Old Tabletop Baseball Ad

Back to 1866

Old Tabletop Baseball Ad

When I was a kid, I discovered that my dad had a copy of the old October - November 1976 copy of The APBA Journal lying around his office somewhere.

This issue is significant because it marked the first time The APBA Journal mentioned National Pastime. In fact, based on what I’ve seen, it would be another 20 years before the publication would mention APBA’s ancestor again.

However, when I first discovered it, I was also intrigued by this illustration:

The accompanying article didn’t go into any detail about this advertisement for a board baseball game from 1866.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to find the original online. And it turns out that the editors of The APBA Journal took some creative liberties in putting that together.

Here’s the actual front page of the December 8, 1866 issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper:

The part we’re interested in comes on page 4:

And, interestingly enough, there was also a description of the game itself:

You can read the entire issue if you’d like to know more.

Critics of National Pastime (and, by association, APBA) have termed it a “parlor game” over the years. I strongly disagree. National Pastime is a lot more advanced than the parlor games of the past, which were honestly closer to pinball games than dice simulations.

I still think it was a pretty good bit of photo editing by The APBA Journal, however.