevertheless, that feature had existed long before in the two-base bat-and-ball game in Continental Europe. Given the evidence, pre-modern baseball probably shares its roots with other bat- and-ball games played in Continental Europe. However, many clues and important knowledge in non-English written accounts and literature are yet to be explored and analyzed in order to arrive at a fuller picture of the development of English and other European bat-and-ball games in pre-modern times.

Notes 1. Heiner Gillmeister, ‘On the Origin and Diffusion of European Ball Games: A Linguistic Analysis’, Studies in Physical Culture and Tourism 16, no. 1 (2009): 37. 2. Robert W. Henderson, Baseball and Rounders (New York: New York Library Press, 1939). 3. David Block, Baseball before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005). 1622 I. LIDSTRÖM AND D. BJÄRSHOLM

4. Richard Hershberger, ‘Baseball and Rounders’, Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game 3, no. 1 (2009): 81–93. See also Dani€el Hartman Craven, The Evolution of Major Games (Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch, 1978), 29. 5. Harold Peterson, The Man Who Invented Baseball (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1973); Robert W. Henderson, Ball, Bat, and Bishop: The Origin of Ball Games (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001); Block, Baseball before We Knew It; Seelochan Beharry, The Prehistories of Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2016); Isak Lidstrom,€ ‘Batting “Runders” on the Island of Runo:€ The Incorporation of English Bat-and-Ball Games into a Traditional Easter Celebration’, ARV: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 73 (2017): 27–49. 6. Block, Baseball before We Knew It. 7. Henderson, Baseball and Rounders; Henderson, Ball, Bat, and Bishop; Block, Baseball before We Knew It; Hershberger, ‘Baseball and Rounders’, Peterson, The Man Who Invented Baseball; Beharry, The Prehistories of Baseball. 8. Viktor Balck, Illustrerad idrottsbok: Handledning i olika grenar af idrott och lekar 1 (Stockholm: C. E. Fritzes K. Hofbokhandel), 87. 9. Frederik Knudsen, Traek af Boldspillets Historie (København: Gyldendal, 1933), 66–7. 10. This description is a further developed version of the game that has previously been published by one of the authors of this article. Ingvar Svanberg and Isak Lidstrom,€ ‘Viking Games and Saami Pastimes: Making Balls of Fomitopsis betulina (Bull.) B. K. Cui, M. L. Hanan & Y. C. Dai’, Ethnobiology Letters 10, no. 1 (2019): 90–91. 11. Victor Kuprianov, ‘Lapta: 300-year-old Russian game’, USSR 44, no. 5 (1960): 64; Małgorzata Bronikowska, ‘Why Polish Sobotka, Palant and Jawor Remained only Local Polish Traditions: Preserving National Heritage through the Traditional Games’, Anthropology of East Europe Review 28, no. 1 (2010): 399–403; Institute for Language and Folklore, Uppsala, Sweden: Folklife Records (ULMA): Document ULMA 19435 (Nargo,€ Estonia); See W. C. Hicklin’s translation of GutsMuths’ description of ‘Deutsche Ballspiel’, http://protoball.org/Deutsche_Ballspiel (accessed October 27, 2019); Corrado Gini, ‘Rural Ritual Games in Libya (Berber Baseball and Shinny)’, Rural Sociology 4, no. 3 (1939): 283–292; Frederik Knudsen, ‘Langbold’, Danske Studier (1922): 97–126; Per Maigaard, ‘Battingball Games’, Genus 5, no. 1 (1941): 57–72. 12. Institute for Language and Folklore, Uppsala, Sweden: Folklife Records (ULMA): Document ULMA 19435 (Nargo,€ Estonia). 13. See Hicklin’s translation of GutsMuths’ description of ‘Deutsche Ballspiel’. 14. Viktor Balck, ‘Långboll’, Tidning f€or Idrott 5 (1885): 99. 15. Johan Gotlind,€ Idrott och Lek,inNordisk Kultur XXIV (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers forlag,€ 1933), 47. 16. GutsMuths cited in Block, Baseball before We knew It, 68. 17. Jim Riordan, ‘Folk Games and Fake Games in Soviet Times: The Case of Gorodki and Lapta’, Stadion 12/13 (1986–1987): 27. 18. Medeia Csoba DeHass and Andreas Droulias, ‘Aleut Baseball: Cultural Creation and Innovation through a Sporting Event’, Etudes/Inuit/Studies 34, no. 2 (2010): 27, footnote 2. 19. B. A. Thurber, ‘The Viking Ball Game’, Scandinavian Studies 87, no. 2 (2015): 167–88; Ebbe Hertzberg, ‘Nordboernes gamle Boldspil’, Historiske Skrifter tilegnede Ludvig Daae (København: Christiania, 1904). 20. Sven Ekbo, ‘Ordet S€alltr€a’, Swedish Dialects and Folk Traditions 1983, 45–50. 21. Viktor Balck, ‘Om fria Lekar och Kroppsofningar€ ’, Tidning f€or Idrott 3 (1883): 87. 22. Knudsen, ‘Langbold’, 98, my translation. Original quotation: ‘Langbold, en, kaldes en Leg med Bold, hvori Bolden skal slaas højt og langt og fanges af den, som den opgives til’. 23. Scheffer translated in Erwin Mehl, ‘Notes to “Baseball in the Stone Age”’, Western Folklore 8, no. 2 (1949): 153. 24. Ibid., 154. THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 1623

25. Guiseppe Acerbi, Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland to the North Cape, vol. II (London: Joseph Mawman, 1802), 288. 26. Leem translated in Mehl, ‘Notes to “Baseball in the Stone Age”’, 153–4. The translation was subsequently corrected in Erwin Mehl, ‘Corrections to “Baseball in the Stone Age”’, Western Folklore 8, no. 4 (1949): 375. 27. Ibid. 28. Carl Reinh. Berch, ‘Om lekar och tidsfordrif€ ’, Samlaren, July 29, 1775, 42. 29. Carl Linnaeus, Linnes dietetik (Uppsala: Lundequistska bokhandeln, 1907), 124. 30. Heiner Gillmeister, Tennis: A Cultural History (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1998), 146. 31. Carl Fredrik Fallen, Biografiska anteckningar (Stockholm: Fahlcrantz’ boktryckeri, 1914), 11. 32. Svenska Akademiens Ordbok online, s.v. ‘Meta’, https://www.saob.se/artikel/?unik=M_ 0805-0121.d5uM&pz=3 (accessed 12 February 2019); Mats Hellspong, Den Folkliga Idrotten: Studier i det Svenska Bondesamh€allets Idrotter och Fysiska Lekar under 1700- och 1800-talen (Stockholm: Nordiska museets forlag,€ 2000), 72. 33. Nordic Museum Archives, Stockholm, Sweden, Folklife records: NM 31 (Timrå, Mede). 34. Agge Johnson, ‘Några Glimtar från min Barndoms V€aster (1870–1875)’, Hylten- Cavalliusf€oreningens årsbok (1938), 80. 35. Nordic Museum Archives, Stockholm, Sweden, Folklife records: EU 304 (Madesjo,€ Smål). 36. Siegfried Mendner, Das Ballspiel im Leben der V€olker (Munster:€ Aschendorff, 1956), 69. 37. Eugenjusz Piasecki, ‘Dalsze badania nad geneza˛ cwiczen cielesnych: palant zagranica˛’, offprint from the journal Wychowanie Fizyczne, no. 9, 10, 11 (1934): 14; Jørn Møller, So i Hul og 99 andre gamle Boldspill og Kastlege. Slagelse: Idraetshistorisk Vaerksted, 1997), 52. 38. Møller, So i Hul, 52; Protoball.org, s.v. ‘Meta’, http://protoball.org/Meta,_or_Longa_ Meta#Supplemental_Text (accessed February 12, 2019); John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture (New York: Grove Press, 1988), 83. 39. Svenska Akademiens Ordbok Online, s.v. ‘Meta’. http://www.saob.se/artikel/?seek=m%C3% A5lskjutnings-materiel&pz=6#U_M1713_90479 (accessed June 25, 2019). Original quotation: ‘Lopare€ kringa sigh medh en hast från målet til Långmetan, och then fr€amste får prijsen’. 40. Mats Hellspong, ‘A Timeless Excitement: Swedish Agrarian Society and Sport in the Pre- Industrial Era’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 14, no. 3 (1997): 14. 41. Per Arvid S€ave, Svenska Lekar, 1: Gotl€andska Lekar (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1948), 45. 42. See Mendner, Das Ballspiel im Leben der V€olker, 68. 43. Gini, ‘Rural Ritual Games in Libya’, 283. 44. Ibid., 291. 45. Maigaard used the word longball as an umbrella concept for all variants of the two-base bat-and-ball game. 46. Maigaard, ‘Battingball Games’:57–72. 47. Erwin Mehl, ‘Baseball in the Stone Age’, Western Folklore 7, no. 2 (1948): 159. 48. See Donald Dewey, ‘The Danish Professor and Baseball: How Per Maigaard Traced America’s National Pastime to Scandinavia’, Scandinavian Review 94, no. 1 (2006): 70–75. 49. Maigaard, ‘Battingball Games’, 68. 50. Block, Baseball before We Knew It, 98. 51. Per Maigaard, ‘Slagboldspillenes Historie’, Danske Studier (1940): 34, footnote 1; Piasecki, ‘Dalsze badania’. See also Bronikowska, ‘Why Polish Sobotka, Palant and Jawor Remained only Local Polish Traditions’, 399–403. 52. David Block, ‘1609: Polish Workers Play Ball at Jamestown, Virginia: An Early Hint of Europe’s Influence on Base Ball’, Base Ball 5, no. 1 (2011): 5–9. 53. Block, Baseball before We Knew It, 139–40. 54. Ibid., 153. 1624 I. LIDSTRÖM AND D. BJÄRSHOLM

55. Johann Christoph Friedrich Gutsmuths, ‘Ball mit Freyst€aten (oder das Englische Base- ball)’, translated by Mary Akitiff, in Geistes fur€ die Jugend, ihre Erzieher und alle Freunde Unschuldiger Jugendfreuden [Games for the exercise and recreation and body and spirit for the youth and his educator and all friends in innocent joys of youth] (Schnepfenthal: Verlag der buchhandlung der Erziehungsanstalt, 1796), cited from appendix 7 in Block, Baseball before We Knew It, 275–8. 56. Ibid., 278. 57. Ibid. 58. Block, Baseball before We Knew It, 71. Dani€el Hartman Craven has called the procedure ‘burning-while-changing’. See Craven, The Evolution of Major Games, 20. 59. Block, Baseball before We Knew It, 279. 60. Gini, ‘Rural Ritual Games in Libya’, 287. 61. Fallen, Biografiska anteckningar, 11. Original quotation: ‘Hvardera delar sig til den €andan i 2:ne partier, hvaraf det ena skall springa under det att andra syssels€attas med at taga fatt den i luften med et bolltr€ad uppslagna bollen. H€ander då, att någon, efter bollens fasttagande, af detta sednare partiet, kan slå med densamma någon af det forra,€ innan denna hunnit fram till utstakat mål, åligger det alla, att skynda inom en uppritad Cirkel, kallad meta,for€ att fredas for,€ att ej ånyo råka br€annas med samma boll. H€ander ej detta, så omskiftas plats mellan partierna, och de som forut€ sprungo ofver€ banan, skola nu fasttaga bollen’. The authors are grateful to Olof Blomqvist for the translation of this quotation. 62. In palant, the retaliation rule has been called ‘re-handcuffing’. John P. Tobin, ‘Palant and cricket family resemblances?’, The World of English, http://www.woe.edu.pl/content/ palant-and-cricket-family-resemblances (accessed April 3, 2019). 63. See for example Lars Mauritz Torngren,€ Fria Lekar: Anvisning till Skolans Tjenst (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & soners€ forlag,€ 1879), 67–8; O. H. Walden, Friluftslekar från N€a€as: Springlekar och Boll-lekar (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & soners€ forlag,€ 1921), 68. 64. Craven, The Evolution of Major Games, 20. 65. Block, Baseball before We Knew It, 155. 66. Ibid.

Disclosure Statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributors Isak Lidstr€om is a doctoral student in Sport Science at Malmo€ University. His research is within the fields of traditional games and Sami history of sport. Daniel Bjarsholm€ is a doctoral student in Sport Science at Malmo€ University. He is also employed at Linnaeus University as a lecturer. His research interest primarily concerns sport management. His other research interests include physical education and sport policy.