[ARETE] Pastime Lost

[Duncan Jamieson]

Attached and below please find Phil Wedge's review of David Bock, *Pastime
Lost*.
Thanks
Duncan

*Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original, and Now Completely Forgotten Game of
English Baseball.*

Reviewed by Philip Wedge, University of Kansas

   As a British literature specialist, I have always been intrigued by Jane
Austen’s referencing baseball in *Northanger Abbey*, published in 1818 but
written much earlier, as well as one of William Blake’s illustrations to
“The Ecchoing Green” which shows a youth holding a baseball or rounders bat
(*Songs of Innocence*, 1789). I show Blake’s illustration to my Brit. Lit.
survey course, joke that it’s our first sports poem for the semester, and
then move on to talk about Nature and the Romantics.  David Block does not
take such a casual approach to discussing the possible English roots of
baseball.  Block’s *Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original, and Now Completely
Forgotten Game of English Baseball *(2019), his second book exploring early
English baseball as a possible origin of the “American” game, is intriguing
reading as he tries valiantly to sort through a wide variety of sources
(novels, letters, short stories, newspaper articles and notices, journal
entries) referencing English games that may be precursors to American
baseball, from “stool ball” to baseball and rounders.

   As Block points out more than once, part of his aim in *Pastime Lost* is
to revise claims he made in his first book on the subject, *Baseball Before
We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game* (2005), in particular his
assumption that English “baseball” and “rounders” were essentially the same
game (250).  In *Pastime Lost*, Block establishes fairly successfully that
English baseball originated in the early to mid-1700s and developed
separately from rounders.  In fact, Block suggests early baseballs were
soft and struck with a hand rather than a bat. Occasionally, games were
even played indoors, as suggested in a letter from Lady Hervey, dated 1748,
in which she describes English Prince Frederick’s family: “in winter, in a
large room, they divert themselves at base-ball, a play all who are, or
have been, schoolboys are well acquainted with. The ladies, as well as
gentlemen, join in this amusement” (16). A co-ed, indoor baseball game, a
sport familiar to schoolboys by 1748—of course, such remarks stand out, and
Block dutifully explores them.

   After culling through many sources, including many local 18th and
19th-century
newspapers, Block develops a theory, based on frequency of mention in
print, that the game of English baseball was most popular in home counties
such as Berkshire and Surrey, as well as Suffolk and Norfolk, and that its
popularity continued well into the 19th century, in company with rather
than being replaced by rounders.  He cites numerous descriptions of social
fetes and community gatherings which include baseball among the
entertainments indulged in.  For example, Eton, in Berkshire, held a
“Brocas Festival” on August 1, 1826, and included such competitions as
cricket, “boys running for a hat, and girls racing for a gown” (101), but
also a baseball game, which is advertised thus: “Girls under 14 years of
age to play Baseball; the Winners to receive 1s. each and a Ribband; the
Losers a Ribband each” (102).  Under 14 girls earning money for a win in
1826, long before the first professional baseball leagues are formed by
men? Very interesting!

   Block is not timid in his assertions about the evolution of American
baseball and its links to English baseball.  Early on, he asserts that
“while technically unproven by anything other than circumstantial factors,
the hypothesis that English baseball is the genetic forebear—and likely the
immediate direct ancestor of America’s National Pastime must be viewed as a
near certainty” (5), and, later, he asserts further that “American baseball
was not original. It derived from an earlier presence in England” (146).  These
are interesting assertions, but since *Pastime Lost* really centers on
defining English baseball, exploring its roots, and building evidence that
it was played as a separate game from rounders well into the 19th century,
the hypothesis that American baseball is derived from English remains, as
Block himself acknowledges, to be proven.  Although he cites an interesting
instance during the Revolutionary War where British prisoners in Cambridge,
MA used “clubs designed to play at bat and ball . . . . hickery-sticks
three or four feet long, and near as thick as my wrist” (67) as weapons,
that instance alone, as Block acknowledges, does not prove baseball, or
rounders, for that matter, has come to America from Britain by 1772.  But
it does invite, surely, Block and others to continue scouring journals,
letters, newspapers, and in this case, court testimony, for further 18th
century references to baseball in America.

   All in all, Block’s *Pastime Lost* is well worth the read.  Jane
Austen’s Catherine Morland may have tried many other sports than baseball
(cricket, for example) in *Northanger Abbey*, but David Block, in *Pastime
Lost,* has stayed centered on enhancing our understanding of the game
Catherine and other children played, with or without a bat in hand.



David Block. *Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original, and Now Completely
Forgotten Game of English Baseball. *University of Nebraska. 2019.

Philip Wedge

University of Kansas
Remember to smell the roses as you recumber *past*

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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