British Baseball?
Graham Lester
remarks on the similarities between the National Pastime and Rounders, a British game that he played in his youth. Most historians today agree that the notion that Abner Doubleday invented the game in a field near Cooperstown was just a convenient myth, invented to give the game a uniquely American origin.
I took a look at the
rules of Rounders. As you can see there are many similarities, including the concept of bases (called sanctuaries, which indeed are what bases represent). There are some dissimilarities, but some of these are due to the evolution of baseball. For example, batters are out if the ball is caught on one bounce, and runners can be thrown out by being hit with the ball. Both these rules were a part of baseball in the 1800s, but have since been changed. Other rules are quite different from baseball, such as the convention that bases are run in clockwise order.
