Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game

Winner of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research
Winner of the North American Society for Sport History Book Award
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title

When Baseball before We Knew It was first published in 2005, it shattered many long-held assumptions about the pastime’s origins. No, baseball was not original to America. No, baseball did not come from the English game rounders. Yes, of course, the Doubleday story was in fact a myth, but for the first time its secret backstory had been revealed. Beyond all its myth busting, Baseball before We Knew It traveled back in time to uncover the true roots of the sport, exploring the many antecedent ball games from Britain and elsewhere that contributed bits of themselves to baseball’s evolution.

Now, in this twentieth anniversary edition of his classic work, David Block fills in more of baseball’s origin story by summarizing the discoveries and advancements he and his fellow historians have accomplished over the past two decades. Other new contributions also appear for the first time in this 2025 edition, including a new foreword by John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball; an expanded annotated bibliography of books relating to baseball’s origins from before the Civil War; and two new essays from the author. Baseball before We Knew It is a comprehensive, reliable, and readable account of baseball’s history before it became America’s national pastime.

David Block is a baseball historian and antiquarian. He is the author of Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original, and Now Completely Forgotten Game of English Baseball (Nebraska, 2019). John Thorn is the official historian of Major League Baseball and the author of Baseball in the Garden of Eden.