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Thanks for the OED2 cite. It is disappointing, in that I have antedates, but unsurprising.

As for "round ball" and going around the bases, I don't interpret "round ball" as saying that the ball itself is round, but that "round" is somehow a characteristic of the ball game, in the same way that bases are a characteristic.

As for the David Block book, it is indeed by far the best work on the subject. I suspect, though, that Block misinterpreted some of his data. I don't think particularly meaningful his conclusion that rounders derived from baseball. This is, I believe, a false conclusion resulting from ambiguities in what we mean by "baseball". This is what I am trying to sort out.

As for the Hall of Fame and Egyptian origins of the game, I point and laugh.

Richard Hershberger

The problem is that "baseball" is used several different ways, usually without the differences being clearly stated. The usual sense is the game played in and around New York City in the 1840s and its direct descendant forms. The word is also used for the New York game and its direct ancestors. The third use is for the broader class of bat-and-ball games of which the New York version was a member (but excluding cricket, which is more distantly related).

The confusion lies with this third, broader sense. The problem is that there were various regional names, including "town ball" in parts of North America and "rounders" in parts of Britain and "base ball" in parts of both. There is not, however, a good generic name for the entire class. "Base ball" is the oldest attested name and was used widely, so taking matters at face value it is a logical choice. But this ends up with confusing language, as it frequently is unclear which sense is intended.

So when Block says that rounders derived from baseball, what sense of "baseball" does he mean? Not the narrow sense: rounders clearly did not derive from the New York game. Taking "baseball" in the broadest sense, the claim is nonsense. Rounders did not derive from the baseball family of bat-and-ball games: it is a member of that family. So the claim seems to be that rounders evolved from "baseball" in the sense of a direct ancestor of the New York game.

There is less here than meets the eye: this is equivalent to saying that rounders and the New York game share a common ancestor: trivially true if we assume an evolutionary model. It appears more interesting than it is because of confusion between the senses of "baseball".

I have recently been working on non-New York versions around 1860. The interesting thing is that at that time they were comfortable talking about regional variants and calling these variants "base ball" in some regions and "town ball" in others. The British name "rounders" fit right in. A few decades later they were less comfortable with this. The New York game had overwhelmed all others, and the variants which formerly had been called "base ball" were retroactively named "town ball". At the same time they started resisting any connection between baseball and rounders. This would have been absurd in 1860, as rounders obviously belonged to the same family, but by 1890 or so the existance of this family had largely been forgotten and baseball could be declared the invention of some lone genius.