The History of Baseball

The History of Baseball

Americans began playing baseball on informal teams, using local rules, in the early 1800s. By the 1860s, the sport, unrivaled in popularity, was being described as America's "national pastime." Alexander Joy Cartwright of New York invented the modern baseball field in 1845. Alexander Cartwright and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club devised the first rules and regulations for the modern game of baseball.

Baseball was based on the English game of rounders. Rounders becomes popular in the United States in the early 19th century, where the game was called "townball", "base", or "baseball". Cartwright formalized the modern rules of baseball. The first recorded baseball game in 1846 when Alexander Cartwright's Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club. The game was held at the Elysian Fields, in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1858, the National Association of Base Ball Players, the first organized baseball league was formed.

People used to think that Abner Doubleday invented baseball but, historians proved them wrong because he was at war at the time when baseball was invented. So in the study in 1905 people really believed that he invented it because some man said that while he was growing up with Doubleday he remembers hitting a ball with a bat, then running to bags with sand in them. Sometime later, an old, rotting baseball found among Doubleday's personal effects. This was viewed, as proof of that man's story was true. Today, the very same ball is on display at the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown.

In the early ninetieth century the Americans hated the English. There were still a few veterans of the Revolutionary War around. If the Englishmen liked to play games, the Americans would not play at all. So for the Americans there was a real growing need for an organized sport for adult's .so the question was "what might be an appropriate sport?" So they came up with a game called cricket witch was somewhat like baseball. It involves throwing, hitting, running, and catching. The game seemed challenging, yet safe and it could be played at a civilized pace. There was plenty of strategy involved. First of all it wasn't very good because it took a very long time to play. They played sometimes more than a day or two. So they had to decide to play a different game.

Records indicate that they were playing a game called baseball in New York around 1842. They wanted a club so they named themselves the Knickerbockers. The Knickerbockers were the first official baseball team to become a club. So the sporting press really latched on baseball in the 1850's. It was rare that two clubs play each other. There were no leagues or schedules so they just played each other when they wanted to. Sometimes one club was divided in to two teams because they would get so bored. -

Now moving on into the years a little bit with a little time line of how things gradually became modern. Well in 1879 -1889 Professional baseball adopts the reserve clause. Giving teams the right to automatically renew a player's contract at the end of each season. Baseball's first union forms. The brotherhood of professional baseball players (unsuccessfully) demands an end to the reserve clause and salary caps. In 1919 the Black Sox had a Scandal: Eight players on the Chicago White Sox conspire with gamblers to throw the World Series. They are acquitted in a court of law--but they are banned from baseball forever. In 1920 they had the first financially successful all-black league; (Negro National League) is founded by Hall-of-Famer Rube Foster.

In 1935 the first night game was played in Cincinnati. In 1939 the first the first televised major league game is broadcast from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Also in 1939 Little league baseball was founded. In 1942 just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt declares, "It would be best for the country to keep baseball going." Then just a year later Philip K. Wrigley starts what will become the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the country's only professional female league.

In 1947 By Joining the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American to play major league baseball in the 20th century. Ten years later, the Dodgers leave Brooklyn for Los Angeles.