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Article Series: Baseball
Teach Me About Baseball
A
Brief History of Baseball
At
a time when interest in baseball seems to be on the rise
again, it seems fitting to review the history of the sport.
A sport
that has such a rich past should get some respect.
Not only can it be intense and exciting, it should be appreciated
for it's universal qualities.
It seems that every culture, since very early, has had some
sort of ball and bat game. The idea of hitting an object with
a stick of some sorts seems to be indigenous to the human condition.
Baseball is one of the many sports to come out of this tradition.
Other sports, like cricket, are also born of a similar idea.
Amazingly, not much is known, or accepted to be true about
the beginning of baseball. Over the past century or so, intrigue
surrounding the history of baseball has been governed by a
large amount of debate and conflict. Folk games greatly influenced
a number of games involving bats and balls. The original versions
of these games were similar to one another, with slight variations
based on regional and national nuances. At the end of the day,
Rounders is generally accepted are the game that evolved into
what we know as baseball.
Rounders is an English pastime called. A form of this is game
is still played in parts of Ireland and various games that
are a cross between baseball and Rounders are played around
the world. The game involves a Feeder, who resembles the modern
day pitcher. A mound called The Castle Rock, or what we might
call home plate, and sanctuaries. The sanctuaries are even
distances from The Castle Rock and are represented by stakes.
The game came to England during the 16th century. As English
settlers began to populate different parts of the world they
brought Rounders with them. By the 17th century the game had
been revolutionized and Americans took to calling it Townball.
It was around this time that Alexander Joy Cartwright took
the sport a step further by creating the first baseball field.
From the beginning of 1800s, little towns put together baseball
teams and bigger cities organized baseball clubs. Alexander
Cartwright was the guy who decided to set up a bunch of rules
and apply them to the game. Some of the rules Cartwright put
in place are still in place. Despite the fact that there is
a fashionable myth that baseball was discovered Abner Doubleday,
Cartwright is accepted as baseball's pioneer.
A year after Cartwright established the rules of baseball,
the first documented baseball game as recorded. Cartwright
team, the Knickerbockers, fail to the New York Baseball Club
in a match at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. As popularity
and the frequency of games grew, the game spread. A bunch of
teams came together in 1857 met talk about the future of baseball.
Delegates from twenty-five amateurs baseball teams met to discuss
the game. The next year, the National Association of Base Ball
Players was created and first regulated baseball league was
underway. The league began charging admission and generating
a fan base.
As the price to keep the league going increased, the cost
of playing the game climbed as well. Paying to see games began
to be the norm. Trips were financed by donations or funded
by sponsors. The better the team, the easier it was to gain
the necessary money to sustain it. Many players were paid under
the table even though everyone was supposed to be an amateur.
The first actual professional baseball team was the Cincinnati
Red Stockings. In 1869 Harry and George Wright collected the
most talented baseball players across the country, making the
Cincinnati Red Stockings a star studded team. At the end of
the season the Red Stockings were unbeaten. The success and
profitability of the professional baseball team became very
attractive. Thus, the birth of baseball being a viable business
venture began; a notion that baseball fans are all too familiar
with these days.
Over time the desire of some purist to keep baseball amateur
gave way to profitability. By 1871, the National Association
became the choice of good baseball players around the United
States. It became the first organized baseball league that
year.
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: 2008
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