Town Ball - Philadelphia Town Ball

Philadelphia Town Ball

Most accounts of a game called town ball were recorded many years later as reminiscences or memoirs. It is more difficult to find contemporary descriptions. One of the earliest was a New York Clipper article dated Sept. 19, 1857, reporting a “Game of Town Ball” at Germantown (now a neighborhood of Philadelphia). Reporting another game, the Clipper for August 11, 1860 commented, "The Olympic Club dates its existence back to 1832, so that properly speaking it is the parent Town Ball organization in the city of Philadelphia."

Informal groups were playing town ball at Market Street in Philadelphia and across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey in 1831 and 1832. Irving Leitner quotes a 19th century source: "All the players were over 25 years of age, and to see them playing a game like this caused much merriment among the friends of the players. It required 'sand' in those days to go out on the field and play, as the prejudice against the game was very great."

The two groups merged in 1833 to form the Olympic Ball Club. In the introduction to his book Baseball, John Montgomery Ward wrote of the Philadelphia game:

... it is recorded that the first day for practice enough members were not present to make up town-ball, and so a game of "two-old-cat" was played. This town-ball was so nearly like rounders that one must have been the prototype of the other, but town-ball and base-ball were two very different games. When this same town-ball club decided in 1860 to adopt base-ball instead, many of its principal members resigned, so great was the enmity to the latter game. -

A copy of the Olympic Ball Club's constitution exists, but it contains only rules for governing the club, and no rules for playing ball. Contemporary accounts describe Philadelphia town ball as played with eleven men on a side, with four bases and the batter standing between 4th and 1st bases. They played two innings of all-out, all-out or eleven innings of one-out, all-out. Typical games were high-scoring with the victorious side often topping 75 runs. The players are said to have made their own bats and balls. They were adept with two types of bats. For a two-handed swing, a flat cricket-type bat was used. For a one-handed swing, a smaller round model, called a delill, was chosen. There is evidence that over the course of three decades the Olympics played varieties of baseball, wicket, and old cat, as well as town ball.

Richard Hershberger's research indicates that Philadelphia Town Ball did not use "soaking" or "burning" to retire the base runner. In fact the bases — rather close together — were not safe havens, but merely marked the complete circuit the batter-runner must take. In this all out-all out game there were no men left on base.

In 1860 the Olympics converted to the modern "New York game", but the old style was still being played in rural areas. That year members of Athletic of Philadelphia — originally formed as a town ball club — traveled to Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania for two contests, one of New York-style baseball and the other of town ball. The Mauch Chunk lads defeated the A's 45–43 at town ball. But playing New York rules, the A's defeated the country players 34–2. The Athletics were soon to be a national baseball powerhouse. The Olympic Club, after a bitterly publicized rivalry with the A's, dropped out of major match play in 1864, and many of the members went back to playing Town Ball.