Baseball: Preview and history

Baseball is a team sport played rampantly throughout North America, Latin America, the Caribbean and East Asia. Its evolution from the various bat-and-ball games is difficult to attribute, but it is agreed that modern baseball is an American, development. It most likely originated from earlier British and Irish games like rounders, but further grew in style and function in the United States, eventually becoming the country’s national sport.

The earliest American reference to the game was in a 1791 Pittsfield, MA bylaw. The city statute then proclaimed that the playing of baseball was prohibited within 80 yards of Pittsfield's new meetinghouse as an effort to protect its windows. However, American newspapers have been seen referring to baseball as far back as the 1870’s as "The National Pastime" or "The National Game."

In a nutshell, baseball is a bat-and-ball game wherein a pitcher throws a hard, fist-sized ball past the hitting area of the batter. The batter attempts to hit the baseball with a cylindrical bat made of wood or metal. A team scores by advancing counter-clockwise past a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a diamond-shaped field. Each base is 90 feet from each other.

Rules of the game
Hall of Fame

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