The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-05-01
GAME IN OLOEN TIMES.
How n Developed From "Rounders"
and s.Town BaII."

and ''Town Bail"
From the Chicago Chronicle.
The story of baseball goes back he
yond the revolution. TO the times OF the
good Queen Anne, to the merrie Eng
land that Elizabeth made and then
down through all the dead ages to a
year and a country unknown. They
did not call the genesis of our great
sport baseball" nor did it nue. re-
semble our play of to-day; yet II held
the vital spark of the game that has
won Americas heart. Not much Is
known of the earlier games except that
the existed. 1t Is only of the mediate
they existed. 1t is only of the
immediate ancestors Of baseball.
FOUNDERS and "townball." that def
mite history exists. Even where and
how they split from the ancestral game
and their cousins, cricket and football.
is not known. For the past century or
more. however, the present game of
baseball has held strong resemblance
to its form Of to-day.
Ii was queer baseball hat our
knickerbockered great = grandfathers
would sport in the meadows beside the
towns, playing with unhandy balls Of
yarn that some good wife had stitched
over with cloth. The surroundings
were queerer: IL they lived in the west
ern reserve of Ohio or in the Lake
1DdtIlDldIH outitl AhtN IliknI httD
their matchlocks piled in a corner of
the fence. ready for an instant change
from gayety to deadly fight against
murderous redskins. But the men OF
1850 and 1860 took their pleasure with
gay hearts inc free minds. glad 10 re-
lax from the steady drudgery Of farm
ing.
Later when the youth and flower Of
the land lived upon the commons and
the muskets were piled in the little
town halls of rough brick the men Of
20 still sought diversion from the anxi-
ETY. of a threatening situation in the old
game of ''rounders." They played il as
English children and even English
princes of Wales played or sthe COM
mons. Most often in the orderly New
England villages of that day the mar
ket place and forum filled the gap be-
tween the spick and span. white meet
ing house. with its invariable high
green blinds and sharp-spiked steeple
of slate. AND The town hall. In the
struggling farmer villages of New
FORK and Pennsylvania, the mild short
horn cattle, with grea; Ringing of heels,
fled from their grazing at the invasion
of the playerssQf FOUNDERS" Farther
the south, whe4e the life was more Of
the plantations md hess of the town. the
games OF the period did not obtain
much of a hold.
1t was in New England and the mid
die colonies that "rounders"- was in
greatest favor. There was little exacti-
tude about the game. A tree or big
stone served as a base; there might be
five. there might be six, of them. A
pitcher stood out in the field and tossed
balls toward batsmen who welded bits
of scantling. broomsticks or what not.
out beyond the bases, playing fancy
free. were three or four helders who did
what they could to get hands ON the
balls az the sticks whadhed them. slew
ing them out there i'm odd curves. Al
together il was such an irregular game
as one may see the 6-year-olds play in
the alley round the coTner any day.
The ball was a bank Of yarn and ever
the smiths apprentices. with their pre-
eminent biceps. could not swipe the
mushy spheroid more than a few dozen
PAGES. Catchers there were none, and
so II was with basemen. The whole
gathered crowd took turns at the club
bling and by rotation the men out on
the green got chances to dodge from