Hi Alan, fascinating pick-up! Y'know, there's a great line from ornithologist David Quammen in his book,
The Song of the Dodo -- "You think you know every bird in the world, and then someone shows you a Curl-crested Aracari."
We have to quote that maybe just a little too often, because after more than thirty years of slogging around
our little backwater of a hobby, once or twice every year we still encounter something we've never seen before.
And we have never seen, nor ever heard mention of, what you have there.
Just a little checking allows us to tell you this much: the game was designed by William R Fuchs (that's pronounced
"Fewks," for the sniggering schoolboys out there) of Washington DC, patent applied for in 1921 and granted
patent 1,581,189 in April 1926. The game, as you might find in the rules pamphlet, is meant to be played
with two pairs of dice, one for the team (gamer) in the field and the other of course for the team / gamer at bat.
We can see already that the results of some dice throws differ subtly from those described in the patent application,
so other aspects of gameplay may also have been altered between patent and production.
One interesting detail in Fuchs' patent drawings is that the little stand-up player-figures meant to be used
in gameplay are pictured exactly as those used in National Game Makers' 1921 number,
Major League Ball,
a game (or at least its player-figures) discussed in this forum on numerous occasions.
We can't read the name of the manufacturer or publisher of your game, seen in a bit of a blur on the box lid
in your photos. Might you tell us what that says? The typewriter font used for the rules pamphlet and the
likelihood the game is the lone extant example do suggest it's a one-off prototype and the only one made,
but the box, despite its damage, and the presence of relatively professional typography on its lid, make a
better argument in favor of it having been a cottage-industry, low-production-run item.
"perezfan" Mark started a cool "show your games" thread in here a few years ago --
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=228673
... unfortunately, Botophucket has grey-bannered all our pics there (we should edit that, one of those days),
but you can get a rough idea of our stuff and of even better stuff from the few members here who are into games.
If you're developing an interest in antique tabletop baseball, Alan, please visit our website and forum!