I’m after the earliest print record of the phrase “touch base” - it’s part of an ongoing letters page on one of the BBC news sites. 
I’ve tracked it back to 1855 via google books (link), so currently have bragging rights, but I’d be grateful if anyone can find an earlier instance!
Any context is fine, as long as it’s “touch base” as a specific term. Full credit will be given!
Guess it isn’t derived from baseball then, just like “the whole nine yards” doesn’t come from gridiron football…
EDIT: Just found the phrase, it’s on page 400, you need to scroll up from the page shown in the link initially.
Good one!
Am I missing something? That article is dated 1957.
Google books can be goofy with dates. I think for periodicals and other items published in a series, the date that shows up in the results is the earliest date that any item was published. This article metions the Civil War in the past tense, so it would have to be later than 1865 at least.
ETA: and, yeah, I just saw the intro at the top saying 1957. I’m still betting on it being a baseball phrase.
Ouch! That slipped right past me. Well caught, guys.
The earliest reliable one I could find with Google Books was a literal baseball use from 1898. Earlier results proved deceptive.
That Google Books result is even screwier than their norm. There are two page 400s. It appears to be two entirely different books accidentally scanned together.
Eek! Good spot! Yeah, it’s not from 1855 at all, clearly 1950s!
But the 1898 baseball reference sounds more likely.
There appears to be an 1882 cite on this search page (bottom reference), but it’s not a digitised text so hard to tell if the date is accurate.
And this one is apparently from 1897.
That one is indeed from 1882. Pretty clear.