Earliest "ball card"...from the 1830s?

Close on the heels of this significant discovery, Hank Thomas, Walter Johnson's grandson and a noteworthy baseball historian himself, has acquired what is certainly the earliest known card of a bat and ball game. Hank's acquisition was originally found in an attic in Maine many years ago and is new to the hobby. Does the card show boys playing one of the dreaded bat and ball games the Pittsfield folks wanted to ban? Exactly what the game featured was called we may never know, but we can say with certainty that the image on the card is a close cousin to the game that today is commonly called baseball. Recall the history lesson recited above and gaze at the card . . . what game do you think it shows? Compare it to a woodcut shown in a garden book from 1833 published in this country (see illustration). Does that game look familiar?

How old is the card? There are obviously no “game statistics” or “yearly totals” on the back of the card to answer that question with the same certainty that we can rely on when viewing a baseball card today. However, historians who have viewed this card have concluded that it was, in all likelihood, manufactured sometime within the first few decades of the 19 th century. I have personally reviewed bat and ball drawings and lithographs from the 18 th and 19 th century, and I believe that this card dates from around the 1830's, the same time period as the woodcut bat and ball scene in the garden book. This was also a time period in which children's educational game cards were popularized and produced as teaching aids in this country and in England. The bat and ball card was uncovered with several other illustrated children's educational cards. None of other cards contain sport related subjects (see illustration). What does it mean?

Julie Vognar wrote:The "bat:" is one of those things with a pocket to catch the ball, I think.

Julie Vognar wrote:Dried grass is called pot. Wet grass too.

sabrjay wrote:I doubt that it is anything like a lacraosse stick. The reasoning being, why would you pitch a ball and then try to hit it with a stick a that has a basket on the end?

Jay