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:
“Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock. A village that has them not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Any balance we achieve between adult and parental identities, between children’s and our own needs, works only for a time—because, as one father says, “It’s a new ball game just about every week.” So we are always in the process of learning to be parents.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion, Dennie, and Palmer Wolf. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)