Baseball overview

Baseball is a sport played between two teamspitcher. Each major league team has a "farm
usually of nine players each. It is a bat-and-ballsystem" of minor league teams at various levels.
game in which a pitcher throws (pitches) a hard,These teams allow younger players to gain
fist-sized, leather-covered ball toward a batter onexperience against opponents with similar levels of
the opposing team. The batter attempts to hitskill.
the baseball with a tapered cylindrical bat, madeThe distinct evolution of baseball from among the
of wood (as required in professional baseball) or avarious bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with
variety of other materials (as allowed in manyprecision. While there has been general agreement
nonprofessional games). A team scores runs onlythat modern baseball is a North American
when batting, by advancing itsdevelopment from the older game rounders, the
players—primarily via2006 book Baseball Before We Knew It: A
hits—counterclockwise past a series ofSearch for the Roots of the Game, by David
four markers called bases arranged at theBlock, argues against that notion. The earliest
corners of a ninety-foot square, or "diamond."known mention of the sport is in a 1744 British
The game, played without time restriction, ispublication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John
structured around nine segments called innings. InNewbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of
each inning, both teams are given the opportunityboys playing "base-ball," showing a set-up roughly
to bat and score runs; a team's half-inning endssimilar to the modern game, and a rhymed
when three outs are recorded against that team.description of the sport. The earliest known
Baseball on both the professional and amateurAmerican reference to the game was published in
levels is popular in North America, Centrala 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, statute that
America, parts of South America, parts of theprohibited the playing of baseball within 80 yards
Caribbean, and East Asia. The modern version ofof the town's new meeting house. The English
the game developed in North America beginning innovelist Jane Austen made a reference to children
the eighteenth century. The consensus ofplaying "base-ball" on a village green in her book
historians is that it evolved from earlierNorthanger Abbey, which was written between
bat-and-ball games, such as rounders, brought to1798 and 1803 (though not published until 1818).
the continent by British and Irish immigrants. ByThe first full documentation of a baseball game in
the late nineteenth century, baseball was widelyNorth America is Dr. Adam Ford's contemporary
recognized as the national sport of the Uniteddescription of a game that took place in 1838 on
States. The game is sometimes referred to asJune 4 (Militia Muster Day) in Beachville, Ontario;
hardball to differentiate it from similar sports suchthis report was related in an 1886 edition of
as softball.Sporting Life magazine in a letter by former St.
In the United States, professional Major LeagueMarys, Ontario, resident Dr. Matthew Harris. In
Baseball teams are divided into the National1845, Alexander Cartwright of New York City led
League (NL) and American League (AL). Eachthe codification of an early list of rules (the
league has three divisions: East, West, and Central.so-called Knickerbocker Rules), from which today's
Every year, the champion of Major Leaguehave evolved. He had also initiated the
Baseball is determined by playoffs culminating inreplacement of the soft ball used in rounders with
the World Series. Four teams make the playoffsa smaller hard ball. While there are reports of
from each league: the three division leaders, plusCartwright's club, the New York Knickerbockers,
one wild card team with the best record amongplaying games in 1845, the game now recognized
the remaining teams in the league. In the Nationalas the first in U.S. history to be officially recorded
League, the pitcher is required to bat, per thetook place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New
traditional rules. In the American League, there is aJersey, with the "New York Nine" defeating the
tenth player, a designated hitter, who bats for theKnickerbockers, 23–1, in four innings.