Mar 26, 2009 - Sale 2174

Sale 2174 - Lot 35

Price Realized: $ 2,880
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
"ONE OF THE CROWN JEWELS OF EARLY BASEBALL BOOKS" (BASEBALL--19TH CENTURY.) Carver, Robin. The Book of Sports. Profusely illustrated with woodcuts. [v]-xii, [13]-164. Large 16mo, contemporary cloth, dampstained, illustrated publisher's label pasted down on front cover (scuffed); recased with new endpapers, dampstaining along gutter with slight marginal loss, professionally silked and rebound, 2 leaves (1:2 and 11:2) bound slightly out of sequence; inscriptions by early owners Alvan A. Hubbard (1836) and Charles A. Beach on front flyleaf, and small faint inked stamps reading "CAB" on flyleaf and title page. Boston: Lilly, Wait, Colman, and Holden, 1834
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Additional Details

Includes an important early description of baseball, pages 37-39: "BASE, OR GOAL BALL. This game is known under a variety of names. It is sometimes called ''round ball,'' but I believe that ''base,'' or ''goal ball'' are the names generally adopted in our country. The players divide into two equal parties . . . Four stones or stakes are placed from twelve to twenty yards asunder . . . One of the party . . . tosses the ball gently towards ''a'', on the right of which one of the in-party places himself, and strikes the ball, if possible, with his bat. If he misses three times, or if the ball, when struck, be caught by any of the players of the opposite side, who are scattered about the field, he is out, and another takes his place . . ." A modest diagram shows the diamond layout of the field, and a charming woodcut titled "Playing Ball" depicts several boys attempting this sport on Boston Common. The book also includes descriptions of cricket, foot-ball, and long-forgotten ball games such as hat-ball and catch-ball, as well as sections on field sports, swimming, "chemical amusements," magic tricks, and much more.

The rules were derived from the description of rounders in William Clarke''s The Boy''s Own Book (London, 1829), and the woodcut was also later used as an advertisement in an 1834 newspaper, with the caption "Scene on Boston Common." "First appearance in America of rules of baseball, and earliest American illustration of the game"--Henderson, Early American Sport, page 43. "One of the crown jewels of early baseball books . . . The first time that the name ''base ball'' was associated with a diamond-shaped infield . . . Prized by collectors as a great American rarity, with only about a dozen copies known to exist"--Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, pages 196-7.