Pittsfield town bylaw prohibiting baseball near the meeting house
- When
- 1791
- Where
- Pittsfield, Massachusetts town
In 1791, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, passed a town bylaw barring baseball near its new meeting house, the first known American reference to the game.
The town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, adopted a bylaw in 1791 prohibiting the playing of baseball near the town's new meeting house. The supplied source identifies this measure as the first known American reference to baseball, but does not state the specific day of enactment, the commonly cited 80-yard distance, or the ordinance's full wording. The bylaw demonstrates that the game was known and played in the community by that year.
Sources
- History of baseball Wikipedia
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.