THE FIRST PUBLISHED BASEBALL RULES (SPORTS--BASEBALL.) Gutsmuths, Johann. Spiele zur Uebung und Erholung des Körpers und Geistes. Frontispiece, 4 folding plates. xvi, 492, [12] pages. 8vo, contemporary 1/2 calf, minor wear, backstrip tinted; very faint dampstaining, a few small ink stains, edges tinted red. Schnepfenthal, Germany, 1796
first edition. While legend dictates that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839, new research has demonstrated that the sport was not invented--it evolved. One important early point in its evolution was this German book of games, with a title translating to "Games for Exercise and Relaxation of Body and Mind." It holds the unlikely distinction of including the baseball's first published rules under its present name. On pages 78 to 84 are given the rules to "Ball mit Freystäten (oder das englische Base-ball)." If that hyphen is throwing you a curveball, please note that the game is referred to as "baseball" in the index. The game described here is recognizable as an ancestor today's sport, though it was a few dozen evolutionary steps short of Bryce Harper. The batter's objective was to strike a thrown ball and run counter-clockwise from base to base (or, literally, free station to free station) without being put out. On the other hand, the bat was small and flat, the five bases were irregularly spaced, and batters did not yet have their own personal walk-up songs. A small diagram helps to visualize the scene. Gutsmuths describes it as a distinctively English game, though it's unclear whether he has learned of it through personal observation or indirectly. He contrasts it with a now-extinct German ball game, "Das deutsche Ballspiel" (pages 57-74), and proposes a synthesis of the best features of each called "Das deutsche-englische Ballspiel" (pages 84-85). The author, Johann Christoph Friedrich Gutsmuths (1759-1839), was an important figure in his own right. He is regarded as the first to introduce physical education to the formal school curriculum, and has been called the grandfather of gymnastics. "Contains the first known published rules for a game called 'base-ball'"--Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, pages 181-2.
