Rounders

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Historic photo from Australia, 1913
Young Indonesian rounders

Rounders ( ir. Cluiche corr ) is a ball sport ( batball game ) from the British Isles, which is referred to as baseball in the children's book A Little Pretty Pocketbook as early as 1744 . Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths also called it 1796 in his collection "Games for exercise and relaxation of the body and mind": Ball with free spaces (or English baseball ).

It has an (almost) square playing field with 4 “bases” that have to be circled. The game ball known as sliotar is used not only in rounders but also in the Gaelic sports of hurling and camogie . The rules also seem to be very similar to the American game. The difference in the floor plan: With the English Rounders, the fourth running mark is not identical to the stroke mark. The entire route thus results in an open pentagon. (In Ireland, on the other hand, the limit is square. In the GutsMuths description it was as many times as there were players on a team). In the German sports literature mostly are cricket and rounders as ancestors of baseball considered. But the differences between these two games and baseball are significantly greater than between rounders and baseball. Today even American athletes recognize the striking similarity between rounders and softball .

Rounders is played predominantly by children and young people, especially in schools (around 2 million in the UK). A British umbrella organization, the National Rounders Association, has only existed since 1943 . In Ireland, the GAA ( Gaelic Athletic Association ) is responsible.

There are no references to international competitions. There are regional leagues in Great Britain (one of them for Wales), the first "international matches" (between England, Wales and the Isle of Man) have been played since 1977. There are national championships in Great Britain for school teams of different age groups, in Ireland also for adults (= clubs). There are also tournaments in which both national and club teams take part.

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Web links

Commons : Rounders  - collection of images, videos and audio files