rovocative issue. Sports historians have presented impressive evidence showing that American baseball, far from being an independent invention, evolved out of various ball-and-stick games that had been played in many areas of the world since the beginnings of recorded history. But in early America, precursors of baseball included informal games of English origin such as paddleball, trap ball, rounders, and town ball. The latter was a popular game in colonial New England and was played by adults and children with a bat and ball on an open field. Printed references to "base ball" in America date back to the eighteenth century. Among these accounts is one of Albigence Waldo, a surgeon with Washington's troops at Valley Forge who poetically told of soldiers batting balls and running bases in their free time. Similarly in 1834 Robin Carver's Book of Sports related that an American version of rounders called "base" or "goal ball" was rivaling cricket in popularity among Americans. Indeed, cricket played a role in the evolution of organized baseball. From this British game came umpires and innings, and early baseball writers like Henry Chadwick used cricket terminology such as "batsman," "playing for the side," and "excellent field" in describing early baseball games. Likewise, the pioneer baseball innovator Harry Wright, a cricket professional turned baseball manager, drew heavily on his cricket background in promoting baseball as a professional team sport in the United States. By the 1840s various forms of baseball vied for acceptance, including the popular Massachusetts and New York versions of the game. The Massachusetts game utilized an irregular four-sided field of play, with the four bases located at fixed, asymmetrical distances from each other and the "striker's," or batter's position away from the home base. "Scouts," or fielders, put men out by fielding a batted ball on the fly or on the first bounce, or by hitting a runner with a t...
