Rounders and Cricket come to mind when we think of English pre-baseball bat-and-ball games. With even more investigation, we find an ancient game called Stoolball, which was played by milkmaids. The game had connections to ancient fertility rituals but later was coopted by the church as part of an Easter tradition. The research into English bat-and-ball sports is rich because sports historians have long debated the origins of American baseball. Once the Abner Doubleday myth was proven false, they looked to other sources to find out where "America's pastime" originated.

There was a rich tradition of bat-and-ball games outside of England in other parts of Europe, and many of them have striking (pun intended) similarities with each other. What contributions could these other European bat and ball sports have brought to baseball, especially as distinct waves of immigration came from Europe? This question has not been investigated enough, but I think a big reason for the success of “American Baseball” was that Europeans from all sorts of backgrounds embraced the game because it was similar to a bat and ball game of their youth in Europe.

It's hard to know where the origin of these "long bat and ball" games came from, but plenty of European countries have claimed that their version was the original. For clarity, I will call the universal common ancestor long bat and ball game "Ancient Longball." The Scandinavian countries, in their own languages respectively, called their bat-and-ball sports Longball. Clear examples are langbold in Danish and långboll in Swedish. They played a version of this game in Lapland, an area encompassing parts of Finland, Sweden, Russia, and other Arctic regions. John Scheffer documented and published this in 1673 and wrote a comprehensive account of the indigenous Sámi people who lived there. He not only went out of his way to describe the rules of the game but also described that this was a game that was played by all men, women, and children, and men and women often played the game together. About one hundred years later, Knud Leem published a description of the Sámi people, including a description of their bat and ball game, featuring the two-base version.

A common characteristic of all these European bats and ball games was that they used two bases, similar to Cricket from England. The playing field was believed to be rectangular, and the participants were split into a batting and fielding team. Another similarity of many of these games was the placement of the pitcher. They stand next to the batter, which is very different from Rounders, Cricket, and American baseball pitchers who stand across from the batter to hurl the ball in their direction. Catching a hit ball in the air before it touches the ground is the best defensive play, which would switch the batting and fielding teams. A field player could also pick the ball off the ground and throw it at a batting player who was off base to "burn" them or get them out, which would also cause an offense and defense switch.

This rule set of Ancient Longball essentially describes the rules for games like Russian Lapta, Polish Palant, and Romanian Oinâ. It’s been said the Lapta was one of Peter the Great’s (1672 – 1725) favorite games. Palant was played in North America, specifically Jamestown, by Polish immigrants who brought their game to the “New World.” Another brief description of this bat and ball game was played in Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic) and was written about by Hippolytus Guarinoni around 1600. In a poem written by Swedish poet Schroderus in 1639, he uses the word långmeta, which connects the “long” with meta, roughly meaning base to describe the game. All these games have been played for centuries in their respective countries, but they all have so much in common points to an older common ancestor that these bat and ball sports would evolve from.

An interesting and popular variation was a "retaliation" rule, which allowed a "burned" player to pick up the ball and throw it at a fielding player before they made it home. This retaliation rule and other similarities showed up in a bat and ball sport called Ta Kurt Om El Mahag, a game played in Africa! Much debate exists on how El Mahag could share so many similarities and not be related. The new question becomes if the game was shared through trade and cultural exchange, or were there Europeans thousands of years ago who shared ancestry with Africans of the mountainous terrain of North Africa? An interesting piece of evidence for this migration theory is that the African Berber people are sometimes lighter-skinned, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed. In modern times, with DNA testing, we see a mitochondrial DNA link with the Sámi people!

German Schlagball, another bat and ball sport, was described by GutsMuths, the 1700's German educator, also known as the "grandfather of gymnastics." He wrote a description that included circular base running and opposing pitchers, which are features more similar to bat and ball games of the British Isles. In The Evolution of Major Games, Daniël Hartman Craven argues that the two base and bat ball and premodern baseball are more closely related than we think through his observations of the retaliation rule being part of both Longball and Schlagball.

Especially with Ancient Longball, the game acted as a microcosm of medieval Europe's societal hierarchy and reflected patterns of social upheaval. The batting team was referred to as the nobility, the lords, the rulers, etc., while the fielding team was referred to as the peasants, servants, serfs, etc. The game's purpose was to either remain the batting team for as long as possible or, if on defense, to become the batting team. These highlighted the adversarial relationship between the working poor and the rulers above them. If the "peasants" tried to overthrow the ruling class (burning one of them) using the retaliation rule, the rulers would try to squash this revolt to keep order. The gameplay eloquently mirrored the historical patterns of Medieval Europe.

I would include the contributions of longball-style games to modern American baseball, especially when we consider the waves of European immigration. As different people came to America, they witnessed American townball games, which had striking similarities to whatever bat and ball sport that was played back home looked like. Playing these early American townball games would help ingratiate immigrants to "America's pastime," and through baseball, immigrants would begin to alter their identity from solely European to a hyphenated version that ended with American. America did not invent baseball. Instead, baseball helped immigrants become American.

This game is a synthesis of the rules of what I believe was the universal common ancestor of them all, a game we’re calling Ancient Longball.

 Materials: 

·      A gym or sizeable outdoor play space

o   If you are outside, use rubber disc dots or cones to show where the bases are

·      A baseball or cricket bat

·      A softball or soft dodgeball

·      Jerseys and pinnies

Prior Knowledge: There are several instances when it would be appropriate to play Ancient Longball. One is when the students study Medieval Europe. Another could be when students study the immigration waves to the United States. This game could also be played when students are doing independent research on European countries since there are so many European countries that have a bat-and-ball game similar to Ancient Longball.