Name: History Pub - The Origins of Baseball
Start: 2026-04-08T19:00:00-07:00
Location: McMenamins Grand Lodge

McMenamins and Friends of Forest Grove present
History Pub
The Origins of Baseball
Presented by John Bawden
McMenamins Grand Lodge Theater
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
7pm/doors 6pm
$5
All ages welcome
Baseball in 1865 was recognizable to modern eyes and on its way to becoming the national game. And yet, just thirty years before, North Americans played a variety of bat and ball games, including cricket, townball, batball, shinny, and wicket. Few Americans living at that time could have imagined their own version of ball disappearing. So, what happened? When did the pastime become the baseball game we know today? Historian John Bawden explores how baseball developed and how the American Civil War spread one variety of baseball across the United States. And he’ll talk about one of the first amateur baseball clubs in the Pacific Northwest, the Pioneer Base Ball Club of Portland in 1866.
John R. Bawden is a historian at Oregon State University. Most of his academic writing is about Chilean history during the Cold War. He is the author of two books, 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑆𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑟𝑠: 𝐴𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛’𝑠 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 and 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑖𝑛𝑜𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑡 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑀𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦. When not teaching, John enjoys researching baseball history topics for his YouTube channel, the Baseball Professor.