Baseball historians find essential source material, with this rare 1866 hardcover book “American Pastimes”, authored and published by Charles Peverelly. While this ancient volume covers the sports of Crickett, Rowing, and Yachting, approximately one-third of the content is devoted to “The National Game”, baseball.



Peverelly painstakingly details the “Rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, Adopted September 23, 1845”, and he lists a great many teams, players, games, dates, and scores, for matches held during the 1850s-1860s. One of the most fascinating passages reads “In the spring of 1845 Mr. Alex. J. Cartwright, who had become an enthusiast in the game, one day upon the field proposed a regular organization, promising to obtain several recruits.”. This section continues to describe the process which led the participants to the famed Elysian Fields in New Jersey, where some of the earliest organized baseball games were played.



Some of the numerous baseball clubs named are the Eagle Club, Union Club, Atlantic Club, Excelsior Club, Harvard Club, Olympic Club, National Association of Base Ball Players, and many others, reaching across the land, all the way to California. For our money, and hopefully yours as well, a full-page engraved plate of a baseball game in progress, makes this book a worthy purchase just for this historic illustration alone, however the astonishing content makes this chronicle of early baseball an absolute must for those interested in the roots of the game.



An ex-library copy with stamps from Brown University Library and The People’s Library of Newport, this antique book shows considerable wear, but remains complete. A 1” vertical split and a smaller horizontal tear are noted at the top of the spine, which otherwise is attractive with moderately worn gold gilt lettering and graphics. Though the pages are mostly separated from the interior of the spine, they are supple, and all content is readily discernible. Opening Bid $200.