In some areas, including Philadelphia and along the Ohio River and Mississippi River—the local game was called Town Ball.
The rules of town ball varied, but distinguishing characteristics most often cited were: Generally the infield was a square or rectangular shape, with four bases or pegs.
Spalding wrote an article titled "The Origin and Early History of Baseball" for the January 15, 1905 Washington Post.
[2] In the townball game that Graves described, the batsman struck the tossed ball with a flat bat, and ran toward a goal fifty feet away, and back again.
One of the earliest was a New York Clipper article dated September 19, 1857, reporting a "Game of Town Ball" at Germantown (now a neighborhood of Philadelphia).
[3] Reporting another game, the Clipper for August 11, 1860, commented, "The Olympic Club dates its existence back to 1832, so that properly speaking it is the parent Town Ball organization in the city of Philadelphia.
"[4] Informal groups were playing town ball at Market Street in Philadelphia and across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey, in 1831 and 1832.
When this same town-ball club decided in 1860 to adopt base-ball instead, many of its principal members resigned, so great was the enmity to the latter game.
This game was generally identified as a type of baseball with large numbers on each side, where the fielders threw the ball at the runner.
The Knickerbocker Antiquarian Base Ball Club of Newark, New Jersey continued to play old-fashioned baseball at least until 1865.
For instance, in Mauston, Wisconsin in 1888, the festivities at The Old Settlers Jubilee included "an old-fashioned base ball game.
A famous game of old-fashioned base ball was played here, in August—Judge Sturges heading the "Reds" and Judge Edick the "Blues"—16 on a side.
The ring was anywhere from three hundred feet to a mile in circumference, according to whether we played on a vacant Pingree lot or out on the open prairie.
The ball was of solid India rubber; a little fellow could hit it a hundred yards, and a big boy, with a hickory club, could send it clear over the bluffs or across the lake.
The side that got its innings first kept them until school was out or the last boy died.Varieties of town ball remained a popular schoolyard activity, especially in rural areas, well into the 20th century.
According to biographer Albert Beveridge, "He joined with gusto in outdoor sports—foot-races, jumping and hopping contests, town ball, wrestling.
We boys, for hours at a time played 'town ball' on the vast lawn, and Mr. Lincoln would join ardently in the sport.
In his book My Life in Baseball, Ty Cobb wrote about ballplaying in Georgia around 1898: "At eleven and twelve, I liked to play cow-pasture baseball—what we called town ball."
He wrote of whacking a string ball and "then chasing madly about the bases while an opponent tried to retrieve said pill and sock you with it."