Searching For The Origins of Baseball

David Block believes both the Doubleday legend and the Alexander Cartwright derived-from-Rounders stories of the origins of baseball are false.  He thinks some game called baseball was being played in the mid 18th century:

In 2007, Block was on a computer terminal in the British Library in London. He came across a comic novel called The Card, by John Kidgell, which was published in 1755. He found this passage:

… the younger Part of the Family, perceiving Papa not inclined to enlarge upon the Matter, retired to an interrupted Party at Base-Ball, (an infant Game which as it advances in its Teens, improves into Fives, and in its State of Manhood, is called Tennis.)

Did you catch that? A mention of baseball nearly a century before Doubleday's "invention"! The problem was, in The Card the precious word baseball ran up against the right-hand margin. Like this:

… Party at Base-

Ball, (an infant Game …)
The OCR software didn't read it in its hyphenated form, base-ball. It read it as a single word, baseball, which had been hyphenated only because it ran off the page. Ask Ken Burns if he ever had to worry about stuff like that.
What was your first reaction when you found the reference in The Card? I asked.
"Wow, 1755, are you kidding me?!" Block recalled. Then his smile disappeared and his modesty returned. "No, of course I was much more restrained, being in the reading room of the British Library."

He searches through diaries and books to find old references to the game.  All I know is that the evidence against the Abner Doubleday legend is immense.