Baseball, Baseball

This game and the related rounders were brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America, where the modern version of baseball developed. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth levels is now popular in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East Asia. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball , in contrast to the derivative game of softball.

Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Every year, the champion of Major League Baseball is determined by playoff that culminate in the World Series. Four teams make the playoffs from each league: the three regular season division winners, plus one wild card team. Baseball is the leading team sport in both Japan and Cuba, and the top level of play is similarly split between two leagues: Japan's Central League and Pacific League; Cuba's West League and East League. In the National and Central leagues, the pitcher is required to bat, per the traditional rules. In the American, Pacific, and both Cuban leagues, there is a tenth player, a designated hitter, who bats for the pitcher. Each top-level team has a farm system of one or more minor league teams. These teams allow younger players to develop as they gain on-field experience against opponents with similar levels of skill.

A French manuscript from 1344 contains an illustration of clerics playing a game, possibly la soule , with similarities to baseball; Block (2005), pp. 106108.

The first known American reference to baseball appears in a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, town bylaw prohibiting the playing of the game near the town's new meeting house. Block (2005), pp. 58, 160, 300, 307, 310; By 1796, a version of the game was well-known enough to earn a mention in a German scholar's book on popular pastimes. As described by Johann Gutsmuths, " englische Base-ball " involved a contest between two teams, in which "the batter has three attempts to hit the ball while at the home plate"; only one out was required to retire a side. Block (2005), pp. 6775, 181; Gutsmuths quoted: p. 86.

Heaphy, Leslie, "Women Playing Hardball", in Baseball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter's Box , ed. Eric Bronson (Open Court, 2004), pp. 246256: p. 247.

In general, the strict rules of baseball contracts and the reserve clause, which bound players to their teams even when their contracts had ended, tended to keep the players in check. Burk (2001), pp. 56, 100, 102, 103, 113, 143, 147, 170, et seq.; Powers (2003), pp. 1721, 27, 83, 121, 122, 160164, 177; Rader (2008), pp. 6071.

The first elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame took place in 1936. In 1939, Little League Baseball was founded in Pennsylvania. By the late 1940s, it was the organizing body for children's baseball leagues across the United States.

It was the first professional baseball union to survive more than briefly, but it remained largely ineffective for years. Powers (2003), p. 170.

This coincidentally helped Roger Maris break Babe Ruth's long-standing single-season home run record, one of the most celebrated marks in baseball. Koppett (2004), pp. 307, 308; Sullivan (2002), pp. 163, 164.

In 2000, the National and American leagues were dissolved as legal entities. While their identities were maintained for scheduling purposes (and the designated hitter distinction), the regulations and other functionssuch as player discipline and umpire supervisionthey had administered separately were consolidated under the rubric of Major League Baseball (MLB). Koppett (2004), p. 489.

The history of baseball in Canada has remained closely linked with that of the sport in the United States. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featured teams from both countries. Bjarkman (2004), p. 73; Burk (2001), p. 58.

In 1977, the expansion Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League. The Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, the first and still the only club from outside the United States to do so. After the 2004 season, Major League Baseball relocated the Expos to Washington, D.C., where the team is now known as the Nationals.

Since 2004, the IBAF has sanctioned the Women's Baseball World Cup, featuring national teams.

It remained part of the 2008 Games and will be put to a vote again for each succeeding Summer Olympics. The elimination of baseball, along with softball, from the 2012 Olympic program enabled the IOC to consider adding two different sports, but none received the majority vote required for inclusion.

A pair of turns, one at bat and one in the field, by each team constitutes an inning; there are nine innings in a game. One teamcustomarily the visiting teambats in the top, or first half, of every inning; the other teamcustomarily the home teambats in the bottom, or second half, of every inning. The goal of a game is to score more points (runs) than the other team. The players on the team at bat attempt to score runs by circling, or completing a tour of, the four bases set at the corners of the square-shaped baseball diamond. A player bats at home plate and must proceed counterclockwise to first base, second base, third base, and back home in order to score a run. The team in the field attempts both to prevent runs from scoring and to record outs, which remove opposing players from offensive action until their turn in their team's batting order comes up again. When three outs are recorded, the teams switch roles for the next half-inning. If the score of the game is tied after nine innings, extra innings are played to resolve the contest. Children's games are often scheduled for fewer than nine innings. Thurston (2000), p. 15; (the term diamond may be used to refer to the square area defined by the four bases or to the entire playing field). The dimensions given are for professional and professional-style games; children often play on smaller fields. The game is played on a field whose primary boundaries, the foul lines, extend forward from home plate at 45-degree angles. The 90-degree area within the foul lines is referred to as fair territory; the 270-degree area outside them is foul territory. The part of the field enclosed by the bases and several yards beyond them is the infield; the area farther beyond the infield is the outfield. In the middle of the infield is a raised pitcher's mound, with a rectangular rubber plate (the rubber) at its center. The outer boundary of the outfield is typically demarcated by a raised fence, which may be of any material and height (many amateur games are played on fields without a fence). Fair territory between home plate and the outfield boundary is baseball's field of play, though significant events can take place in foul territory, as well.

At most levels of organized play, two coaches are stationed on the field when the team is at bat: the first base coach and third base coach, occupying designated coaches' boxes just outside the foul lines, assist in the direction of baserunners when the ball is in play, and relay tactical signals from the manager to batters and runners during pauses in play. Walfoort, Cleon, "Most 'Signs' Given by Coaches Are Merely Camouflage", Baseball Digest , December 1960January 1961, pp. 4749.

During the late innings of a game, as relief pitchers and pinch hitters are brought in, the opposing managers will often go back and forth trying to create favorable matchups with their substitutions: the manager of the fielding team trying to arrange same-handed pitcher-batter matchups, the manager of the batting team trying to arrange opposite-handed matchups. With a team that has the lead in the late innings, a manager may remove a starting position playerespecially one whose turn at bat is not likely to come up againfor a more skillful fielder. See, e.g., Davis, Hank, Small-town Heroes: Images of Minor League Baseball (Univ. of Iowa Press, 1997), p. 186.

All of these sports use a clock; in all of them, gameplay is less individual and more collective; and in none of them is the variation between playing fields nearly as substantial or important. The comparison between cricket and baseball demonstrates that many of baseball's distinctive elements are shared in various ways with its cousin sport.

At almost any turn in any baseball game, the most advantageous strategy is some form of aggressive strategy. Mount, Nicholas James, "Team Sports", in Encyclopedia of Time , ed. Samuel L. Macey (Taylor & Francis, 1994), pp. 588590: p. 590.

If the batter hits a line drive, the outfielder is solely responsible for deciding to try to catch it or play it on the bounce and for succeeding or failing. The statistical precision of baseball is both facilitated by this isolation and reinforces it. As described by Mandelbaum, It is impossible to isolate and objectively assess the contribution each [1] team member makes to the outcome of the play...

In baseball, by contrast, every player is more or less on his own.... Baseball is therefore a realm of complete transparency and total responsibility. A baseball player lives in a glass house, and in a stark moral universe.... Everything that every player does is accounted for and everything accounted for is either good or bad, right or wrong. Mandelbaum (2005), pp. 5557.

In the late nineteenth century, a former cricket player, English-born Henry Chadwick of Brooklyn, New York, was responsible for the "development of the box score, tabular standings, the annual baseball guide, the batting average, and most of the common statistics and tables used to describe baseball." Tygiel (2000), p. 16.

For example, statistics can indicate which specific pitchers a certain batter performs best against. If a given situation statistically favors a certain batter, the manager of the fielding team may be more likely to change pitchers or have the pitcher intentionally walk the batter in order to face one who is less likely to succeed. See, e.g., Albert, Jim, and Jay Bennett, "Situational Effects", ch. 4 in Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game , 2d ed. (Springer, 2003), pp. 71110.

The term was coined around 1980 by one of the field's leading proponents, Bill James, and derives from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Gray, Scott, The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball (Doubleday, 2006), p. ix.

With the rise in popularity of other team sports with much higher average ticket pricesfootball, basketball, and hockeyprofessional baseball had become among the most blue-collar-oriented of leading American spectator sports. Riess (1991), pp. 247248.

In 2008, nearly half a million high schoolers and over 35,000 collegians played on their schools' baseball teams.

Today, high school baseball in particular is immensely popular there. Bjarkman (2004), p. xxiv; Gmelch (2006), pp. 23, 53.

Talented children as young as seven are sent to special district schools for more intensive trainingthe first step on a ladder whose acme is the national baseball team.

In the early 1900s they were produced widely as promotional items by tobacco and confectionary companies. The 1930s saw the popularization of the modern style of baseball card, with a player photograph accompanied on the rear by statistics and biographical data. Baseball cardsmany of which are now prized collectiblesare the source of the much broader trading card industry, involving similar products for different sports and non-sports-related fields. Zoss (2004), pp. 1625.

Source: Wikipedia > Baseball