What is the origin of baseball?
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08-08-02, 07:11 AM
Koz
It has been established without a doubt that modern baseball developed in North America. However, the exact origin of the game has not been conclusively determined. Many scholars believe that baseball evolved from a variety of similar games that have been played for centuries. One story goes that that Abner Doubleday, who was a Union officer during the American Civil War, invented the game in 1839. However, it has not been proved conclusively.

Stick-and-ball games
Evidence of games involving a stick and a ball being played, since the early days of civilisation, has been provided by scholars. There have been claims of stick-and-ball games being played in Persia, Egypt and Greece for purposes of recreation and as part of certain ceremonies. These games had caught on in Europe, by the Middle Ages (that is between the fifth and fifteenth centuries). There was a variety of forms that the game was being played and most of them were very popular. These stick-and-ball games were imported to the American colonies in the early seventeenth century, by Europeans. However, through the eighteenth century, they came to be considered as children’s games. By the nineteenth century, a number of these stick-and-ball games had become very popular in North America. Most of these games originated in England. People in places such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia played cricket.

Rounding off with Rounders
Scholars, however, have maintained that it was probably an English game rounders that came closest in resemblance to the modern day baseball. In rounders too, a batter struck a ball and ran around the bases for scoring runs. If the ball was caught on the hit or after first bounce, the batter was declared out. There was the equivalent of cricket’s run out too. It was known as plugging in, wherein fielders could get runners out by throwing the ball at them as they ran between bases. The rules of the game varied from place to place. The game was also known by different names such as town ball, one o’ cat, and, eventually, baseball.

An innovation in the rules that runners be tagged with the ball rather than hit with it made possible the introduction of a smaller hard ball and a larger, diamond-shaped field. The rule was adopted by Alexander Cartwright and a group of New York City players.

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