Baseball before We Knew It

A Search for the Roots of the Game

David Block

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496242709
• Year: 2025

Winner of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research
Winner of the North American Society for Sport History Book Award
Named a 2005 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Named a 2025Choice Outstanding Academic Title

When Baseball before We Knew It was first published in 2005, it shattered many long-held assumptions about the pastime's origins. No, baseball was not original to America. No, baseball did not come from the English game rounders. Yes, of course, the Doubleday story was in fact a myth, but for the first time its secret backstory had been revealed. Beyond all its myth busting, Baseball before We Knew It traveled back in time to uncover the true roots of the sport, exploring the many antecedent ball games from Britain and elsewhere that contributed bits of themselves to baseball's evolution.

Now, in this twentieth anniversary edition of his classic work, David Block fills in more of baseball's origin story by summarizing the discoveries and advancements he and his fellow historians have accomplished over the past two decades. Other new contributions also appear for the first time in this 2025 edition, including a new foreword by John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball; an expanded annotated bibliography of books relating to baseball's origins from before the Civil War; and two new essays from the author. Baseball before We Knew It is a comprehensive, reliable, and readable account of baseball's history before it became America's national pastime.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword to the New Edition
• Foreword
• Preface to the New Edition
• Preface
• Acknowledgments for the New Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Base, as in Baseball
• A Pocket(book)ful of Miracles
• 1. Uncertainty as to the Paternity
• 2. Rounders, Schmounders
• 3. Abner and Albert, the Missing Link by Philip Block
• Playing Ball at Camp Doubleday
• 4. Was Abner Graves Telling the Truth?
• 5. Rules of Baseball: The Prequel
• 6. How Slick Were the Knicks?
• 7. In the Beginning
• 8. Stools, Clubs, Stobs, and Jugs
• 9. Traps and Cats
• 10. It’s Starting to Look Familiar
• 11. Baseball before We Knew It
• Early Baseball Bibliography
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Appendix 4
• Appendix 5
• Appendix 6
• Appendix 7
• Notes
• Principal Sources Consulted
• Index
• About David Block
• About Tim Wiles
• About John Thorn