The Ball Game is an 1898

1898 in film

-Events:*May 19 - Vitagraph is founded in New York.*Birt Acres invents the first amateur format, Birtac, by splitting 35 mm film into two halves of 17.5 mm.-Films released in 1898:*The Ball Game*The Nearsighted School Teacher...

 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 short

Short subject

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...

 black-and-white

Black-and-white

Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...

 silent

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 sports film produced and distributed by Edison Manufacturing Company.

Plot

The film contains footage of an 1898 baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 game between Reading Phillies

Reading Phillies

The Reading Phillies are a minor league baseball team based in Reading, Pennsylvania, playing in the Eastern Division of the Eastern League. Since the 1967 season, they have been the AA affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies....

 and the Newark Bears

Newark Bears

The Newark Bears are an American professional baseball team based in Newark, New Jersey. They are a member of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball, which is not affiliated with Major League Baseball. Since the 1999 season, the Bears have played their home games at Bears &...

. The camera is situated twenty feet from the bag and a short extract of the game is then filmed.

Current status

Given its age, this short film is available to freely download from the Internet. It has also featured in a number of film collections including Diamonds on the Silver Screen.