History of Baseball

History Of Baseball

Baseball is a game of ball between two nine-player teams played usually for nine innings on a field that has as a focal point a diamond-shaped infield with a home plate and three other bases, 90 ft. (27 m) apart, forming a circuit that must be completed by a base runner in order to score, the central offensive action entailing hitting of a pitched ball with a wooden or metal bat and running of the bases, the winner being the team scoring the most runs.

The earliest known mention of baseball in the United States was in a 1792 pittsfield. Another early reference reports that "base ball" was regularly played on Saturdays on the outskirts of New York City in 1823. The first team to play baseball under modern rules were the New York Knickerbockers. The club was founded on September, 1845, as a social club for the upper middle classes of New York City, and was strictly amateur until its disbandment. But the game was played by Knickerbocker Rules. For example, now a days you have to tag someone are throw them out by getting the ball there before the player from the other team gets there will get them out. But Knickerbocker Rules, a fielder could put a runner out by hitting the runner with the thrown ball. Writing the rules didn't help the Knickerbockers in the first known competitive game between two clubs under the new rules, played at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 19, 1846. The self-styled "New York Nine" humbled the Knickerbockers by a score of 23 to 1. The Knickerbocker Rules were adopted by teams in the New York area and their version of baseball became known as the "New York Game".

In 1857, sixteen New York area clubs, including the Knickerbockers, formed the National Association of base ball Players or NABBP. The NABBP was the first organization to govern the sport and to establish a championship. Aided by the Civil War, membership grew to almost 100 clubs by 1865 and to over 400 by 1867 , including clubs from as far away as California. During the Civil war, soldiers from different parts of the United States met, and played baseball, leading to a more unified national version of the sport. Beginning in 1869 , the NABBP permitted professional play, addressing a growing practice that had not been permitted under its rules to that point. The first and most prominent professional club of the NABBP era was the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players operated from 1871 through 1875, and is considered by some to have been the first major league. The NABBP split into two groups National and American. Clubs in turn were required to play their full schedule of games, rather than forfeiting games scheduled once out of the running for the league championship, as happened frequently under the National Association. At the same time, a "gentleman's agreement" was struck between the clubs which endeavored to bar non-white players from professional baseball, a bar which was in existence until 1947. It is a common misconception that Jackie Robinson was the first African-American major-league ballplayer; he was actually only the first after a long gap. Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday Walker were unceremoniously dropped from major and minor-league rosters in the 1880s, as were other African-Americans in baseball. An unknown number of African-Americans