Henderson, Robert W. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001. 220 pp., $14.95 (USD). ISBN: 0-252-06992-7.
[1] This edition of Robert W. Henderson's Ball, Bat and Bishop represents the third printing, with others by Rockport Press (New York, 1947) and Gale Research Company (Detroit, 1975). The main reason for multiple printings, as pointed out by the late Leonard Koppett in the foreword to the 2001 version, is that Henderson's book was the first work dispelling the “Abner Doubleday myth” of the invention of baseball. The Doubleday myth, perpetuated strongly by the Spalding Baseball Commission in 1905, held that civil-war hero Abner Doubleday invented the game, without drawing on precedents or precursors, in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. This myth preserved the idea of baseball as an American game and aided in its early commercialization. Henderson's book holds a seminal place in baseball history because it picked apart specific portions of the myth and traced the long history of ball games back through medieval and ancient times. This longer history of ball games makes Henderson's Ball, Bat, and Bishop useful to a wider audience, especially those interested in the links between sport and religion.
[2] While baseball's origins and development takes up the last quarter of Henderson's book, other ball games receive attention throughout. Most of the major ball games appear, including tennis, billiards, polo, lacrosse, and cricket, as do nearly forgotten games like stoolball and the French la soule. Henderson's main goal throughout is tracing the step-by-step development of ball games forward through time, from ancient religious rites to modern popular pastimes.
[3] Henderson repeatedly argues that ball games hold a common origin in ancient Egyptian fertility rites, and maintain links to such rites throughout most of their spread and development. Originally representing the conflict between the gods Horus and Set, and between the dying winter and coming spring, Egyptian fertility rites involved teams in mock combat over the “head of Horus.” Eventually, puppet heads and later, crude forms of balls, replaced the human heads initially used in the ritual. This and similar rites diffused throughout ancient societies of North Africa and the Middle East, following the cycle of seasons and being adapted to local conditions and needs. From there, ball games spread with Islamic invaders in the Middle Ages, from Spain to France and beyond. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, several ball games were widely popular throughout Europe. Some, such as tennis, which for some time was only played inside monasteries, owe their popularity to religious institutions. Other games remained tied to seasonal rites. Modern secularized sports like baseball and cricket developed from these earlier forms of popular ball games.
[4] Beyond the religious origins of many of our popular activities, Henderson's Ball, Bat, and Bishop has another important point for those interested in religion and popular culture. The book offers many instances where religious institutions incorporated popular pastimes and pagan rituals into their own practices. Henderson documents conscious adoption of popular practices by religious authorities, as well as less conscious influences on religions from outside. This is instructional not only for historians, but for scholars interested in current religious practices, as well.
[5] Henderson had access to impressive collections on ball games in Europe and North America as a result of his affiliation with the New York Public Library and as the librarian of the Racquet and Tennis Club of New York, the nation's oldest tennis club, enabling him to choose his sources effectively. The one concern that some readers might have with the work is Henderson's simplistic notion of the diffusion of ideas and practices, especially when he links North American lacrosse to ancient Egyptian rites. More nuanced studies of diffusion—such as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (Norton, 1999) which looks at agricultural and technological diffusion—argue for complex patterns and the possibility of the simultaneous generation of ideas. Henderson's case would be strengthened by more complexity in his notion of diffusion. Still, this does not negate the validity of his arguments, nor his place of being among the first to seriously study the links between modern sport and ancient religion.
[6] Henderson's Ball, Bat, and Bishop deserves a wider audience beyond the baseball historians who have traditionally read it. With an accessible and highly readable format, the book has something to offer for other sport and social historians, scholars of various religious traditions, and a general readership interested in religion and popular culture.
Fred Mason
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
fmason@uwo.ca
