American Handball - History

History

Sports involving striking a ball with a hand have existed since ancient times. References to games in which a ball is hit or thrown extend as far back as Homer and ancient Egypt. A game similar to handball was played by the northern and Central Americans from 1500 B.C., most famously by the Aztecs as the Mesoamerican ballgame. None of these reference a rebound game using a wall, however, and these ancient games resemble a form of hand tennis.

The first recorded game of striking a ball with a hand against a wall was in Scotland in 1427, when it was recorded that King James I ordered a cellar window in his palace courtyard blocked up, as it was interfering with his game. In Ireland, the earliest written record of a similar ball game is contained in the town statutes of Galway of 1527, which forbade the playing of ball games against the walls of the town. The first depiction of an Irish form of handball does not appear till 1785. The sport of handball in Ireland was eventually standardized as Gaelic handball.

Handball was brought to the United States by Irish immigrants. The earliest records of the game being played in the country list two handball courts in San Francisco in 1873. From there, the sport grew rapidly over the next few decades. In the early 1900s, when four-wall handball was already well established, a one-wall game was developed in New York City by beachgoers who hit bald tennis balls with their hands against the sides of the wooden jetties that lined beaches. This led to a rise in one-wall handball around the beaches of New York, and by the 1930s, thousands of one-wall courts, both indoor and outdoor, had been built throughout the city. American handball today is seen predominantly in parks and school yards in The Bronx, NY, Brooklyn, NY, Queens, NY and Lynbrook, NY. Major John Andre and General Sir Henry Clinton are said to have played a game called handball during the American Revolution, in "Treacherous Beauty," a book by Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case about the Arnold-Andre conspiracy.

National championships in handball have been held annually in the United States since 1919. These championships were organized by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) until 1950, when their control was transferred to the newly formed United States Handball Association (USHA).