The Champion Game of Baseball

The Champion Game of Baseball was published by the Proctor Amusement Company of North Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1889. It consists of a baseball field printed on the bottom of the box with a metal spinner in the middle, a rules sheet, and an envelope with nine blue and nine red cardboard disks.

There is not a lot of strategy in this early game - each team uses the spinner on its turn to bat. Most of the results are either outs or hits (spaces for single, double, triple and home run), but there also are spaces for strikes, balls and base on balls. It is therefore possible but unlikely to get three strikes or four balls. There is one space for a foul ball, and any spinner stopping on a line is considered a foul as well.

The one strategic option open to the batting team is whether to have base runners try to steal. In this event, the stealing team spins again, but uses an outer ring where the results are divided between "out", "safe" or "sacrifice" (where the runner advances but the current batter is out). An out result always picks off the lead runner.

* * see corrections in Community Wiki below