hatever with "rounders."

The game of base-ball probably owed its name to the fact that bases were
used in making its runs, and were one of its prominent features.

There seems to be no doubt that the game was played in the United States
as early at least as the beginning of the present century, for Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes declared a few years ago that base-ball was one of
the sports of his college days, and the autocrat of the breakfast table
graduated at Harvard in 1829. Along in 1842 a number of gentlemen,
residents of New York City, were in the habit of playing the game as a
means of exercise on the vacant lot at the corner of Fourth Avenue and
Twenty-sixth Street, where Madison Square Garden now stands. In 1845
they formed themselves into a permanent organization known as the
Knickerbocker Club, and drew up the first code of playing rules of the
game, which were very simple as compared with the complex rules which
govern the game of the present time, and which are certainly changed in
such a way as to keep one busy in keeping track of them.

The grounds of this parent organization were soon transferred to the
Elysian Fields, at Hoboken, N. J., where the Knickerbockers played their
first match game on June 19th, 1846, their opponents not being an
organized club, but merely a party of gentlemen who played together
frequently, and styled themselves the New York Club. The New Yorks won
easily in four innings, the game in those days being won by the club
first making twenty-one runs on even innings. The Knickerbockers played
at Hoboken for many years, passing out of existence only in 1882. In
1853 the Olympic Club of Philadelphia was organized for the purpose of
playing town-ball, a game which had some slight resemblance to
base-ball. The Olympic Club, however, did not adopt the game of
base-ball until 1860, and consequently cannot claim priority over the
Knickerbockers, although it was one of the oldest ball-playing
organizations in existence, and was disbanded only a few years ago.

In New England a game of base-ball known by the distinctive title of
"The New England game" was in vogue about fifty years ago. It was played
with a small, light ball, which was thrown over-hand to the bat, and was
different from the "New York game" as practiced by the Knickerbockers,
Gotham, Eagle, and Empire Clubs of that city. The first regularly
organized club in Massachusetts playing the present style of base-ball
was the Olympic