The term town ball, or townball, describes the bat-and-ball, safe haven games played in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, which were similar to rounders and were precursors to modern baseball. In some areas — such as Philadelphia and along the Ohio River and Mississippi River — the local game was called Town Ball. In other regions the local game was named "base," "round ball," "base ball," or just "ball." The players might be schoolboys in a pasture with improvised balls and bats, or young men in organized clubs. As baseball became dominant, town ball became a casual term to describe old fashioned or rural games similar to baseball.
Read more about Town Ball: Rules, Town Ball and The Doubleday Myth, Philadelphia Town Ball, Town Ball in The West, The Massachusetts Game, Old-fashioned Base Ball, Famous Town Ball Players, Modern Townball (Upper Midwest)
Famous quotes containing the words town and/or ball:
“A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A ball player’s got to be kept hungry to become a big leaguer. That’s why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues.”
—Joe Dimaggio (b. 1914)