In this accounting, baseball was understood as the derivation of an English children's game, rounders, but America was allowed to retain patrimony over its national pastime through the assertion that it had been reinvented as a modern sport by the members of the New York Knickerbockers, who codified its rules for the first time in 1845.

By 1796 the rules of this English game were well enough established to earn a mention in German scholar Johann Gutsmuths book on popular pastimes, that described "Englische Base-ball" involved a contest between two teams, in which "the batter has three attempts to hit the ball while at the home plate"; only one out was required to retire a side.

In the book, Block suggests that it was the English game of baseball that had arrived in the U.S. as part of "a sweeping tide of cultural migration" during the colonial period.

An illustration in the French manuscript "The Romance of Alexander" (1344) depicts a group of monks and nuns engaged in a game, thought to be "la soule", that looks much like co-ed softball.

"[1] Block also notes in the book that American researchers during the past half-century "have made only minimal effort to document baseball's early history and for the most part have not been inclined to go looking to European sources for clues.