James Naismith gym floor. [The injury toll: several black eyes, one separated shoulder and one player knocked unconscious.] "It certainly was murder." [Naismith changed some of the rules as part of his quest to develop a clean sport.] The most important one was that there should be no running with the ball. That stopped tackling and slugging. We tried out the game with those [new] rules (fouls), and we didn't have one casualty. By 1892, basketball had grown so popular on campus that Dennis Horkenbach (editor-in-chief of "The Triangle", the Springfield college newspaper) featured it in an article called "A New Game",
Town ball with the A's, dropped out of major match play in 1864, and many of the members went back to playing town ball. New Englanders usually called their game "base" or "round ball" (from running 'round the bases). The "Massachusetts game" or "New England game" was a formalized version with many clubs active in the Boston area. A set of rules was drawn up by the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players at Dedham, Massachusetts in 1858. This game was played by ten to fourteen players with four bases 60 feet apart and no foul territory. The ball was considerably smaller