Baseball: Yesterday and Today
(Excerpted from an article available in Student Resource Center. )
Origins of the game
The origins of baseball are difficult to trace, since different versions of stick-and-ball games have been documented over hundreds of years and in many cultures. Even in the United States, early forms of the game varied. Baseball, as we know it today, is thought to have evolved from a game called Rounders, a variation of cricket brought to the United States from England in the early 1800s.
In 1907, the National League appointed a commission to investigate the origins of the game. It declared Abner Doubleday, a Union Army officer and general in the American Civil War, as the inventor of baseball, in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. While this idea remains entrenched in the popular imagination, and explains why the Baseball Hall of Fame is located in Cooperstown, sports historians consider this to be a myth. In 1953, the U.S. Congress officially recognized New York banker Alexander Cartwright as the game's true inventor.
In 1842, Cartwright formed the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in New York City. Between 1842 and 1845, he devised a new set of rules for the game, which included the laying out of foul lines left and right, the four-base diamond configuration, strikeouts, and tagging the runner (as opposed to hitting the runner with the ball) to force an out. During this time, other baseball clubs were being formed in cities around the country, and in 1846 Cartwright's Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club, in what is the first recorded baseball match in U.S. history. In 1858, the National Association of Base Ball Players, the first organized league, was formed by teams around the country. During the Civil War that followed (1861-1865), Union soldiers from New York introduced their style of baseball wherever they were stationed, and the game's popularity spread. By 1868, more than one hundred teams were represented at the league's annual convention.
The earliest teams were made up of amateur players, though team sponsors secretly paid or offered jobs to some of the best players. But by 1871, several teams decided to hire only professional players; that same year, the league changed its name to the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), which was made up of ten teams. The modern era of baseball began when the minor Western League was renamed the American League in 1900. Together with the National League, which replaced the NAPBBP in 1876, these two leagues became what is now recognized as Major League Baseball (MLB).
Baseball today
Baseball has become a truly international sport. While it is today considered America's national pastime, it has also become popular throughout the world, particularly in Latin America and Japan. As of 2009, the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) boasts over 120 member federations (representing various countries or regions worldwide). Baseball was admitted to the Olympics as a medal sport in 1992, but was voted out starting with the 2012 Olympics. Over the years, major league players have been recruited from countries such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, as well as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Many of these countries have their own professional leagues. Examples include the Japanese Central League and Pacific League, the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League, the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League, as well as leagues in South Korea, Taiwan, and now China.
In North America and Japan, the professional baseball season begins in the early spring and ends in October or November. (The Winter Leagues, played mainly in Latin America and the southwest United States, begin in September and last three to four months.) In the United States, the major league baseball season culminates in a postseason playoff series and, finally, the World Series, which pits the winners of the American League and National League titles.
Baseball is also played internationally as a youth sport. Little League Baseball, a non-profit organization based in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1939 and organizes youth (ages five through eighteen) baseball and softball leagues in five North American regions, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The Little League World Series, for players eleven to thirteen years old, became a truly international event when, in 1957, a team from Monterrey, Mexico, beat the team from La Mesa, California, 4 to 1. Since then, other teams from Mexico, Venezuela, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have competed and won the top honor.