History of Baseball

Origins of baseball

There is some confusion about where baseball originated from. There are claims that it was developed from the quintessentially English sports of cricket and rounders.

There are also American counter-claims that baseball was developed as a separate game in the United States.

The earliest known reference to baseball was in a book published in London, England, in 1744, entitled The Little Pretty Pocket Book, by J. Newbury. It contained a woodcut of the game and it was captioned with a verse called Base-ball.

This book was published at least twice before the end of the eighteenth century in the Untied States.

In 1829, an edition of The Boy's Own Book described the rules of rounders, and many aspects of the game have a lot in common with baseball. Again, this book was first published in England.

In the United States, Oliver Wendell Holmes is believed to have played baseball at Harvard University after reading The Boy's Own Book. He is said to have altered the playing area into a diamond shape.

A West Point cadet called Abner Doubleday claimed to have laid out the first diamond-shaped pitch at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. He claimed not to have any knowledge of the English books, but this happened 10 years after the Boy's Own Book was published.

The first set of rules

A surveyor named Alex Joy Cartwright junior drew up the first set of rules on 23 September 1845. Twenty initial rules were drawn up, and he also founded the sport's first organised team, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York.

Before Cartwright made the new rules, the Massachusetts rules were the ones which were played with, where a player was out if they were hit by a thrown ball. The tagging rule replaced this. He also introduced the three-strikes rule.

The first match under Cartwright's rules was played at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey on 19 June 1846, and the result was 23 runs to 1 to the New York Base Ball Club, who beat the Knickerbockers.

Other clubs were formed, particularly in the north-east, and on the 10 March 1858 twenty-five clubs formed the first baseball league, when the National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players was established.

The game was commercialised soon after, and on 20 July 1858 fifteen hundred spectators paid 50 cents each to watch Brooklyn play the New York All Stars at Long Island's Fashion race course. This was the first game to gather a paying audience.

Professional teams followed with the first entirely professional team, the Cincinatti Red Stockings, in 1869.

A professional league was created on 17 March 1871. It was called the National Association of Base Ball Players. It was formed after a meeting on Broadway, New York. The Philidelphia Athletics were the first champions, then the Boston Red Stockings won the next four championships.

The league folded after that, with scandals of match-fixings, gambling and drunkenness among players.

League wars

A Chicago businessman named William Hulbert formed the National League of Base Ball Clubs in 1876, which is still active now. One of the first regulations of the new league was that teams could only get a franchise if the town of city had a population of more than 75,000. Players were also not allowed to move between clubs during a season.

In 1882, an American Association was set up, and in 1890, a National Brotherhood of Professional Players was formed.

Financially baseball was in trouble, with trade wars between the leagues. After one season, the National League absorbed the Professional Players League. After another year, the American Association folded.

The American League was set up in 1901 by Byron 'Ben' Johnson, and there was a trade war between the two leagues until 1903, when they settled their differences and signed an agreement to control organised baseball. A third league, the Federal League, was formed in 1914, but it folded after two years.

Baseball developed quickly as a spectator sport in the 1920's, although there were still scandals. In 1919, there was a big scandal over the fixing of the World Series. The Chicago White Sox lost to the Cincinatti Reds, and eight members of the White Sox team were found guilty of accepting bribes.

A former Federal Judge named Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed as the sole commissioner of organised baseball. He remained the commissioner until his death in 1944. Under his leadership, credibility was returned to baseball.

World Series

The biggest event in US Baseball is the World Series, held in October, when the winners of both the American and National Leagues meet each other in a best-of-seven meeting. After a regular season of 162 matches, the top teams go into the knockout playoff stages to decide which team represents each League. The World Series was first held in 1903.

International baseball

While the United States is the main country for professional baseball, world amateur championships have been taking place since 1938, and Cuba have been very successful. The country other than the United States which has embraced baseball the most is probably either Japan and Cuba. Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are also keen on the amateur game.

Baseball

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