Carrol Cox wrote:
> A gane called "baseball" is referred to in one of Austen's novels. What
> game would that be. (Circa 1810 -- rural England.)
Which Austen novel? Was it called baseball or base ball? If you read the rest of my post about the origins of the game as it exists today, however, this is a matter of (idle) curiosity only. It's largely irrelevant to the creation of the current game.
btw, there was a rural variant of the simple game in the US at about the same time (usually mentioned to be circa 1820).
RO