Town Ball - Famous Town Ball Players

Famous Town Ball Players

Abraham Lincoln Project Protoball lists Abraham Lincoln as a player in the 1840s. According to biographer Albert Beveridge, "He joined with gusto in outdoor sports — foot-races, jumping and hopping contests, town ball, wrestling."

In another Protoball reference, Henry C. Whitney, in Lincoln the Citizen writes of the future President in 1860: "During the settling on the convention Lincoln had been trying, in one way and another, to keep down the excitement ... playing billiards a little, town ball a little, and story-telling a little."

Irving Leitner quotes a story by Frank Blair, grandson of Francis P. Blair, one of Lincoln's political confidants:

There were eight or ten of us, our ages ranging from eight to twelve years. Although I was but seven or eight years of age, Mr. Lincoln's visits were of such importance to us boys as to leave a clear impression on my memory. He drove out to the place quite frequently. We boys, for hours at a time played 'town ball' on the vast lawn, and Mr. Lincoln would join ardently in the sport. I remember vividly how he ran with the children; how long were his strides, and how far his coat-tails stuck out behind, and how we tried to hit him with the ball, as he ran the bases. He entered into the spirit of the play as completely as any of us, and we invariably hailed his coming with delight."

Ty Cobb In his book My Life in Baseball, Ty Cobb wrote about ballplaying in Georgia around 1898: "At eleven and twelve, I liked to play cow-pasture baseball—what we called town ball." He wrote of whacking a string ball and "then chasing madly about the bases while an opponent tried to retrieve said pill and sock you with it." In this version of town ball, a home run entitled the hitter to another turn at bat.