Baseball Before We Knew It

"Block picked up where Robert Henderson left off with Ball, Bat and Bishop in 1947 . David Block was not a professional writer, this was his first book and it came as a complete surprise – out of left field as we say. He’s a lovely writer, an erudite fellow and a very good friend. But at the time the book came out I didn’t know him at all. He sent me the manuscript and asked me to evaluate it and I was completely stunned. It was a brilliant piece of work. The number of specific finds sprinkled through the work, like diamonds in the dust, is dazzling. For example, it was standard fare for sophisticated baseball folk to say that the game arrived from rounders. David Block demonstrated that the name baseball was far older than rounders – that, if anything, rounders derived from baseball. This may seem a trivial distinction in the wider world and one billion Chinese people don’t care about it, but in our little world this is pretty earthshaking. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . David is very systematic and careful in his elucidation of fact. He found a German text by a gymnastic professor named Guts Muths – a 1796 text that had never been translated into English. In it he found the rules and diagrams for baseball. It was a staggering find. Subsequent to publishing the book he discovered a diary in Suffolk from 1755 by a man named William Bray discussing an outing to go to play baseball. Another amazing find. We haven’t heard the last of David. David’s approach was multinational and ancient, first causes. While in my recent book I spend some time in Ancient Egypt and Europe, it is a matter of paragraphs and pages – not whole chapters. I really focus on how the game came to be and rise to prominence in the United States."