All About Baseball

Baseball

2006-05-11T04:42:00.000-07:00

For the Ken Burns documentary, see Baseball (documentary).

For unrelated computer and video games entitled Baseball or similar names, see Baseball (computer game).

Baseball is a team sport in which a player on one team (the pitcher) attempts to throw a hard, fist-sized ball within a zone over home plate while a player on the other team (the batter) attempts to hit the baseball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat that can be made out of either wood (professional baseball) or metal alloys (amateur baseball).

A team scores only when batting, by advancing counter-clockwise past a series of four markers called bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Each base is 90 feet from the previous base (except in amateur baseball).

Both "softballs" and "hardballs" fall under the sport named "baseball." The main difference between the two lies in pitching. In softballs, the pitcher delivers the ball with an underhand throw, where in hardballs, the ball is thrown overhand (hardball is traditional baseball). Other differences include ball size (softballs are larger) and field dimensions (softballs are shorter and distance between bases is 60 feet).

A view of the playing field at Busch Stadium II in St. Louis, Missouri.

Picture of Fenway Park. Part of the "Green Monster" can be seen on the right side of this picture

Baseball is most popular in the Americas and East Asia (although in South America only in the extreme northern portion). In Japan, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, South Korea, and Taiwan, it is one of the most popular sports. The United States is the birthplace of baseball, where it has long been regarded as more than just a "major sport" - it has been considered, for decades, the national pastime and Major League Baseball has been given a unique monopoly status by the U.S. Congress; the total attendance for Major League games is roughly equal to that of all other American professional team sports combined, this being due to the fact that they play far more games per season (162 regular season and 11 minimum postseason games) than any other sport. Among American television viewers, however, baseball has been surpassed in popularity (in terms of television ratings) by American football. Although three of the four most popular sports in North America are ball games (baseball, basketball and American football), baseball's popularity grew so great that the word "ballgame" in the United States almost always refers to a game of baseball, and "ballpark" to a baseball field. Of notable exception is in the south, where "ballgame" is used more frequently in association with the more popular football.

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History

Main article: History of baseball

Baseball is among the most popular team sports in the United States. A unique culture surrounds it, which includes the game itself, the field, the players, the ballparks, and the fans. It remains a sport created in and for simpler times, yet is a complex sport that is greater than any one individual, team, or era. Baseball's current popularity is supposed to be less than that of football; its greater attendance than all other team sports combined (see above) is supposedly a function of its longer season. Yet the 162 game MLB season is only twice that of the NHL or NBA, both of which play 82 game seasons. It's odd that baseball's attendance figures (which reached another record in 2005) are explained away by its longer season, yet the same explanation isn't used to consider why baseball's TV ratings are lower. There are ten times as many baseball than football games in any given year, yet football doesn't get ten times the ratings for nationally televised games, let alone ten times baseball's per-game attendance. Also, the intensity of the fan base must be considered. Even in the South, where football and NASCAR are the apparent kings, baseball books far out-number football books in your local Barnes and Noble.

The origins and evolution of the various bat-and-ball games are murky, and many believe that baseball is primarily an American invention. However, many believe that it originated as an adaptation of the game of rounders, vigaro and was also influenced by the rules of cricket. Indeed, the English author Jane Austen specifically mentions the game of baseball in her novel, Northanger Abbey, being played by the protagonist, Catherine Moreland. The book was first written in 1798 and revised until publication in 1803. As far back as the 1870s, American newspapers were referring to baseball as "The National Pastime" or "The National Game." An award-winning account of the origins of the game is David Block's Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game (University of Nebraska Press, 2005). The publisher's description of the book notes that "David Block looks into the early history of the game and of the 150-year-old debate about its beginnings. He tackles one stubborn misconception after another, debunking the enduring belief that baseball descended from the English game of rounders and revealing a surprising new explanation for the most notorious myth of all—the Abner Doubleday–Cooperstown story." In short, the debate on the game's origins may never be settled to everyone's satisfaction.

A substantial part of baseball's appeal is that most of the games take place during the warm, relatively leisurely months of the year, which is why many people refer to baseball players as "The Boys of Summer."

Baseball is a perennial attraction—summarized below in Baseball's unique style—unlike any other mainstream, American sport. Many people believe that baseball is the ultimate combination of skill, timing, athleticism, and strategy. Yogi Berra (a Hall of Fame baseball player) once said: "Baseball is 90% mental—the other half is physical."

The following section on Gameplay provides the rules of game, but the lure of baseball is in its subtleties: situational defense, pitch location, pitch sequence, statistics, ball parks, history, and player personalities. For the avid fan, the game—even during its slowest points—is never boring because of these nuances. Therefore, a full appreciation of baseball naturally requires some knowledge of the rules; it also requires deep observation of those endearing and enduring qualities that give baseball its unique style.

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Gameplay

A simplified version of the rules of baseball is at simplified baseball rules. Also visit www.mlb.com, the official web site of Major League Baseball in the United States, where you can access the complete Official Rules, and view clips of baseball being played during the baseball season (April-October).

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General structure

Diagram of a baseball diamond.

Baseball is played between two teams of nine players each on a baseball field, under the authority of one or more officials, called umpires. There are usually four umpires in major league games; up to six (and as few as one) may officiate depending on the league and the importance of the game. There are four bases. Numbered counter-clockwise, first, second and third bases are cushions (sometimes informally referred to as bags) shaped as 15 in (38 cm) squares which are raised a short distance above the ground; together with home plate, the fourth "base," they form a square with sides of 90 ft (27.4 m) called the diamond. Home base (plate) is a pentagonal rubber slab known as simply home. The field is divided into two main sections:

The infield, containing the four bases, is for defensive and conversational purposes bounded by the foul lines and the grass line (see figure). However, the infield technically consists of only the area within and including the bases and foul lines.
The outfield is the grassed area beyond the infield grass line (for general purposes; see above under infield), between the foul lines, and bounded by a wall or fence. Again, there is a technical difference; properly speaking, the outfield consists of all fair ground beyond the square of the infield and its bases. The area between the foul lines, including the foul lines (the foul lines are in fair territory), is fair territory, and the area outside the foul lines is foul territory.

The game is played in nine innings in which each team gets one turn to bat and try to score runs while the other pitches and defends in the field. In baseball, the defense always has the ball -- a fact that differentiates it from most other team sports. The teams switch every time the defending team gets three players of the batting team out. The winner is the team with the most runs after nine innings. In the case of a tie, additional innings are played until one team comes out ahead at the end of an inning (if the visitors are ahead) or in an incomplete inning (if the home team scores to take the lead in its half of an extra inning, the game ends at that point). At the start of the game, all nine players of the home team play the field, while players on the visiting team come to bat one at a time.

A batter follows through after swinging at a pitched ball.

The basic contest is always between the pitcher for the fielding team, and a batter. The pitcher throws—pitches—the ball towards home plate, where the catcher for the fielding team waits (in a crouched stance) to receive it. Behind the catcher stands the home plate umpire. The batter stands in one of the batter's boxes and tries to hit the ball with a bat. The pitcher must keep one foot in contact with the top or front of the pitcher's rubber—a 24" x 6" (~ 61 cm x 15 cm) plate located atop the pitcher's mound—during the entire pitch, so he can only take one step backward and one forward in delivering the ball. The catcher's job is to receive any BALLS that the batter has and to "call" the game by a series of hand movements that signal to the pitcher what pitch to throw and where. If the pitcher disagrees with the call, he will "shake off" the catcher by shaking his head; he accepts the sign by nodding. The catcher's role becomes more crucial depending on how the game is going, and how the pitcher responds to a given situation. Each pitch begins a new play, which might consist of nothing more than the pitch itself.

Each half-inning, the goal of the defending team is to get three members of the other team out. A player who is out must leave the field and wait for his next turn at bat. There are many ways to get batters and baserunners out; some of the most common are catching a batted ball in the air, tag outs, force outs, and strikeouts. After the fielding team has put out three players from the opposing team, that half of the inning is over and the team in the field and the team at bat switch places; there is no upper limit to the number that may bat in rotation before three outs are recorded. Going through the entire order in an inning is referred to as "batting around". It is indicative of a high scoring inning. A complete inning consists of each opposing side having a turn (three outs) on offense.

The goal of the team at bat is to score more runs than the opposition; a player may do so only by batting, then becoming a base runner, touching all the bases in order (via one or more plays), and finally touching home plate. To that end, the goal of each batter is to enable baserunners to score or to become a baserunner himself. The batter attempts to hit the ball into fair territory—between the baselines—in such a way that the defending players cannot get them or the baserunners out. In general, the pitcher attempts to prevent this by pitching the ball in such a way that the batter cannot hit it cleanly or, ideally, at all.

A baserunner who successfully touches home plate after touching all previous bases in order scores a run. In an enclosed field, a fair ball hit over the fence on the fly is normally an automatic home run, which entitles the batter and all runners to touch all the bases and score. A home run hit with all bases occupied ('bases loaded') is called a grand slam.

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Fielding team

See also: Baseball positions and Baseball positioning

The squad in the field is the defensive team; they attempt to prevent the baserunners from scoring. There are nine defensive positions, however, only two of the positions have a mandatory location (pitcher and catcher), the locations of the other seven fielders is not specified by the rules, except that at the moment the pitch is delivered they must be positioned in fair territory and not in the space between the pitcher and the catcher. These fielders often shift their positioning in response to specific batters or game situations, and they may exchange positions with one another at any time. The nine positions are: pitcher, catcher, first baseman, second baseman, third baseman, shortstop, left fielder, center fielder, and right fielder. Scorekeepers label each position with a number starting with the pitcher (1), catcher (2), first baseman (3), second baseman (4), third baseman (5), shortstop (6), left fielder (7), center fielder (8), right fielder (9). This convention was established by Henry Chadwick. The reason the shortstop seems out of order has to do with the way fielders positioned themselves in the early years of the game.

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The battery

The battery is composed of the pitcher, who stands on the rubber of the mound, and the catcher, who squats behind home plate. These are the two fielders who always deal directly with the batter on every pitch, hence the term "battery", coined by Henry Chadwick and later reinforced by the implied comparison to artillery fire.

The pitcher's main role is to pitch the ball toward home plate with the goal of getting the batter out. Pitchers also play defense by fielding batted balls, covering bases (for a potential tag out or force out on an approaching runner), or backing up throws. The catcher's main role is to receive the pitch if the batter does not hit it. Together with the pitcher and coaches, the catcher plots game strategy by suggesting different pitches and by shifting the starting positions of the other fielders. Catchers are also responsible for defense in the area near home plate.

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The infielders

The four infielders are the first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, and third baseman. Originally the first, second and third basemen played very near their respective bases, and the shortstop generally played "in" (hence the term), covering the area between second, third, and the pitchers box, or wherever the game situation required. As the game evolved, the fielding positions changed to the now-familiar "umbrella", with the first and third baseman generally positioned a short distance toward second base from their bases, the second baseman to the right side of second base, and the shortstop playing to the left of second base, as seen from the batter's perspective, filling in the gaps.

The first baseman's job consists largely of making force plays at first base on ground balls hit to the other infielders. When an infielder picks up a ball from the ground hit by the batter, he must throw it to the first baseman before the batter gets to the base for the batter to be out. The first baseman must be able to catch the ball very well. The first baseman also fields balls hit near first base. The first baseman also has to receive throws from the pitcher in order to tag runners out who have reached base safely. The position is less physically challenging than the other positions, but there is still a lot of skill involved. Infielders don't always make good throws to first base, so it is the first baseman's job to field any ball thrown toward him cleanly. Older players who can no longer fulfill the demands of their original positions also often become first basemen. The second baseman covers the area to the first-base side of second base and provides backup for the first baseman in bunt situations. He also is a cut-off for the outfield. This is when the outfielder doesn't have to throw the full distance from him/her to the base, but just to the cut-off. The shortstop fills the critical gap between second and third bases—where right-handed batters generally hit ground balls—and also covers second or third base and the near part of left field. This player is also a cut-off for the outfield. This position is the most demanding defensively, so a good shortstop doesn't need to necessarily be a good batter. The third baseman's primary requirement is a strong throwing arm, in order to make the long throw across the infield to the first baseman. Quick reaction time is also important for third basemen, as they tend to see more sharply hit balls than the other infielders, thus the nickname for third base as the "hot corner."

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The outfielders

The three outfielders, left fielder, center fielder, and right fielder, are so named from the catcher's perspective looking out onto the field. The right fielder generally has the strongest arm of all the outfielders due to the need to make throws on runners attempting to take third base. The center fielder has more territory to cover than the corner outfielders, so this player must be quick and agile with a strong arm to throw balls in to the infield; as with the shortstop, teams tend to emphasize defense at this position. Also, the center fielder is considered the outfield leader, and left- and right-fielders often cede to his direction when fielding fly balls. Of all outfielders, the left fielder often has the weakest arm, as they generally do not need to throw the ball as far in order to prevent the advance of any baserunners. The left fielder still requires good fielding and catching skills, and tends to receive more balls than the right fielder due to the fact that right-handed hitters, who are much more common, tend to "pull" the ball into left field. The left fielder also backs up third base on pick-off attempts from the catcher.

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Defensive strategy

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Pitching

The typical motion of a pitcher

Main article: Pitching

Effective pitching is vitally important to a baseball team, as pitching is the key for the defensive team to retire batters and to preventing runners from getting on base. A full game usually involves over one hundred pitches thrown by each team. However, most pitchers begin to tire before they reach this point. In previous eras, pitchers would often throw up to four complete games (all nine innings) in a week. With new advances in medical research and thus a better understanding of how the human body functions and tires out, starting pitchers tend more often to throw fractions of a game (typically 6 or 7 innings depending on their performance) about every five days (though a few complete games do still occur each year).

Multiple pitchers are often needed in a single game, including the starting pitcher and relief pitcher(s). Pitchers are substituted for one another like any other player (see below), and the rules do not limit the number of pitchers that can be used in a game; the only limiting factor is the size of the squad, naturally. In general, starting pitchers are not used in relief situations except sometimes during the post-season when every game is vital. If a game runs into many extra innings, a team may well empty its bullpen. If it then becomes necessary to use a "position player" as a pitcher, major league teams generally have certain players pre-designated as emergency relief pitchers, to avoid the embarrassment of using a less skillful player. In baseball's early years, squads were smaller, and relief pitchers were relatively uncommon, with the starter normally remaining for the entire game unless he was either thoroughly ineffective or became injured; today, with a much greater emphasis on pitch count (100 being the "magic number" in general), over the course of a single game each team will frequently use from two to five pitchers. In the 2005 ALCS, all four of the Chicago White Sox victories were complete games by the starters, a highly noteworthy event in the modern game.

Although a pitcher can only take one step backward and one forward while delivering the ball, the pitcher has a great arsenal at his disposal in the variation of location, velocity, movement, and arm location (see types of pitches). Most pitchers attempt to master two or three types of pitches; some pitchers throw up to 6 types of pitches with varying degrees of control. Common pitches include a fastball, which is the ball thrown at just under maximum velocity; a curveball, which is made to curve by rotation imparted by the pitcher; and a change-up, which seeks to mimic the delivery of a fastball but arrives at significantly lower velocity.

To illustrate pitching strategy, consider the "fastball/change-up" combination: The average major-league pitcher can throw a fast ball around 90 miles per hour (145 km/h), and a few pitchers have even exceeded 100 miles per hour (161 km/h). The change-up is thrown somewhere between 75 to 85 miles per hour (121 to 137 km/h). Since the batter's timing is critical to hitting a pitch, a batter swinging to hit what looks like a fast ball, would be terribly fooled (swing and miss, hopefully) when the pitch turns out to be a much slower change-up.

Some pitchers choose to throw using the 'submarine style,' a very efficient sidearm or near-underhand motion. Pitchers with a submarine delivery are often very difficult to hit because of the angle and movement of the ball once released. Walter Johnson, who threw one of the fastest fast balls in the history of the game, threw sidearm (though not submarine) rather than a normal overhand. True underhanded pitching was outlawed early in baseball history due to the fact that because the underhand motion is a natural motion it puts less stress on the arm and enables the hurler to throw at speeds deemed unfair to the batter. Remember, when baseball first began the pitcher was supposed to "allow" the batter to hit the ball.

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Fielding strategy

Since only the pitcher's and catcher's locations are fixed( The pitcher does sometimes covers 1st base and home plate if the the play pulls the 1st baseman/catcher off the base as the runner approaches and someone needs to cover the base for a play to be made) , the other players on the field move around as needed to defend against scoring a run. Many variations of this are possible, as location depends upon the "situation." "Situation" refers to immediate circumstances of play, and includes: the number of outs, the count (balls and strikes) on the batter, the number and speed of runners, the ability of the fielders, the ability of the pitcher, the

Japanese Baseball

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Koshien Stadium (in 1992)

Baseball has been a popular sport in Japan for over a century since its introduction in 1872. It is called 野球 (やきゅう; yakyū) in Japanese, combining the characters for field and ball. It is played at all age levels but most widely in junior high schools and senior high schools. Two tournaments are held in March and August for senior high school teams that win a prefectural tournament. The location of the tournaments is Koshien Stadium.

The highest level of competition is the professional league, started in 1920. It is called Puro Yakyū (プロ野球), meaning Professional Baseball.

Players from the Japanese leagues who have gone on to success in Major League Baseball in the United States include Hideo Nomo, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Ichiro Suzuki, Tadahito Iguchi and Hideki Matsui.

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1 Professional baseball
- 1.1 Problems of professional baseball
2 History
3 Current Japanese baseball teams
4 Defunct Japanese baseball teams
5 Records
6 See also
7 External links

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Professional baseball

Japanese professional baseball consists of two leagues, the Central League and the Pacific League. There are also two secondary-level professional minor leagues, the Eastern League and the Western League, that play shorter schedules.

The professional season starts in late March or early April and ends in October with two or three all star games in July. In recent decades, the two leagues each scheduled 130, 135 or 140 regular season games with the best teams from each league going on to play in the "Nihon Series" or Japan Series. Prior to 1950 there was just one league, called the Japanese Baseball League. From 1973 to 1982, the Pacific League employed a split season with the first half winner playing against the second half winner in a mini-playoff to determine its champion. Then in 2004, the Pacific League played five fewer games than the Central League teams during the regular season and used a new playoff format to determine its champion. The teams in third and second place played in a best two of three series (all at the second place team's home ground) with the winner of that series going on to play the first place team in a best 3 of 5 format at its home ground. In the end, the Seibu Lions finished in second place, defeated Nippon Ham 2 games to 1, went on to take 3 of 5 games in Fukuoka against the Daiei Hawks and then defeated the Chunichi Dragons in the Japan Series, 4 games to 3, capping off their grueling playoff drive with a well-earned championship.

The two leagues began interleague play in 2005, with each team playing two 3-game series (one home, one away) against each of the six teams in the other league. All interleague play games are played in a 7-week span near the middle of the season.

Play in the Pacific League is similar to that of American League baseball, with the use of designated hitters, unlike the Central League. Unlike North American baseball, however, Japanese baseball games may end in a tie. If the score is tied after 9 innings of play, up to 3 additional innings will be played. If there is no leader after 12 innings, the game is declared a draw. Other differences from its American counterpart is that the general play is less aggressive, there are fewer home runs, the strike zone is larger near the batter but smaller away from the batter, and the ball is slightly smaller and wound tighter.

Unlike American pro teams, Japanese professional baseball teams are usually named after their corporate owners/sponsors rather than the cities in which they play.

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Problems of professional baseball

Financial problems hinder the league as a whole, but the problem is not a simple one to solve. It is believed that except for the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers, all teams are operating with considerable subsidies, often as much as ¥6 billion or about US$50 million, from their parent companies. A rise in the salaries of players is often blamed, but, from the start of the professional league, parent companies paid the difference as an advertisement. Most teams have never tried to improve their finances through constructive marketing. Until Nippon Ham Fighters moved to Hokkaidō, there were six teams in Tokyo and its surrounding area and three teams in the Ōsaka–Kōbe region. The market was flooded, but this was considered all right, as there was no competitor that tried to challenge baseball's popularity.

Eventually, however, J. League professional football league challenged that, winning over many people who used to spend their money and time on baseball. Instead of teams clustered in metropolitan areas, J. League aimed to create teams in the major city of every prefecture, much like professional football leagues in Europe.

On September 18, 2004, professional baseball players went on a two-day strike, the first strike in the history of the league, to protest the proposed merger between the Orix BlueWave and the Ōsaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and the failure of the owners to agree to create a new team to fill the void resulting from the merger. The strike was settled on September 23, 2004, when the owners agreed to grant a new franchise in the Pacific League and to continue the two-league, 12-team system. The new team, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles began play in the 2005 season.

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History

Baseball was introduced to Japan in 1872 by Horace Wilson, and its first formal team was established in 1878. For almost 30 years, until 1906, a game could be viewed freely, as it was considered shameful to take money for doing something the players liked. In 1907, the first game was held that had a fee to watch. From 1908, several U.S. professional teams made their tours and had a match against amateur teams made up mostly by university students. Realizing that a professional league was necessary to improve, two professional teams were established in 1920. In the same year, teams held exhibition tours in Korea and Manchuria to spread baseball. This first professional league disintegrated in 1923 for financial reasons, and after repeated attempts to revive a professional league, it formally disbanded in 1929.

In 1934, Dai-nippon Tokyo Yakyū Club (literally Tokyo, Japan Baseball Club) was established, reviving professional baseball. A second team, Ōsaka Yakyū Club (literally Ōsaka Baseball Club) was established in following year. The former became Yomiuri Giants and the latter became Hanshin Tigers. In 1936, five other teams also formed, and the Nippon Professional Baseball League was started. Briefly forced to stop playing for a year beginning in 1944, it restarted on November 6, 1945, and a full season was played the next year. In 1950, the league split into the Central and Pacific Leagues.

Starting in 1992 and continuing intermittently, several Major League Baseball (MLB) teams have played exhibition games against Japanese teams. American teams popular in Japan include the Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers, and New York Yankees at least in part due to Japanese players on those teams. Although the Minnesota Twins lack any Japanese players on their squad, they are quite popular in Japan, seen as playing baseball more like a Japanese team than the stereotypical home run hitting American clubs. Since 1986, a team of MLB All-Stars has made an end-of-the-season biennial tour of Japan, playing exhibitions games against a mix of NPB teams and all-star teams; the MLB squad has won each of these series.

In 2005 the Japan Samurai Bears began play in the Golden Baseball League, becoming the first Japanese team in an American professional baseball league.

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Current Japanese baseball teams

Current Japanese professional baseball teams
Central League
Yomiuri Giants	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Yokohama BayStars
Chunichi Dragons	Hanshin Tigers	Hiroshima Toyo Carp
Pacific League
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters	Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles	Seibu Lions
Chiba Lotte Marines	Orix Buffaloes	Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks
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The Central League
- Yomiuri Giants (Tokyo)
- Tokyo Yakult Swallows (Tokyo)
- Yokohama BayStars (Yokohama)
- Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya)
- Hanshin Tigers (Nishinomiya)
- Hiroshima Toyo Carp (Hiroshima)
The Pacific League
- Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters (Sapporo)
- Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles (Sendai)
- Seibu Lions (Tokorozawa)
- Chiba Lotte Marines (Chiba)
- Orix Buffaloes (Ōsaka and Kōbe)
- Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks (Fukuoka)

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Defunct Japanese baseball teams

Former Japanese Baseball League teams:

Nagoya Golden Dolphins (merged with Tsubasa in 1940, Tsubasa later became Nishitetsu.)
Nishitetsu (dissolved in 1943.)
Yamato (dissolved in 1944.)

Former Central League teams:

Nishi Nihon Pirates (merged with the Nishitetsu Clippers in 1951, now the Seibu Lions.)
Shochiku Robins (merged with Taiyo Whales 1952, now the Yokohama BayStars.)

Former Pacific League teams:

Daiei Unions (merged with Mainichi Orions 1957, now the Chiba Lotte Marines.)
Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes (merged with the Orix BlueWave after the 2004 season to form the Orix Buffaloes.)
Orix BlueWave (merged with the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes after the 2004 season to form the Orix Buffaloes)
Takahashi Unions (merged with the Daiei Stars in 1956, the Stars later became the Daiei Unions.)

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Records

Season

Batting

Batting Average
- Randy Bass .389 (1986)
- Ichiro Suzuki .387 (2000)
- Ichiro Suzuki .385 (1994)
HR
- Sadaharu Oh 55 (1964)
- Alex Cabrera 55 (2001)
- Tuffy Rhodes 55 (2002)
- Randy Bass 54 (1985)
RBI
- Makoto Kozuru 161 (1950)
- Robert Rose 153 (1999)
SB
- Yutaka Fukumoto 106 (1972)
SO
- Ralph Bryant 204 (1993)
- Ralph Bryant 198 (1990)
- Ralph Bryant 187 (1989)
- Ralph Bryant 176 (1992)
- Orestes Destrade 165 (1990)

Pitching

ERA
- Hideo Fujimoto 0.73 (1943)
- Masaru Kageura 0.79 (1936 fall)
- Eiji Sawamura 0.81 (1937 spring)
Wins
- Victor Starffin 42 (1942)
- Kazuhisa Inao 42 (1961)
- Jiro Noguchi 40 (1942)
SO
- Yutaka Enatsu 401 (1968)
- Kazuhisa Inao 353 (1961)

career

BA
- Leron Lee .320 (1977–1987)
- Tsutomu Wakamatsu .31918 (1971–1989)
- Isao Harimoto .31915 (1959–1981)
  - Ichiro Suzuki hit .353 for his Japanese career (1993–2000), but did not have enough at-bats to qualify for career leadership.
HR
- Sadaharu Oh 868 (1959–1980)
RBI
- Sadaharu Oh 2170
SB
- Yutaka Fukumoto 1065 (1969–1988)
SO
- Kouji Akiyama 1712
ERA
- Hideo Fujimoto 1.90 (1942–1955)
Wins
- Masaichi Kaneda 400 (1950–1969)
- Tetsuya Yoneda 350 (1956–1977)
- Masaaki Koyama 320 (1953–1973)
- Keishi Suzuki 317 (1966–1985)
- Takehiko Bessho 310 (1942–1960)
- Victor Starffin 303 (1936–1955)
SO
- Masaichi Kaneda 4490

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External links

Japan Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Japanese Baseball Data Archive at The Baseball Guru
List of players at Japanese Baseball
((Japanese)) Official Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) Site (.jp)
MLB history of Puro Yakyū page
Japan Baseball Daily

Japanese Professional Baseball
Central League			Pacific League
Yomiuri Giants	Chunichi Dragons	Tokyo Yakult Swallows	Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters	Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles	Chiba Lotte Marines
Hiroshima Toyo Carp	Hanshin Tigers	Yokohama BayStars	Seibu Lions	Orix Buffaloes	Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks

Japan Series - Japanese Baseball League (former) - edit table

Baseball Field

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A baseball field or baseball diamond is the field upon which the game of baseball is played.

[hide]

1 Specifications
2 First Base
3 Second Base
4 Third Base
5 Foul Poles
6 Home plate
7 Pitcher's Mound
8 Baseline
9 Grass line
10 History
11 See also
12 References
13 External links

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Specifications

The starting point for much of the action on the field is home plate, which is a five-sided white rubber slab 17 inches by 8 1/2 by 12 by 12 by 8 1/2 inches. Next to each of the two parallel 8 1/2 inch sides is a batter's box. The point of home plate where the two 12 inch sides meet at right angles, is at one corner of a ninety-foot square. The other three corners of the square, in counterclockwise order from home plate, are called first base, second base, and third base. Three canvas bags fifteen inches (38 cm) square mark the three bases. These three bags along with home plate form the four bases at the corners of the infield.

Diagram of a baseball field.

A subtlety about the bases is that home plate and the first and third base bags are entirely within the ninety-foot square. They are positioned this way to help the umpires, as any ball hitting those bases must necessarily be in fair territory. Home plate has its peculiar shape in order to help the plate umpire judge whether a pitch is over the plate or not, i.e. whether it might be in the strike zone. The second base bag, which is fully within fair territory, is placed so that its center coincides exactly with the corner or "point" of the ninety-foot infield square. Thus, although the "points" of the bases are 90 feet apart, the physical distance between each successive pair of base markers is more like 88 feet.

The lines from home plate to first and third bases are extended to the nearest fence, stand or other obstruction and are called the foul lines. The portion of the playing field between (and including) the foul lines is fair territory; the rest is foul territory. The area in the vicinity of the square formed by the bases is called the infield; fair territory outside the infield is the outfield. Most baseball fields are enclosed with a fence that marks the outer edge of the outfield. The fence is usually set at a distance ranging from 300 to 410 feet (90 to 125 m) from home plate. Most professional and college baseball fields have a right and left foul pole. These poles are at the intersection of the foul lines and the respective ends of the outfield fence.

[edit]

First Base

Main article: First baseman

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Second Base

Main article: Second baseman

[edit]

Third Base

Main article: Third baseman

[edit]

Foul Poles

The purpose of the foul poles is to help the umpires judge whether a fly ball hit above the fence line is fair (a home run) or foul (out of play). The foul pole is an extension of the foul line. Despite their names, both the foul lines and the foul poles are actually in fair territory. Prior to 1920, the foul lines were "infinite": A fly ball over the fence had to land in fair territory, or to be fair when last seen by the umpire, in order to be a home run. The rule was changed to be where the ball is when it clears the fence. Thus, a fly ball hitting a foul pole above the top of the outfield fence is a home run, regardless of where the ball goes after striking this pole, and a fly ball clearing the fence on the fair side of the pole is a home run regardless of where it lands. Foul poles (not shown on the diagram seen above) are typically much higher than the top of the outfield fence, and often have a narrow screen running along the fair side of the pole to further aid the umpire's judgment. It can still be a difficult call, especially in ballparks with no outfield stands behind the poles to provide perspective. Wrigley Field is notorious for arguments over long, curving flies down the lines which might even go higher than the foul pole. Sometimes, even repeated TV replays cannot prove the call either way.

[edit]

Home plate

For the Bonnie Raitt album, see Home Plate. For the geological feature on Mars, see Home Plate (Mars).

In baseball and related games, home plate is the final base that a player must touch to score. It has five sides. Unlike the other bases, home plate is hard, usually a slightly flexible hard plastic with beveled edges that rises only slightly above ground level.

[edit]

Pitcher's Mound

In the middle of the square is a low artificial hill called the pitcher's mound. On the mound there is a white rubber slab, called the pitcher's plate or commonly the rubber, six inches (15 cm) front-to-back and two feet (61 cm) across, the front of which is exactly sixty feet six inches (18.4 m) from the rear point of home plate. This peculiar distance was set by the rulemakers in 1893, not due to a clerical or surveying error as popular myth has it, but purposely (as noted earlier). On a baseball field, the pitcher's mound is a raised section in the middle of the diamond where the pitcher stands when throwing the pitch.

In Major League Baseball, a regulation mound is 18 feet (5.5 m) in diameter, with the center 59 feet (18.0 m) from the rear point of home plate, on the line between home plate and second base. The front edge of the pitcher's plate or rubber is 18 inches (45.7 cm) behind the center of the mound, making it 60 feet 6 inches (18.4 m) from the rear point of home plate. Six inches (15.2 cm) in front of the pitcher's rubber the mound begins to slope downward. The top of the rubber is to be no higher than ten inches (25.4 cm) above home plate. From 1903 through 1968 this height limit was set at 15 inches, but was often slightly higher, sometimes as high as 20 inches (50.8 cm), especially for teams that emphasized pitching, such as the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were reputed to have the highest mound in the majors.

A pitcher will push off the rubber with his foot in order to gain velocity toward home plate when pitching. In addition, a higher mound generally favors the pitcher over a lower mound. With the height advantage, the pitcher gains more leverage and can put more downward velocity on the ball, making it more difficult for the batter to strike the ball squarely with the bat. The lowering of the mound in 1969 was intended to "increase the batting" once again, as pitching had become increasingly dominant, reaching its peak the prior year; 1968 is known among baseball historians as "The Year of the Pitcher". This restrictive rule apparently did its job, contributing to the hitting surge of modern baseball.

A pitcher's mound is difficult for groundskeepers to maintain. On youth and amateur baseball fields, the mound may be much different than the rulebook definition due to erosion and repair attempts. Even in the major leagues, each mound gains its own character, as pitchers are allowed to kick away pieces of dirt in their way, thereby sculpting the mound a bit to their preference.

[edit]

Baseline

A baseline is the direct route—a straight line— between two adjacent bases. The basepath is the region within three feet (0.9 meters) of the baseline. Baserunners are not required to run in this objective basepath, however; a baserunner may run wherever he wants when no play is being attempted on him. At the moment the defense begins to attempt a tag on him, his running baseline is established as a direct line from his current position to the base which he is trying for. The runner may not stray three feet away from this line in an attempt to avoid a tag; if he does, he is automatically out.

[edit]

Grass line

The grass line, where the dirt of the infield ends and the grass of the outfield begins, has no special significance to the rules of the game. Its only purpose is to act as a visual aid so that participants, fans, and umpires may better judge distance from the center of the diamond.

[edit]

History

The basic layout of the diamond has been little changed since the original Knickerbocker Rules of the 1840s. The distance between bases was already established as 90 feet, which it remains to this day. Through trial and error, 90 feet had been settled upon as the optimal distance. 100 feet would have given too much advantage to the defense, and 80 feet too much to the offense. As athleticism has improved on both sides of the equation, 90 feet remains the appropriate balance between hitting and fielding, as it continues to provide frequent tests between the speed of a batter-runner and the throwing arm of a fielder.

It is the pitching distance, and other aspects of the pitcher's mound, and of pitching itself, that have been tinkered with from time to time over the many decades, in an effort to keep an appropriate balance between pitching and hitting.

In contrast to the distance between the bases, which seems natural enough, the very specific pitching distance of 60 feet 6 inches is one of those sports oddities that seems like a mistake unless one knows the history. To paraphrase Mae West, "Never mind the 60 feet, let's talk about the 6 inches":

The original Knickerbocker Rules did not specify the pitching distance explicitly.
By the time major league baseball began in the 1870s, the pitcher was compelled to pitch from within a "box" whose front edge was 45 feet from the "point" of home plate. Although he had to release the ball before crossing the line, as with bowlers in cricket, he also had to start his delivery from within the box; he could not run in from the field as bowlers do. Furthermore, he had to throw underhand. By the 1880s, pitchers had mastered the underhand delivery quite well. The year 1880 saw two perfect games within a week of each other.
In an attempt to "increase the batting", the front edge of the pitcher's box was moved back 5 feet in 1881, to 50 feet from home plate.
The size of the box was tinkered with over the next few years. Pitchers were allowed to throw overhand starting in 1884, and that tilted the balance of power again. In 1887, the box was set at 4 feet wide and 5 1/2 feet deep, with the front edge still 50 feet from the plate. However, the pitcher was compelled to deliver the ball with his back foot at the 55 1/2 foot line of the box, thus somewhat restricting his ability to "power" the ball with his overhand delivery.
In 1893, the box was replaced by the pitcher's plate, although the term "knocked out of the box" is still sometimes used when a pitcher is replaced for ineffectiveness. Exactly 5 feet was added to the point the pitcher had to toe, again "to increase the batting" (and hopefully to increase attendance, as fan interest had flagged somewhat), resulting in the peculiar pitching distance of 60 1/2 feet.
Many sources tend to say that the pitching distance evolved from 45 to 50 to 60 1/2 feet. However, the first two were the "release point" and the third is the "pushoff point", so the 1893 increase was not quite as dramatic as is often implied; that is, the 1893 rule change added only 5 feet to the release point, not 10 1/2 feet.
Originally the pitcher threw from flat ground (as softball pitchers still do), but over time the mound was developed, tipping the balance back the pitchers' way somewhat.

[edit]

References

Official Rules of Major League Baseball
The Baseball Encyclopedia, published by MacMillan).
Glory Fades Away, by Jerry Lansch

Baseball Coach

2006-05-11T04:45:00.000-07:00

In baseball, a number of coaches assist in the smooth functioning of a team. The most prominent is the manager who determines the lineup and decides how to substitute players during the game. Beyond the manager, more than a half dozen coaches may assist the manager in running the team. Baseball is unique in that the manager and coaches all wear numbered uniforms similar to those of the players. One noteable exception to this was Baseball Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack, who always wore a black suit and never dressed like a player while managing.

The team is assisted by two on-field coaches when it is at bat. They are stationed near first and third base to signal and direct the runners and batters. These coaches are called the first base coach and third base coach, respectively, and position themselves in designated coach's boxes. The third base coach typically has more responsibility because he must quickly and accurately signal to a baserunner whether he should attempt to score on a batted ball.

In addition, a team may have several other coaches who specialize in certain disciplines. A pitching coach mentors and trains pitchers. A hitting coach works with players to improve their hitting techniques and form. A bullpen coach is similar to a pitching coach but works primarily with relief pitchers in the bullpen. Another coaching position is the catching instructor who advises catchers. Many teams also employ special instructors in defense and baserunning. The position of bench coach is relatively new in baseball. The bench coach's responsibilities include helping to set up the day's practice and stretching routines before a game. Once the game begins, the bench coach acts mostly like an assistant manager, offering the manager situational advice. Because of MLB rules on the number of coaches, the same person may hold more than one of these positions.

Teams may hire more than one person for any given coaching position based on the team's needs. Teams may also hire people to serve as general coaches or instructors without any specific title who instead may perform any one or more of the duties listed above. Often times coaches will be former players themselves who can teach current players from their own experience.

Baseball Statistics

2006-05-11T04:47:00.000-07:00

As with many sports, and perhaps even more so, statistics are very important to baseball. A seemingly intrinsic part of the game is the keeping of statistics on the achievements of the players. The practice was started by Henry Chadwick in the 19th century who devised the concepts of batting average and earned run average based on his experience of cricket. Statistics have been kept for the Major Leagues since their creation.

General managers and baseball scouts study player statistics to decide what players to try to get for their team. Managers, catchers and pitchers study statistics of batters on opposing teams to figure out how best to pitch to them and position the players. Managers and batters study opposing pitchers to figure out how best to hit them. Managers often base their personnel decisions during the game on statistics, such as choosing who to put in the lineup, or which relief pitcher to bring in.

Traditionally, statistics like batting average for batters (the number of hits divided by the number of at bats) and earned run average (approximately the number of runs given up by a pitcher per nine innings) have governed the statistical world of baseball. However, the advent of sabermetrics brought an onslaught of new statistics that better gauge a player's performance and contributions to his team from year to year.

Some sabermetric statistics have entered the mainstream baseball world. Among statistics that do an excellent job of measuring a batter's performance, On-base plus slugging (OPS) is the easiest to calculate. It adds the hitter's on base percentage (number of times reached base -by any means- divided by total plate appearances) to his or her slugging percentage (total bases divided by at bats). Some argue that the OPS formula is flawed and that more weight should be shifted towards OBP (on base percentage). Regardless, OPS still stands as the most direct means of evaluating a hitter's performance using readily available statistics.

OPS is also useful when determining a pitcher's level of success. 'Opponent On-base Plus Slugging' (OOPS) is becoming a popular way to evaluating a pitcher's actual performance. When analyzing a pitcher's statistics, some useful categories to consider are: K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings), K/BB (strikeouts per walk), WHIP (walks+hits per inning pitched) and OOPS (opponent on-base plus slugging). When viewing all these categories together, you gain a much clearer picture of the pitcher's success level (as opposed to simply considering W-L and ERA).

Since 2001, more emphasis has been placed on Defense-Independent Pitching Statistics. These statistics, such as Defense-Independent ERA (dERA), evaluate a pitcher solely according to those events governed solely by the pitcher's performance, regardless of the strength of the defensive players behind him.

Also important are all of those statistics in certain in-game situations. For example, a certain hitter's ability to hit left-handed pitchers might cause his manager to give him more chances to face lefties. Other hitters may have a history of success against a given pitcher (or vice versa), and the manager may use this information to engineer a favourable matchup.

Comprehensive, historical baseball statistics were difficult for the average fan to access until 1951, when researcher Hy Turkin published "The Complete Encyclopedia of Baseball". In 1969, MacMillan Publishing printed its first Baseball Encyclopedia, using a computer to compile stats for the first time. "Big Mac" became the standard baseball reference until 1988, when Total Baseball was released by Warner Books, using even more sophisticated technology. (This led to discovery, and expulsion, of several players who didn't belong in the record books -- "phantom ballplayers", like Lou Proctor.)

[hide]

1 Commonly used statistics
- 1.1 Batting statistics
- 1.2 Baserunning statistics
- 1.3 Pitching statistics
- 1.4 Fielding statistics
- 1.5 General statistics
2 See also
3 Other terminology

[edit]

Commonly used statistics

Most of these terms also apply to softball. Commonly used statistics with their abbreviations are explained here. The explanations below are for quick reference and do not fully or completely define the statistic; for the strict definition, see the corresponding article for each statistic.

[edit]

Batting statistics

1B - Single - hits on which the batter reached first base safely without the contribution of a fielding error.
2B - Double - hits on which the batter reached second base safely without the contribution of a fielding error.
3B - Triple - hits on which the batter reached third base safely without the contribution of a fielding error.
AB - At bat - Batting appearances, not including bases on balls, hit by pitch, sacrifices, interference, or obstruction
BA - Batting average (also abbreviated AVG) - hits divided by at bats
BB - Base on balls (also called a "walk") - times receiving four balls and advancing to first base
BBP - Walk percentage - number of base on balls divided by plate appearances
BB/K - Walk-to-strikeout ratio - number of base on balls divided by number of strikeouts
EBH - Extra base hit (Sometimes EB or XBH) - doubles plus triples plus home runs
FC - Fielder's choice - times reaching base when a fielder chose to try for an out on another runner
G/F - Ground ball fly ball ratio - number of ground balls divided by number of fly balls
GIDP - Ground into Double play - number of ground balls hit that became double plays
GS - Grand Slam - a home run with the bases loaded, resulting in four runs scoring, and four RBI credited to the batter.
H - Hit - times reached base because of a batted, fair ball without error by the defense
HBP - Hit by pitch - times touched by a pitch and awarded first base as a result
HR - Home run - hits on which the batter successfully touched all four bases, without the contribution of a fielding error.
K - Strike out - number of times that strike three is taken or swung at and missed, or bunted foul
LOB - Left on base - number of runners not out nor scored at the end of an innning.
OBP - On base percentage - times reached base (H + BB + HBP) divided by at bats plus walks plus hit by pitch plus sacrifice flies (AB + BB + HBP + SF).
OPS - On-base plus slugging - on-base percentage plus slugging percentage
PA - Plate appearance - number of completed batting appearances no matter the result
RBI - Run batted in - number of runners who scored due to a batters's action, except when batter grounded into double play or reached on an error
SAC - Sacrifice bunt - number of times bunts advanced other runners (sometimes called sacrifice hit or SH)
SF - Sacrifice fly - number of fly ball outs which allow another runner to score
SLG - Slugging percentage - total bases divided by at-bats
TA - Total average - total bases, plus walks, plus steals, divided by plate appearances plus caught stealing
TB - Total bases - one for each single, two for each double, three for each triple, and four for each home run
TOB - Times on base - times reaching base as a result of hits, walks and hit by pitches

[edit]

Baserunning statistics

CS - Caught stealing - times tagged out when attempting to steal a base or when picked off
SB - Stolen base - number of bases advanced other than on batted balls, walks, or hits by pitch.
R - Run - times reached home base legally and safely

[edit]

Pitching statistics

AVG - Opponents batting average - hits allowed divided by at-bats faced
BB - Base on balls (also called a "walk") - times pitching four balls, allowing runner to advance to first base
BB/9 - Base on balls times nine divided by innings pitched
BS - Blown save - number of times entering the game in a save situation, and being charged the run which ties the game.
CG - Complete game - number of games where player was the only pitcher for his team
dERA - Defense-Independent ERA - a measure of a pitcher's effectiveness that doesn't include balls hit within the field of play
ER - Earned run - number of runs that did not occur as a result of errors or passed balls
ERA - Earned run average - earned runs times innings in a game (usually nine) divided by innings pitched
GIR - Games in relief - number of games pitched where player was not the starting pitcher for his team
GF - Games finished - number of games pitched where player was the final pitcher for his team
GP - Games pitched - number of games in which the player pitched
G/F - Ground ball fly ball ratio - ground balls allowed divided by fly balls allowed
GS - Games started - number of games pitched where player was the first pitcher for his team
H/9 - Hits per nine innings - hits allowed times nine divided by innings pitched
HA - Hits Allowed - total hits allowed
HB - Hit batsman - times hit a batter with pitch, allowing runner to advance to first base
HLD (or H) - Hold - number of games entered in a save situation, left in save situation, recorded at least one out, and not having surrendered the lead
HRA - Home runs allowed - total home runs allowed
IBB - Intentional base on balls
IRA - Inherited runs allowed - number of runners allowed to score who were on base when pitcher enters the game
IP - Innings pitched - number of outs recorded while pitching divided by three
K - Strikeout (also abbreviated K) - number of batters who received strike three
K/9 - Strikeouts per nine innings - strikeouts times nine divided by innings pitched
K/BB - Strikeout-to-walk ratio - number of strikeouts divided by number of base on balls
L - Loss - number of games where pitcher was pitching while the opposing team took the lead and went on to win
R/9 - Runs per nine innings - number of runs allowed times nine divided by innings pitched
SHO - Shutout - number of complete games having allowed zero runs
SV - Save - number of close games finished where the pitcher's team won
TBF - Total batters faced - opponent's total plate appearances
W - Win - number of games where pitcher was pitching while his team took the lead and went on to win (also related: winning percentage)
W+S - Relief wins plus saves - wins plus saves
WHIP - Walks plus hits per inning pitched - bases on balls plus hits divided by innings pitched
W/9 - Walks per nine innings - bases on balls times nine divided by innings pitched
WP - Wild pitches - charged when a pitch is too high, low, or wide of home plate for the catcher to field, thereby allowing one or more runners to advance or score

See also

List of pitches

[edit]

Fielding statistics

A - Assists - number of outs recorded on a play where a fielder touched the ball, except if such touching is the putout

DP - Double plays - one for each double play during which the fielder recorded a putout or an assist.
E - Errors - number of times a fielder fails to make a play he should have made with common effort, and the offense benefits as a result
FP - Fielding percentage - total plays (chances minus errors) divided by the number of total chances
INN - Innings - number of innings that a player is at one certain position
PB - Passed ball - error charged to the catcher that occurs when the ball is dropped and one or more runners advance
PO - Putout - number of times the fielder tags, forces, or appeals a runner and he is called out as a result
RF - Range factor - ([putouts + assists]*9)/innings played. Used to determine the amount of field that the player can cover
SB - Stolen bases - number of times a runner advanced on the pitch without being thrown out by the catcher
TC - Total chances - assists plus putouts plus errors
TP - Triple play - one for each triple play during which the fielder recorded a putout or an assist

[edit]

General statistics

G - Games played - number of games where the player played, in whole or in part
WW - "Wasn't Watching" - used by non-official scorekeepers when their attention is distracted from the game - said to have been invented by Phil Rizzuto

[edit]

Other terminology

Ball
Strike
Strike zone

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_statistics"

Category: Baseball

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Baseball Manager

2006-05-11T04:49:00.000-07:00

In baseball, the head coach of a team is called the manager (or more formally, the field manager); this individual controls matters of team strategy on the field and team leadership. The manager sets the line-up and starting pitcher before each game as well as making substitutions throughout the game. How much control a manager takes in player strategy varies from one manager to another. Some managers control pitch selection, defensive positioning, decisions to bunt/steal/pitch out, etc., while others leave these decisions to a player's discretion. Most find a balance somewhere in the middle.

In modern baseball the field manager is normally subordinate to the team's general manager, who among other things is responsible for personnel decisions, including hiring and firing the field manager. However, the term manager used without qualification almost always refers to the field manager, while the general manager is often called the GM.

1 Current MLB Managers
- 1.1 American League
- 1.2 National League
2 See also

Current MLB Managers

[edit]

American League

Team	Manager	Managing Since
Baltimore Orioles	Sam Perlozzo	2005
Boston Red Sox	Terry Francona	2004
Chicago White Sox	Ozzie Guillén	2004
Cleveland Indians	Eric Wedge	2003
Detroit Tigers	Jim Leyland	2006
Kansas City Royals	Buddy Bell	2005
Los Angeles Angels	Mike Scioscia	2000
Minnesota Twins	Ron Gardenhire	2002
New York Yankees	Joe Torre	1996
Oakland Athletics	Ken Macha	2003
Seattle Mariners	Mike Hargrove	2004
Tampa Bay Devil Rays	Joe Maddon	2006
Texas Rangers	Buck Showalter	2003
Toronto Blue Jays	John Gibbons	2004

[edit]

National League

Team	Manager	Managing Since
Arizona Diamondbacks	Bob Melvin	2004
Atlanta Braves	Bobby Cox	1991
Chicago Cubs	Dusty Baker	2003
Cincinnati Reds	Jerry Narron	2005
Colorado Rockies	Clint Hurdle	2003
Florida Marlins	Joe Girardi	2006
Houston Astros	Phil Garner	2004
Los Angeles Dodgers	Grady Little	2006
Milwaukee Brewers	Ned Yost	2003
New York Mets	Willie Randolph	2004
Philadelphia Phillies	Charlie Manuel	2005
Pittsburgh Pirates	Jim Tracy	2006
St. Louis Cardinals	Tony La Russa	1996
San Diego Padres	Bruce Bochy	1995
San Francisco Giants	Felipe Alou	2003
Washington Nationals	Frank Robinson	2002

Baseball Pitch

2006-05-11T04:58:00.000-07:00

In baseball, a pitch is the act of throwing a baseball toward home plate to start a play. The term comes from the Knickerbocker Rules. Originally, the ball had to be literally "pitched" underhand, as with pitching horseshoes. Overhand throwing was not allowed in baseball until 1884.

Pitchers throw a variety of pitches, each of which has a slightly different velocity, trajectory, movement, and/or arm angle. These variations are introduced to confuse the batter in various ways, and ultimately aid the defensive team in getting the batter or baserunners out.

To obtain variety, and therefore enhance defensive baseball strategy, the pitcher manipulates the grip on the ball at the point of release. Variations in the grip, cause the seams to "catch" the air differently, therefore changing the trajectory of the ball, making it harder for the batter to hit.

[hide]

1 List of pitches
- 1.1 Fastballs
- 1.2 Breaking balls
- 1.3 Changeups
- 1.4 Others

[edit]

List of pitches

[edit]

Fastballs

The fastball is the most common pitch in baseball, and all pitchers have some form of a fastball in their arsenal. At its simplest, it is a straight pitch thrown very fast. The cut fastball, split-finger fastball and forkball are variations on the fastball with extra movement. The most common fastball type pitches are:

four-seam fastball (rising fastball)
two-seam fastball
- cutter
- splitter
- sinker
forkball

[edit]

Breaking balls

Well-thrown breaking balls have movement—sideways or downward usually. The goal is usually to make the ball difficult to hit well or confusing to batters. Most breaking balls are considered off-speed pitches. The most common breaking pitches are:

curveball
- knuckle curve
- slurve
slider
screwball
submarine (actually a pitching motion, not a distinct pitch type)

[edit]

Changeups

The changeup is the staple off-speed pitch, usually thrown to look like a fastball but arriving much slower to the plate. It is meant to confuse the batter's timing. The most common changeups are:

palmball
circle change
changeup

[edit]

Others

Other pitches which are or have been used in baseball are:

knuckleball
Eephus pitch
brushback and beanball
spitball
pitchout
intentional ball
gyroball
Shuuto

See also: Wild pitch

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_%28baseball%29"

Umpire

2006-05-11T04:54:00.000-07:00

Home plate umpire Gary Darling signals that the last pitch was a strike

In baseball, the umpire is the person charged with officiating the game, including beginning and ending the game, enforcing the rules of the game and the grounds, making judgment calls on plays, and meting out discipline. The term is often shortened to the colloquial form ump. They are also addressed as blue due to the color of the uniform some umpires wear. (It should be noted that on the professional level, umpires generally disdain being called "blue", preferring instead to be called by their name.) Although games were often officiated by a sole umpire in the formative years of the sport, from the turn of the 20th century onward officiating has been commonly divided among several umpires, who form the umpiring crew.

[hide]

1 Duties and positions
2 Amateur Umpiring
3 Professional umpiring
4 Famous umpires
5 Origin of the word "umpire"
6 External links

[edit]

Duties and positions

In a baseball game officiated by two or more umpires, the plate umpire is the umpire who is positioned behind home plate. This umpire calls balls and strikes, calls fair balls and foul balls short of first/third base, and makes most calls concerning the batter or concerning baserunners near home plate. If another umpire leaves the infield to cover a potential play in foul ground or in the outfield, then the plate umpire may move to cover a potential play near second or third base. The plate umpire is often mistakenly called the "umpire-in-chief(UIC)". This term refers to the head umpire on the field. In most leagues, the UIC is the plate umpire, in higher levels or playoff tournaments where 3 or more officials are used, however, the UIC is not always the plate umpire. Traditionally, an umpiring crew rotates such that each umpire in the crew works each position, including umpire-in-chief, an equal number of games. On the Major League level, an umpiring crew generally rotates positions clockwise each game; for example, the plate umpire in one game would umpire third base in the next.

The other umpires are called base umpires, as they are commonly stationed near the bases. (Field umpire is an incorrect term for any position.) When two umpires are used, the second umpire is simply the base umpire. This umpire will make most calls concerning runners on the bases and nearby plays, as well as in the middle of the outfield. When three umpires are used, the second umpire is called the first base umpire and the third umpire is called the third base umpire, even though the various umpires may move to different positions on the field as the play demands. When four umpires are used, each umpire is named after the base they are stationed near. Sometimes a league will provide six umpires; then, two are stationed in the outfield and then may be called outfield umpires. In Major League Baseball, outfield umpires are only used during the playoffs and the All-Star Game, when they are stationed in foul territory on both sides, and are thus known as the left- and right-field umpires. Rulings on catches of batted balls are usually made by the umpire closest to the play.

The term umpire-in-chief is not to be confused with the umpiring crew chief or crew chief, who is usually the most experienced umpire in a crew. On the major league and high minor league level (Class AA and AAA), the crew-chief acts as a liaison between the league office and the crew and has a supervisory role over other members of the crew.

For example, on the Major League level, "[t]he Crew Chief shall coordinate and direct his crew's compliance with the Office of the Commissioner's rules and policies. Other Crew Chief responsibilities include: leading periodic discussions and reviews of situations, plays and rules with his crew; generally directing the work of the other umpires on the crew, with particular emphasis on uniformity in dealing with unique situations; assigning responsibilities for maintaining time limits during the game; ensuring the timely filing of all required crew reports for incidents such as ejections, brawls and protested games; and reporting to the Office of Commissioner any irregularity in field conditions at any ballpark." [1] Thus, on the professional level, some of the duties assigned to the umpire-in-chief (the plate umpire) in the Official Baseball Rules have been reassigned to the crew chief, regardless of the crew chief's umpiring position.

Unlike referees in American football, an umpire's judgment call is final, unless the umpire making the call chooses to ask his partner(s) for help and then decides to reverse it after the discussion. If an umpire seems to make an error in rule interpretation, his call in some leagues can be officially protested. If the umpire is persistent in his or her interpretation, the matter will be settled at a later time by a league official. Such protests are seldom upheld; indeed, in most cases of protest, the umpire's interpretation is found to be correct.

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Amateur Umpiring

Just as kids play little league before progressing into a more competitive style of baseball, the best place for new umpires to get experience is at the local level. Almost every league in every city will use amateur umpires to call games. The only difference between an amateur and professional umpire is the level of play. An amateur umpire should carry the same amount of respect for the game as that of a professional umpire. Umpires are responsible for ensuring that all players, coaches, and fans conduct themselves in a sportsmanlike manner, and that the game is played so that the focus is on playing, rather than on personal matters or "bad blood" between opposing teams. Each umpire has the authority to eject any player, spectator, or coach from the premises in order to insure the integrity of the game. There are numerous organizations that train/test anyone interested in umpiring for local leagues and can help make connections to the leagues in the area. Little League and Babe Ruth Baseball are two of the most popular organizations when it comes to youth baseball and each have their own application, test, and training process for becoming an umpire.

Little League Baseball: http://www.littleleague.org/umpires/index.asp

Babe Ruth Baseball: http://www.baberuthbaseball.org/umpires.html

Amateur Baseball Umpires Association: http://www.abua.com

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Professional umpiring

Becoming a Major League Baseball (United States) umpire is a long and tough road, with very long odds of success. First, a person desiring to become a professional umpire must attend one of two private umpiring schools authorized by Major League Baseball: The Jim Evans Umpire Academy or The Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School. Both schools are run by former Major League umpires and are located in Florida. There is no prerequisite for attending these schools; it is said that the teachers even prefer unexperience players that they might start their training afresh.

After five weeks of training, each school sends its top students to the Professional Baseball Umpires Corp. (PBUC) evaluation course also held in Florida. The actual number of students sent on to the evaluation course is determined by PBUC and not the umpire schools. Generally, the top 10 to 20 percent of each school's graduating class advance. The evaluation course is conducted by PBUC staff, which differs in personnel from the staff at the respective umpire schools. The evaluation course generally lasts around 10 days. Depending on the number of available positions in the various minor leagues, so many (but not all) of the evaluation course attendees will be assigned to a low level minor league.

Professional umpires begin their careers in a Class "A" league, which is divided into four levels (rookie, short-season, long-season and advanced "A"). Top umpiring prospects will often begin their careers in a short-season "A" league (for example, the New York-Penn League), but most will begin in a rookie league (for example, the Gulf Coast League).

Throughout the season all minor league umpires in Class A and Class AA are evaluated by members of the PBUC staff. All umpires receive a detailed written evaluation of their performance after every season. In addition, all umpires, except those in the rookie or short "A" leagues, receive written mid-season evaluations.

Generally, an umpire is regarded as making adequate progress "up the ranks" if he advances up one level of Class "A" ball each year (thus earning promotion to Class AA after three to four years) and promotion to Class AAA after two to three years on the Class AA level. However, this is a very rough estimate and other factors not discussed (such as a lack of or overwhelming number of retirements at higher levels) may dramatically affect these estimates. For example, many umpires saw rapid advancement in 1999 due to the mass resignation of many Major League umpires as a collective bargaining ploy.

When promoted to the Class AAA level, an umpire's evaluation will also be conducted by the umpiring supervisory staff of Major League Baseball. In recent years, top AAA prospects, in addition to umpiring and being evaluated during the regular season (in either the International or Pacific Coast League) have been required to umpire in the Arizona Fall League where they receive extensive training and evaluation by Major League Baseball staff.

In addition, top AAA prospects may also be rewarded with umpiring only Major League pre-season games during spring training (in lieu of Class AAA games). Finally, the very top prospects may umpire Major League regular season games on a limited basis as "fill-in" umpires (where the Class AAA umpire replaces a sick, injured or vacationing Major League umpire).

Finally, upon the retirement of a Major League umpire, a top Class AAA umpire will be promoted to Major League Baseball's permanent umpire staff. It should be noted, that during this entire process, if an umpire is evaluated as no longer being a major-league prospect, he (or she) will be released, ending their professional career.

There are currently (in 2005) 68 umpires on Major League Baseball's permanent staff, and 21 Class AAA umpires eligible to umpire regular season Major League games as a "fill-in" umpire. [2]

Major League umpires earn $100,000 to $300,000 per year depending on their experience. Minor league umpires earn a drastically lower salary.

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Famous umpires

Umpires are eligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame for their careers, and eight umpires have been thus inducted:

Al Barlick (NL, 1940-43, 1946-55, 1958-71)
Nestor Chylak (AL, 1954-78)
Jocko Conlan (NL, 1941-64)
Tommy Connolly (NL, 1898-1900; AL, 1901-31)
Billy Evans (AL, 1906-27)
Cal Hubbard (AL, 1936-51)
Bill Klem (NL, 1905-41)
Bill McGowan (AL, 1925-54)

Other noteworthy umpires have included:

Emmett Ashford (AL, 1966-70)
Larry Barnett (AL, 1968-99)
Joe Brinkman (AL, 1973-99; MLB, 2000- )
Don Denkinger (AL, 1968-98)
Bill Dinneen (AL, 1909-37)
Augie Donatelli (NL, 1950-73)
Bob Emslie (AA 1890; NL, 1891-1924)
Jim Evans (AL, 1971-99)
Bruce Froemming (NL, 1971-99; MLB, 2000- )
John Gaffney (NL, 1884-86, 1891-94, 1899-1900; AA, 1888-89; PL, 1890)
Doug Harvey (NL, 1962-92)
Tim Hurst (NL, 1891-97, 1900, 1903; AL, 1905-1909)
Ron Luciano (AL, 1968-80)
Tim McClelland (AL, 1984-99; MLB, 2000- )
John McSherry (NL, 1971-96)
Ed Montague (NL, 1974-99; MLB, 2000- )
Hank O'Day (NL, 1895, 1897-1911, 1913, 1915-27)
Silk O'Loughlin (AL, 1902-18)
Beans Reardon (NL, 1926-49)
Dutch Rennert (NL, 1973-92)
Cy Rigler (NL, 1906-22, 1924-35)
Jack Sheridan (PL, 1890; NL, 1892, 1896-97; AL, 1901-14)
Bill Summers (AL, 1933-59)
Harry Wendelstedt (NL, 1966-98)

For other umpires, see Category:Baseball umpires and List of baseball umpires

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Origin of the word "umpire"

"Kill the ump" might have been "kill the nump," but a linguistic process known as false splitting or juncture loss intervened.

According to the Middle English Dictionary entry for noumpere, the predecessor of umpire, which came from the Old French nonper (from non, "not" + per, "equal") meaning "one who is requested to act as arbiter of a dispute between two people"--meaning that the arbiter is not paired with anyone in the dispute.

In Middle English, the earliest form of this shows up as noumper around 1350, and the earliest version without the n shows up as owmpere, a variant spelling in Middle English, circa 1440.

The n was lost after it was written (in 1426-1427) as a noounpier with the a being the indefinite article. The leading n became attached to the article, changing it to an Oumper around 1475. Thus today we say "an umpire" instead of "a numpire."

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External links

Major League Baseball umpiring portal
World Umpires Association - labor union for Major League umpires
A history of major league umpiring - by Larry R. Gerlach

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpire_%28baseball%29"

Baseball glove

2006-05-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

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Glove front (top) shows catching surface with baseball bat. Glove back (bottom).

A baseball glove or mitt is a large leather glove that baseball players on the defending team are allowed to wear to assist them in catching and fielding balls hit by a batter.

Some say the first player to use a baseball glove was Doug Allison, a catcher for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, in 1870, due to an injured left hand. The first documented story of glove use however concerns Charles Waitt, a St. Louis outfielder-first baseman who in 1875 donned a pair of flesh-colored gloves. While glove usage was not accepted by all players at first, being considered "sissy" by many, it slowly caught on as more and more players began using different forms of gloves. Many early baseball gloves were simple leather gloves with the fingertips cut off, supposedly to allow for the same control of a bare hand, but with extra padding. The adoption of the baseball glove by baseball star Albert Spalding when he began playing first base influenced more infielders to begin using gloves. By the mid 1890s, it was the norm for players to wear gloves in the field.

Since their beginnings, baseball gloves have grown. While catching in baseball had always been two handed, eventually, gloves grew to a size that made it easier to catch the ball in the webbing of the glove, and use the off-hand to keep it from falling out.

Now, gloves have taken on many shapes and sizes:

Catcher's mitts have extra padding and a hinged, claw-like shape that helps them to catch 90+ mile per hour fastballs, and provide a good target for pitchers to throw at. If required to catch a knuckleball, a catcher will typically use an even larger mitt.
Pitcher's gloves usually have a closed webbing to allow them to get a grip on the ball without tipping their pitches
First basemen's mitts are generally very long and wide to help them with scooping badly thrown balls from infielders. These mitts lack individual fingers.
Outfield gloves are usually quite long, to help with both catching fly balls on the run or on a dive and so they do not have to bend down as far to field a ground ball, so they can return it to the infield.
Infield baseball gloves other than the first basemens' tend to be smaller, to allow the players to easily fish the ball out of the dirt with their glove to make a quick throw to first base.

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History of Baseball in the United States

2005-11-14T02:06:00.000-08:00

The earliest known mention of baseball in the United States is a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts bylaw banning the playing of the game within 80 yards of the town meeting house.

The first team to play baseball under modern rules were the Knickerbockers of New York City. The club was founded on September 23, 1845, as a social club for the upper middle classes, and was strictly amateur until its disbandment. The club members, led by Alexander Cartwright, formulated the "Knickerbocker Rules", which in large part deal with organizational matters but which also lay out rules for playing the game. One of the significant rules was the prohibition of "soaking" or "plugging" the runner; under older rules, a fielder could put a runner out by hitting the runner with the thrown ball. The Knickerbocker Rules required fielders to tag or force the runner, as is done today, and avoided a lot of the arguments and fistfights that resulted from the earlier practice.

Writing the rules didn't help the Knickerbockers in the first 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. Nevertheless, the Knickerbocker Rules were rapidly adopted by teams in the New York area and their version of baseball became known as the "New York Game" (as opposed to the "Massachusetts Game", played by clubs in the Boston area).

In 1857, sixteen New York area clubs, including the Knickerbockers, formed the National Association of Base Ball Players (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. 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.

Professionalism and the rise of the major leagues

In 1870, a schism formed between professional and amateur ballplayers. The NABBP split into two groups. 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. (Other researchers dispute this.) Its amateur counterpart disappeared after only a few years.

The professional National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, which is still existant, was established in 1875 after the National Association proved ineffective. The emphasis was now on "clubs" rather than "players". Clubs now had the ability to enforce player contracts, preventing players from jumping to higher-paying clubs. 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. A concerted effort was made to reduce the amount of gambling on games which was leaving the validity of results in doubt.

At the same time, a "gentlemen'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 one of an unknown number. 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 played in the major leagues as Indians, or South or Central Americans. And a still larger number played in the minor leagues and on amateur teams as well. In the majors, however, it was not until Robinson (in the National League) and Larry Doby (in the American League) emergence that baseball would begin to correct this.

The early years of the National League were nonetheless tumultuous, with threats from rival leagues and a rebellion by players against the hated "reserve clause", which restricted the free movement of players between clubs. Competitive leagues formed regularly, and also disbanded regularly. The most successful was the American Association (1881–1891), sometimes called the "beer and whiskey league" for its tolerance of the sale of alcoholic beverages to spectators. For several years, the National League and American Association champions met in a postseason championship series—the first attempt at a World Series.

The Union Association survived for only one season (1884), as did the Players League (1890), a fascinating attempt to return to the National Association structure of a league controlled by the players themselves. Both leagues, however, are considered major leagues by many baseball researchers because of the perceived high caliber of play (for a brief time anyway) and the number of star players featured. Some researchers have disputed the major league status of both leagues, claiming that the vast majority of their players were far below the National League's level of play at the time.

There were dozens of leagues large and small at this time. So what made the National League major? Control of the major cities, particularly New York City, the edgy, emotional nerve center of baseball with several clubs. They had both the biggest national media distribution systems of the day, and the populations that could generate big enough revenues for teams to hire the best players in the country.

Many leagues, including the venerable Eastern League, survived in parallel with the National League. One, the Western League, founded in 1893, became aggressive. Its firey leader Ban Johnson, railed against the National League, and promised that he would build a new league that would grab the best players, and field the best teams. Later renamed the American Association, it began play in April 1894.

The teams were Detroit (the only league team that has not moved since), Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Sioux City and Toledo. Prior to the 1900 season, the league changed its name to the American League, moved several franchises to larger, strategic locations, and in 1901 declared its intent to operate as a major league.

The resulting bidding war for players led to widespread contract-breaking and legal hassles. One of the most famous involved star second baseman Napoleon Lajoie, who went across town in Philadelphia from the National League Phillies to the American League Athletics in 1901. Barred by a court injunction from playing baseball in the state of Pennsylvania the next year, Lajoie saw his contract traded to the Cleveland team; he would play for and manage Cleveland for many years.

The war between the American and National also caused shock waves throughout the rest of the baseball world. The result was a meeting at the Leland Hotel in Chicago in 1901 of every other baseball league. On September 5, 1901 Patrick T. Powers, president of the Eastern League formed the second National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the NABPL or "NA" for short. The design of the association was to maintain the other leagues' independence.

To call these leagues "minor" in these days would have been a poorly received mistake. The term 'minor' league did not come into vogue until the Great Depression and St. Louis Cardinals GM Branch Rickey's coordinated developmental program, the farm system, came into being in the 1930s. Still, these leagues needed money, and selling players to the more affluent National and American leagues sent them down the road that would strip the "in" from their independent status.

For Ban Johnson had other designs for the NA. While the NA continues to this day, he saw it as a tool to end threats from smaller rivals who might some day want to expand in other territories and threaten the his league's dominance.

After 1902 both leagues and the NABPL signed a new National Agreement which achieved three things:

First and foremost, it governed player contracts that set up mechanisms to end the cross-league raids on rosters and reinforced the power of the hated [reserve clause] that kept players virtual slaves to their baseball masters.

Second, it led to the playing of a "World Series" in 1903 between the two major league champions. The first World Series was won by Boston of the American League.

Lastly, it established a system of control and dominance for the major leagues over the independents. There would not be another Ban Johnson-like rebellion from the ranks of leagues with smaller cities. Selling player contracts was rapidly becoming a staple business of the independent leagues. During the rough and tumble years of the American-National struggle, player contracts were violated at the independents as well: Players that the team had developed would sign deals with the National or American leagues without any form of compensation to the indy club.

The new agreement tied independent contracts to the reserve-clause national league contracts. Baseball players were a commodity, like cars. $5,000 bought your arm or your bat, and if you didn't like it, find someplace that would hire you. It set up a rough classification system for independent leagues that regulated the dollar value of contracts, the forerunner of the system refined by Rickey and used today.

It also gave the NA great power. Many independents walked away from the 1901 meeting. The deal with the NA punished those other indies who had not joined the NA and submitted to the will of the 'majors.' The NA also agreed to the deal to prevent more pilfering of players with little or no compensation for the players' development. Several leagues, seeing the writing on the wall, eventually joined the NA, which grew in size over the next several years.

The dead ball era: 1900 to 1919

Cy Young, 1911 baseball cardAt this time the games tended to be low scoring, dominated by such legendary pitchers as Walter "The Big Train" Johnson, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander to the extent that the period 1900–1919 is commonly called the "dead ball era". The term also accurately describes the condition of the baseball itself. Baseballs cost three dollars apiece, a hefty sum at the time, and club owners were reluctant to spend much money on new balls if not necessary. It was not unusual for a single baseball to last an entire game. By the end of the game, the ball would be dark with grass, mud, and tobacco juice, and it would be misshapen and lumpy from contact with the bat. Balls were only replaced if they were hit into the crowd and lost, and many clubs employed security guards expressly for the purpose of retrieving balls hit into the stands—a practice unthinkable today.

As a consequence, home runs were rare, and the "inside game" dominated—singles, bunts, stolen bases, the hit-and-run play, and other tactics dominated the strategies of the time.

Despite this, there were also several superstar hitters, the most famous being Honus Wagner, held to be one of the greatest shortstops to ever play the game, and Detroit's Ty Cobb, the "Georgia Peach". Cobb was a mean-spirited man, fiercely competitive and loathed by many of his fellow professionals, but his career batting average of .366 is unlikely ever to be bested.

The Merkle incident

The 1908 pennant races in both the AL and NL were among the most exciting ever witnessed; neither was decided until the final day of play. The conclusion of the National League season, in particular, involved a bizarre chain of events. On September 23, 1908, the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs played a game in the Polo Grounds. Nineteen-year-old rookie first baseman Fred Merkle, later to become one of the best players at his position in the league, was on first base, with teammate Moose McCormick on third with two out and the game tied. Giants shortstop Al Bridwell socked a single, scoring McCormick and apparently winning the game. However, Merkle, instead of advancing to second base, ran toward the clubhouse to avoid the spectators mobbing the field. Cub second baseman, Johnny Evers, noticed this. In the confusion that followed, Evers claimed to have retrieved the ball and touched second base, forcing Merkle out and nullifying the run scored. The league ordered the game replayed at the end of the season, if necessary. It turned out that the Cubs and Giants ended the season tied for first place, so the game was indeed replayed, and the Cubs won the game, the pennant, and subsequently the World Series (the last Cub Series victory to date, as it turns out).

For his part, Merkle was doomed to endless criticism and vilification throughout his career for this lapse, which makes his later playing success even more remarkable. In his defense, some baseball historians have suggested that it was not customary for game-ending hits to be fully "run out", and it was only Evers's insistence on following the rules strictly that resulted in this unusual play[1]. In fact, earlier in the 1908 season, the identical situation had been brought to the umpires' attention by Evers. While the winning run was allowed to stand on that occasion, the dispute raised the umpires' awareness of the rule, and directly set up the Merkle controversy.

New places to play

The first 20 years of the 20th century saw an unprecedented rise in the popularity of baseball. Large stadiums dedicated to the game were built for many of the larger clubs or existing grounds enlarged, including Shibe Park, home of the Philadelphia Athletics, Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, Boston's Fenway Park along with Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois. Likewise from the Eastern League to the small developing leagues in the West, and the rising Negro Leagues professional baseball was being played all across the country. Where there weren't professional teams, there were semi-pro teams, traveling teams barnstorming, company clubs and amateur mens leagues. In the days before television, if you wanted to see a game, you had to go to the game.

The farm system

In the 1930s the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, Branch Rickey decided that a more structured method of developing players for his team was needed. The system derives its name from a joke told by major leaguers in the 1930s about players brought up from the minors where they were "growing players down on the farm like corn."

Working with one ballclub, then several, he developed a tiered system that placed players at a level of expertise where they could develop best. Rickey also devised many of the training regimens and tools, like the batting cage, batter's helmets, and other equipment considered standard issue today. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first commissioner of baseball, resisted Rickey's scheme. It upset the status quo, which usually involved allowing independent "minor" clubs to develop a player, then pay the minor team next to nothing and take him. Rickey's method worked, though, to improve teams fitness and toughness through the long season.

Any resistance to it was eroded by the Great Depression, which was the black plague of independent and minor league baseball. Many clubs, whose fans dried up along with the stock market and the fields in Oklahoma, could not sustain without the revenue from selling contracts to the majors. (See a more complete history in the Minor league baseball section.)

The "Black Sox"

Shoeless Joe JacksonContrary to what many of baseball's administrators were willing to acknowledge, gambling was rife in the game. Hal Chase was particularly notorious for throwing games, but played for a decade after gaining this reputation; he even managed to parlay these accusations into a promotion to manager. Even baseball stars as legendary as Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker have been credibly alleged to have fixed game outcomes. The league's complacency during this Golden Age of baseball was shockingly exposed in 1919, in what rapidly became known as the Black Sox scandal.

During the season the Chicago White Sox had shown themselves to be the best team in (probably) both leagues, and were the bookmaker's favourites to defeat the Cincinnati club in the World Series. The White Sox were defeated and throughout the Series rumours were common that the players, motivated by a mixture of greed and a dislike of club owner Charles Comiskey, had taken money to throw the games. During the following seasons the rumours intensified, and spread to other clubs, until a grand jury was convened to investigate. During the investigation two players, Eddie Cicotte and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson confessed and eight players were tried, and acquitted, for their role in the fix. Much of the evidence (depositions and other testimony) disappeared mysteriously. The Leagues were not so forgiving. Under the commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, all eight players were banned from organised baseball for life.

The Negro leagues

A history within a history

The saddest fact of American baseball is that it has, until July 5, 1947, two histories. One fills libraries, while the other is just beginning to be chronicled well.

African Americans have played baseball as long as white Americans. Players of color, both African-American and Hispanic, played for white baseball clubs throughout the early days of the organizing amateur sport.

As early as 1867, the racism of America showed up in its national pastime: The National Association of Baseball Players, an amateur association, voted to exclude any club that had black players from playing with them.

In 1871 the first professional white league formed. Bud Fowler became their first professional black baseball player, with a non-league pro team in 1872. Fleet Walker a catcher, appeared in 42 games with the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association in 1884.

Yet the racial tensions between white and black people that were present in society showed up on baseball fields. Cap Anson refused to play in a game with a negro pitcher, George Stovey at a game in 1887. This was a famous, but hardly isolated incident.

In that same year, the International League's Board of Directors voted against approving any further contracts with black baseball players. While black players continued to find a few jobs in other leagues, the move set into motion racist tendencies that led to the unwritten "gentleman's agreement" a bar on black players in both major league and independent baseball clubs affiliated with the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues.

Black baseball developed its own network of formal, semi-formal and informal pro and semi-pro leagues. The progress of the leagues' development was much slower, because they lacked both the economic resources and the political clout to evolve as rapidly.

The first professional black baseball club, the Cuban Giants, was organized in 1885. More teams sprang up. Sometimes they played in their own small parks. Some major league owners, smelling additional revenue, made deals with black clubs to play in the major league parks on away game days.

By the early 1890s professional black baseball was foundering, with only one ballclub in operation. Closer to the turn of the 20th century, though, that turned around and leagues began to emerge in two power centers: Chicago and the Midwest and the New York-Pennsylvania corridor.

In the dead ball era, black clubs were independent, without a real league. They played each other. They played semi-pro teams and barnstorm clubs. Some attempts at formal leagues formed and failed. Generally, each team booked its own schedule.

Rube Foster, a former ballplayer with a gift for organization, founded the Negro National League in 1920. A second league, the Eastern Colored League was established in 1923. These became known as the "Negro Leagues." The Negro Southern League formed around the same time, but because of its distance from the East-Midwest power centers, and its poor finances, it remained independent and out of the loop from the other leagues.

From 1924 to 1927, these two black 'major' leagues held four Negro World Series.

The ECL was relatively prosperous but always unstable due to almost perpetual in-fighting amongst its owners. It folded in 1928. In its wake the American Negro League formed in 1929, but disbanded after one season. The surviving Eastern teams went back to the old system of booking games.

The Negro National League did well until 1930, when Rube Foster suffered a debilitating illness and died. Without a strong leader, the league entered into the Great Depression and folded, with its surviving franchises returning back to independent team operation.

By 1932, the Depression had hit new lows. Unemployment, particularly in the African-American communities, was sky-high. Without money to buy tickets, and without the patronage of white major league baseball, whose contract purchases kept many independent league ballclubs afloat, most of the teams closed, sending players scattering anywhere to find work. Barnstorming tours kept a few employed. The East-West League folded mid-season of their first year. The Negro Southern League used to working with less, became the defacto 'major' negro league that year because it could keep major league players playing. Many more players went to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and other Latin American nations to find work in places where their skin color would not be an issue.

Gus Greenlee and several others revived the Negro National League in 1933, piecing together teams from both the old NNL and the ECL leagues. As it was one league, the only rivalry between the two sides of it became the East-West All-Star game.

In 1937 the Negro American League formed with teams from the Eastern part of the country and survivors of the Negro Southern League as its core. The Negro National League realigned as a more Eastern league as well. The composition of the two began to mirror the white major leagues' structure. From 1942 to 1948 the Negro League World Series was revived. This was the golden era of Negro League baseball, a time when it produced some of its greatest stars, and when it did so well financially that white baseball sat up and took notice.

Usual references to Branch Rickey's breaking of the color-line make it seem like some sort of Ghandian exercise in liberation. Certainly, from Rickey's Methodist Midwestern roots, the racism of the sport could not have sat well. More importantly though, the Brooklyn Dodgers' General Manager was a fierce competitor, a shrewd businessman and an apt showman. He watched the full stadiums at Negro League games. He saw the powerful talents on the field. WWII had been a drain on baseball's coffers, as many of their star players went to fight overseas. While post-war enthusiasm for the national pastime was good, Rickey believed that it could be better. Paying customers all had one color: The green of money.

So, with the stroke of his pen Jackie Robinson signed the deal that on July 5, 1947, signaled the end of the Negro Leagues. The full effect was not felt until 1948, when stars like Satchel Paige were signed out from under the black clubs by white baseball clubs. The Negro National League folded again in 1948. Survivors moved to the Negro American League, which continued to play, in one form or another, until 1960. Effectively though, the Negro Leagues ceased to be of 'major' quality after 1948.

Heroes or ghosts? - Negro league players in history

The Negro Leagues produced scores of players as good, if not better than their white contemporaries. Most notable to the white baseball history world have been pitcher Satchel Paige, by records both official and ill-kept the greatest and most durable pitcher in the game; and catcher Josh Gibson, considered by some observers to be the most skilled hitter of all time, even better than the much-vaunted Babe Ruth.

A few of the other great names from the Negro Leagues that may be missed are Hank Aaron, Newt Allen, Walter Ball ("The Georgia Rabbit"), Sam Bankhead, Chet Brewer, Ray Brown, Williard Brown, Sam Crawford, John Donaldson,Lucious Luke Easter, Vic Harris, Monte Irvin, Chappie Johnson, Cecil Kaiser ("Minute Man"), Buck Leonard, John Henry Lloyd, Oliver Marcelle ("Ghost") and hundreds of others. These men, whose histories lay in the hands of poorly run clubs and poorly kept statistics and historical records, did not have the benefit of a powerful press machine made up of decades of adoring sports writers lavishing praise upon them. Most have become ghosts in the history of a great game which they were as instrumental in shaping as the white players of their days.

Many of the Negro League players could give the white players in the Baseball Hall of Fame a run for their money. Had the leagues and teams kept more accurate records, some of these milestones would have buried the records of many of their contemporaries in white baseball. While many Negro league players were finally admitted for their achievements, many records still receive 'separate-but-equal' treatment from Hall historians, who maintain the god-like myths of the white titans of the game of that day.

Negro league milestone - women in men's baseball

Perhaps the only class of people more discriminated against than black men in the national pastime were women. The Negro Leagues contributed one other milestone to professional baseball not seen before or since: Women playing in the men's game. [Mamie Peanut Johnson] was discovered by Bish Tyson, a former Negro League player. Dubbed 'peanut' by a batter because of her diminuitive stature, there was little else small about this right-handed pitcher for the Indianapolis Clowns from 1953 to 1955, whose career record was 33-8 as a pitcher who also possessed a batting average that ranged .262 to .284, against some of the toughest male players of the day of any color. The legendary Satchel Paige, whose Monarchs played the Clowns frequently, befriended Johnson and taught her a wicked curve ball. She was one of a handful of women ever to play with men in the men's game. She did it with great success. Were it not for Jackie Robinson breaking the color line, she would have probably continued to pitch with great success for years longer. Women of color would not cross over into the major leagues.

Character and greatness in adversity

Black baseball was unique in many ways. It had a character and flavor that distinguished it from the white version of the game. The black version of the sport was populated by characters who talked trash and played to the crowd, and phenomenal players who made next-to-nothing and played with a power, passion, and intensity that was second to none. All of these fine black athletes layers would not let the dream die. They would prove that they were the best at what they did. They would survive and thrive in spite of white baseball's ban on them for the color of their skin. In the few instances of games played between major white and major black teams, the black teams usually won. One such game was worth a dozen Negro World Series to show that they could be the best at their sport.

Black teams combined the best of great baseball, church, Vaudeville and the side-show to pay the bills and keep playing. Teams scraped by on very little. A few, like the Kansas City Monarchs, the equivalent of the Yankees in the Negro National League, did very well. Some stayed afloat barely from game to game. To cover the cost of traveling great distances, some teams would have to barnstorm, picking up games with semi-pro teams, company leagues, amateurs and even prison teams to make enough food and gas money to get to the next scheduled game.

The road was hard for black baseball players. Many towns had whites-only hotels and restaurants. Players slept in the homes of fans on good days, on the bus, in a barn, or the booth of a tonk or bar on not-so-good ones, and out in open fields on bad ones. Sometimes they had to keep moving rather than stop for a meal, where none could be found. Usually though, once a team had established its "route," it also established a network of resources that would keep it running on the road that it would use in following years.

Teams from the different Negro leagues learned that they played for cash in those transit stops, and for keeps in games with other black clubs. It would not be uncommon for a great black ballclub to lose a game to much inferior semi-pro or town team to keep the peace. Black athletes had far more to consider every time they took the plate, or appeared in public, than did their white contemporaries.

With all of the hardships, though, the games in black baseball were just more fun. Satchel Paige would taunt batters by telling them to pick where on the plate they wanted him to throw it. He would drop it right where they liked it, but they still couldn't touch it. He had numerous names for his pitches, including the famed "Bee Ball," so-named because it could "...be where I want it to be." Pitchers would invoke the crowd into chants and taunts. One story without attribution recounts the tale of a batter who used to seat well-dressed, great looking women behind home plate to distract a particularly tough pitcher. Truth or myth, it is a fair representation of the colorful nature of the game.

Negro league ball has also been characterized as being much quicker in pace. This would be in part due to the excellence of the athletes, but in larger part also due to their schedules, which often had them playing over greater distances traveling by car or bus between daily games without breaks, or up to three games in a single day.

The first international leagues

While many of the players that made up the black baseball teams were African-Americans, many more were Latin Americans from nations that deliver some of the greatest talents that make up the major league rosters of today. Black players moved freely through the rest of baseball, playing in Canadian Baseball, Mexican Baseball, Caribbean Baseball, and Central America and South America where more than a few found that level of fame that they were unable to attain in the country of their birth.

The Babe and the end of the dead ball era

Ruth batting for the Yankees.It was not the Black Sox scandal by which an end was put to the dead ball era, but by a rule change and a player.

Some of the increased offensive output can be explained by the 1920 rule change outlawing tampering with the ball, which pitchers had often done to produce "spitballs", "shine balls" and other trick pitches which had 'unnatural' flight through the air. Umpires were also required to put new balls into play whenever the current ball became scuffed or discolored. This rule change was enforced all the more stringently following the death of Ray Chapman, who was struck in the temple by a pitched ball from Carl Mays in a game on August 16, 1920 (he died the next day). Discolored balls, harder for batters to see and therefore harder for batters to dodge, have been rigorously removed from play ever since. There are two side effects. One, of course, is that if the batter can see the ball more easily, the batter can hit the ball more easily. The second is that without scuffs and other damage, pitchers are limited in their ability to control spin and so to cause altered trajectories.

Still, in the past, rule changes favoring the batter had led to batting average increases, but not to widespread changes in hitting styles. The "inside game" might have continued to dominate but for the activities of one remarkable player. At the end of the 1919 season Harry Frazee, then owner of the Boston Red Sox, sold a group of his star players to the New York Yankees. (The story that he did so in order to fund theatrical shows on Broadway for his lady friend is, apparently, unfounded.) Amongst them was George Herman Ruth, known affectionately as "Babe".

Ruth's career mirrors the shift in dominance from pitching to hitting at this time. He started his career as a pitcher in 1914, and by 1916 was considered one of the dominant left-handed pitchers in the game. When Edward Barrow, managing the Red Sox, converted him to an outfielder, ballplayers and sportswriters were shocked. It was apparent, however, that Ruth's bat in the lineup every day was far more valuable than Ruth's arm on the mound every fourth day. Ruth swatted an unprecedented 29 home runs in his last season in Boston. The next year, as a Yankee, he would hit 54 and in 1921 he hit 59. His 1927 mark of 60 home runs would last until 1961, and, because of an asterisk in the record books, longer still.

Ruth's power hitting ability demonstrated a new way to play the game, and one that was extremely popular with the crowds. By the late 1920s and 1930s all the good teams had their home-run hitting "sluggers": the Yankees' Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx in Philadelphia, Hank Greenberg in Detroit and Chicago's Hack Wilson were the most storied. Whilst the American League championship, and to a lesser extent the World Series, would be dominated by the Yankees, there were many other excellent teams in the inter-war years. The legendary Connie Mack assembled a Philadelphia Athletics side that won the 1929 and 1930 championships; many consider this team the greatest in baseball history, even surpassing the 1927 Yankees. Also, the National League's Saint Louis Cardinals would win three titles themselves in nine years, the last with a group of players known as the "Gashouse Gang".

The first radio broadcast of a baseball game was on August 5, 1921 over Westinghouse station KDKA from Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Harold Arlin announced the Pirates-Phillies game.

1933 also saw the introduction of the All-Star game, a mid-season break in which the greatest players in each league play against one another in a hard fought but officially meaningless demonstration game. In 1936 the Baseball Hall of Fame was instituted and five players elected: Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner. The Hall formally opened in 1939.

The war years

The beginning of US involvement in World War II necessitated depriving the game of many players who joined the armed forces, but the major leagues continued play throughout the duration. In 1941, a year which saw the premature death of Lou Gehrig, Boston's great left fielder Ted Williams had a batting average over .400 — the last time anyone has achieved that feat. During the same season Joe DiMaggio hit successfully in 56 consecutive games, an accomplishment both unprecedented and unequalled. Both Williams and DiMaggio would miss playing time in the services, with Williams also flying later in the Korean War. During this period Stan Musial led the St. Louis Cardinals to the 1942, 1944 and 1946 World Series titles. The war years also saw the founding of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

Blacks return to the major leagues

Jackie RobinsonIn 1947, Branch Rickey — general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers — signed Jackie Robinson and broke the color barrier which had been tacitly recognized for 50 years. Robinson was an exceptional talent, although perhaps not the greatest in the Negro leagues at the time, and he also had the inner strength to withstand the racism and abuse from both fans and players which he would be expected to face. He stood up to the pressure magnificently, and played well enough to win the first Rookie of the Year award. Later that same year, four more black players made it to the majors. The following year, the 1948 major league champion Cleveland Indians featured Hall-of-Famers Larry Doby and Satchel Paige . Paige, who had pitched more than 2400 innings in the Negro Leagues, sometimes two and three games a day, was still effective at 42, and still playing at 59. His ERA in white baseball, after thousands of balls pitched, was still just 2.48, making him without question the most commanding pitcher ever to play the game. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired Robinson's uniform number (42) from use by all teams.

According to some baseball historians, Robinson and the other African American players helped reestablish the importance of baserunning and similar elements of play that were previously deemphasized by the predominance of power hitting.

In 1951 Willie Mays joined the New York Giants. Mays, the "Say Hey Kid", was fantastically talented: an athletic center-fielder with a splendid throwing arm who could hit for power and average as well as steal bases. 50 years after the start of his career, he is widely considered amongst the greatest to have ever played the game. In his rookie season he helped the Giants to win the pennant, a feat only accomplished by Bobby Thomson's homer against the Dodgers on the last day of the season — its fame as "The Shot Heard 'Round The World" is due in no small part to Russ Hodges' commentary:

"Brooklyn leads 4-2 ... Branca throws, there's a long fly, its gonna be, I believe ... The Giants win the pennant!! The Giants win the pennant!! Bobby Thomson hit that ball into the lower deck of the left field stands! The Giants win the pennant, and they're going crazy ... they're going crazy! I don't believe it! I will not believe it"

The major leagues move west

Baseball had been in the West for almost as long as the National League and the American League had been around. It evolved into the Pacific Coast League, which included the San Francisco Seals, San Diego Padres, Hollywood Stars, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Oaks and teams in Portland, Salt Lake City and Denver at various times.

The PCL was huge in the West. It developed players like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. A member of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues it kept losing these great players to the National and the American leagues for less than $8,000 a player.

The PCL was far more independent than the other "minor" leagues, and rebelled continously against their Eastern masters. Clarence Pants Rowland, the President of the PCL, took on baseball commissioners Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Happy Chandler at first to get better equity from the major leagues, then to form a third major league. His efforts were rebuffed by both commissioners. Chandler and several of the owners, who saw the value of the markets in the West started to plot the extermination of the PCL. They had one thing that Chandler did not: The financial power of the Eastern major league baseball establishment.

No one was going to back a PCL club building a major-league size stadium if the National or the American League was going to build one too, and potentially put the investment in the PCL ballpark into jeopardy.

Up to this time, major league baseball franchises had been largely confined to the northeastern United States. The first team to relocate in fifty years was the Boston Braves who moved to Milwaukee in 1953. In Milwaukee the club set attendance records, and more teams moved: the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore, and the Philadelphia Athletics to Kansas City.

In 1958 the New York market ripped apart. The Yankees were becoming the dominant draw, and the cities of the West offered generations of new fans in much more sheltered markets for the other venerable New York clubs, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Placing these storied, powerhouse clubs in the two biggest cities in the West had the specific design of crushing any attempt by the PCL to form a third major league. Eager to bring these big names to the West, Los Angeles gave Walter O'Malley, owner of the Dodgers, a helicopter tour of the city and asked him to pick his spot. The Giants were given the lease to the PCL San Francisco Seals digs while Candlestick Park was built for them.

The logical first candidates for major league "expansion" were those PCL teams that already had major league money in them. The Los Angeles Angels, who were one of the first expansion teams in over 70 years in major league baseball, left the PCL in 1961 (soon the California Angels, the Anaheim Angels, and, as of 2005, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim); and the Athletics, who moved again, settling in Oakland in 1968.

The other 1961 expansion team was the Washington Senators, who took over the nation's capital when the previous Senators moved to Minnesota and became the Twins. 1961 is also noted as being the year in which Roger Maris surpassed Babe Ruth's single season home run record, hitting 61 for the New York Yankees, albeit in a slightly longer season than Ruth's. Expansion continued in 1962 with the addition of the Houston Colt.45s and New York Mets to the National League.

The Oakland Coliseum, opened in 1966, was built in part to lure the Athletics from Kansas City.In 1969, the American League expanded when the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots defected from the PCL and joined the league. The Pilots stayed just one season in Seattle before moving to Milwaukee and becoming today's Milwaukee Brewers. The National League also added two teams that year, the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres. The Padres were the last of the core PCL teams to be absorbed. The Coast League did not die, though. It reformed, and moved into other markets, and endures to this day as a Class AAA league.

The last team move of this time period was in 1972, when the second Washington Senators moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and became the Texas Rangers. Baseball would not see another team move until Major League Baseball announced near the end of the 2004 season that the Montreal Expos would begin play in Washington, DC in 2005 as the Washington Nationals. In 1977, another expansion occurred as the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League, the last expansion until four teams were added in the 1990s. The Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins joined the National League in the 1993 expansion, and in 1998, in a second expansion, the Arizona Diamondbacks joined the National League and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays joined the American League. In order to keep the number of teams in each league even, Milwaukee changed leagues, and is a now a member of the National League.

As of 2005, there are 16 teams in the National League, and 14 teams in the American League.

Pitching dominance and rules changes

By the late 1960s, the balance between pitching and hitting had swung in favor of the pitchers. In 1968 Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title with an average of just .301, the lowest in history. That same year, Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain won 31 games — making him the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season. St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Bob Gibson achieved an equally remarkable feat by allowing an ERA of just 1.12.

In response to these events, major league baseball implemented certain rules changes in 1969 to benefit the batters. The pitcher's mound was lowered, and the strike zone was reduced.

In 1973 the American League, which had been suffering from much lower attendance than the National League, made a move to increase scoring even further by initiating the designated hitter rule.

Players assert themselves

From the time of the formation of the Major Leagues to the 1960s, when it came to the control of the game of baseball the team owners held the whip hand. After the so-called "Brotherhood Strike" of 1890 and the failure of the National Brotherhood of Ball Players and its Players League, the owners control of the game seemed absolute and lasted over 70 years, despite the formation of a number of short-lived players organizations over that time. In 1966, however, the players enlisted the help of labor union activist Marvin Miller to form the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). The same year, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale – both Cy Young Award winners for the Los Angeles Dodgers – refused to re-sign their contracts, and the era of the reserve clause, which held players to one team, was coming toward an end.

The first legal challenge came in 1970. Backed by the MLBPA, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood took the leagues to court to negate a player trade, citing the 13th Amendment and antitrust legislation. In 1972 he finally lost his case in the United States Supreme Court by a vote of 5 to 3, but gained large-scale public sympathy, and the damage had been done. The reserve clause survived, but it had been irrevocably weakened. In 1975 Andy Messersmith of the Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos played without contracts, and then declared themselves free agents in response to an arbitrator's ruling. Handcuffed by concessions made in the Flood case, the owners had no choice but to accept the collective bargaining package offered by the MLBPA, and the reserve clause was effectively ended, to be replaced by the current system of free-agency and arbitration.

While the legal challenges were going on, the game continued. In 1969 the "Miracle Mets", just 7 years after their formation, recorded their first winning season, won the National League East and finally the World Series.

On the field, the 1970s saw some of the longest standing records fall and the rise of two powerhouse dynasties. In Oakland, the Swinging A's were overpowering, winning the Series in '72, '73 and '74, and five straight division titles. The strained relationships between teammates, who included Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Reggie Jackson, gave the lie to the need for "chemistry" between players. (This A's dynasty also single-handedly reintroduced the moustache into baseball). The National League, on the other hand, belonged to the Big Red Machine in Cincinnati, where Sparky Anderson's team, which included Pete Rose as well as Hall of Famers Tony Perez, Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan, succeeded the A's run in 1975.

The decade also contained great individual achievements as well. On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run, surpassing Babe Ruth's all-time record. He would retire in 1976 with 755. There was great pitching too: between 1973 and 1975, Nolan Ryan threw 4 "no-hit" games. He would add a record-breaking fifth in 1981 and two more before his retirement in 1993, by which time he had also accumulated 5,714 strikeouts, another record, in a 27-year career.

The marketing and hype era

From the 1980s onward, the major league game has changed dramatically from a combination of effects brought about by free agency, improvements in the science of sports conditioning, changes in the marketing and television broadcasting of sporting events, and the push by brand-name products for greater visibility. These events lead to greater labor difficulties, fan disaffection, skyrocketing prices, changes in the way that the game is played, and problems with the use of performance enhancing substances like steroids tainting the race for records.

The science of the sport changes the game

During the 1980s, the science of conditioning and workouts greatly improved. Weight rooms and training equipment were improved. Trainers and doctors developed better diets and regimens to make athletes bigger, healthier, and stronger than they had ever been.

Another major change that had been occurring during this time was the adoption of the pitch count. Starting pitchers playing complete games had not been an unusual thing in baseball's history. Now pitching coaches watched to see how many pitches a player had thrown over the game. At anywhere from 125 to 175, pitchers increasingly would be pulled out to preserve their arms. Bullpens began to specialize more, with more pitchers being trained as middle relievers, and a few hurlers, usually possessing high velocity but not much durability, as closers.

Along with the expansion of teams, the addition of more pitchers needed to play a complete game stressed the total number of quality players available in a system that restricted its talent searches at that time to America, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The rise of cable television

Baseball had been watched live since the mid 19th century. Television sports' arrival in the 1950s increased attention and reveneue for all major league clubs at first. The television programming was extremely regional. It hurt the minor and independent leagues most. People stayed home to watch Maury Wills rather than catch Joe Nobody at their local baseball park. Major League Baseball, as it always did, made sure that it controlled rights and fees charged for the broadcasts of all games, just as it did on radio. It brought additional revenues and attention both from the broadcast itself, and from the increases in attendance and merchandise sales that expanded audiences allowed.

The national networks began televising national games of the week, opening the door for a national audience to see particular clubs. While the games hit most teams, emphasis was always on the league leaders and the major market franchises that could draw the largest audience.

In the 1970s the cable revolution began. The Atlanta Braves became a power contender with greater revenues generated by WTBS, Ted Turner's Atlanta-based Super-Station, that broadcast "America's Team" to cable households nationwide. The roll out of ESPN, then Fox Sports changed sports news and particularly impacted baseball. Potboiled down to the thirty-second game highlight, and now under the microscope of news organizations that needed to fill 24 hours of time, the amount of attention paid to major league players magnified to staggering levels from where it had been just 20 years prior.

It brought with it increased attention for individual players, who reached super-star status nationwide on careers that often were not as compelling as those who had come before them in a less media intense time.

As player contract values soared, and the number of broadcasters, commentators, columnists, and sports writers also soared. The competition for a fresh angle on any story became fierce. Media pundits began questioning the high salaries that the players received. Coverage began to become intensely negative. Players personal lives, which had always been off-limits unless something extreme happened, became the fodder of editorials, insider stories on television, and features in magazines. When the use of performance-enhancing drugs became an issue, the gap between the sports media and the players whom they covered widened further.

With the development of satellite television, Major League Baseball launched baseball channels with season subscription fees.

The next round became the single-team cable networks. YES, the New York Yankees cable television network, took in millions to broadcast games to the Yankee faithful not only in New York but around the country. These networks generated as much revenue or more annually for large market teams like the Yankees and Boston Red Sox as their entire baseball operations did. By making these separate companies, these owners were able to exclude the money from consideration of deals to try and keep the level of play equal at all clubs in the major leagues. The rule of the day became he who has the most money can spend it at will on players.

Sponsorships, endorsements, & merchandise

Television and greater media coverage in magazines and newspapers trying to attract a new generation of non-readers also brought in the sponsors, and even more money, that would attract players to new financial opportunities and bring in other elements to the business of baseball that would impact the game.

Baseball memorabilia and souvenirs, including baseball cards, exploded in price as networks of adults became more sophisticated in their trading. This would explode yet again in the late 1990s, as the Internet, and the website eBay provided venues for collectors of all things baseball to trade with each other. Regionalized pricing was wiped away, and many objects, baseballs, bats, and the like began selling for high dollar values. This in turn brought in new businessmen whose sole means of making a living was acquiring autographs and memorabilia from the athletes. Memorabilia hounds fought with fans to get signatures worth $20, $60, or even $100 or more in their stores.

Beyond the staple billboards, large corporations like NIKE and Champion fought to make sure that their logos were seen on the clothing and shoes worn by athletes on the field. This kind of association branding became a new revenue stream. In the late 1990s and into the dawn of the 21st century, the dugout, the backstops behind home plate, and anywhere else that might be seen by a camera all became fair game for inserting advertising.

Merchandise with the logos of teams began being sold at ballparks. Then, in larger markets, select stores would carry it. In the late 1980s there was an explosion of merchandise, where shopping malls, department stores, and retailers great and small all carried MLB merchandise.

All of this brought increased wealth to the owners of baseball. It also made the players, who were becoming increasingly aware of their cash value, desirous of cashing in themselves at the horn of plenty.

Player wealth and influence

Players who had been dramatically underpaid for generations were now replaced by players who were paid extremely well, and, in many cases, dramatically overpaid for their services.

Sports agents

By the 1970s a new generation of sports agents were hawking the talents of players who knew baseball but didn't know how the business end of the game was played. The agents broke down what the teams were generating in revenue off of the players' performances. They calculated what their player might be worth to energize a television contract, or provide more merchandise revenue, or put more fans into seats.

Side deals

The athletes signed shoe deals, baseball card sponsorships, and commercial endorsements for products of every size and shape. At first this boon seemed only fitting. The players were finally getting what so many had not. Then the other side of the coin flipped.

Disconnects with the average Joe

Salaries began to climb to such astronomical levels that the relationship between the average fan and the players began to change. Mike Piazza, in a famous negotiation with the Dodgers went public with his complaint that he was only going to get $81 million from the Dodgers not the $88 he sought. For the legions of people who made less than $30,000 a year who came out to watch the home team, it was too much. Piazza was booed every time he came to bat. In a short while he was traded to Florida, then was acquired by the New York Mets.

Players balked at many of the traditions of baseball: Playing in old timers games, making appearances not tied to their endorsements, and even autographing kids' baseballs. San Francisco Giants Slugger Barry Bonds became infamous for blowing off fans' autograph requests.

Business and strategy changes

Sky high salaries also changed many of the strategies of the game. Players rarely were "sent" down to the minors if they failed to perform. Who could justify paying a slumping player millions to sit in Toledo where the major league fans couldn't pay their way? Other players in the Triple-A level of the minor leagues, who used to rise on merit, became trapped under these overpaid "stars." Worse still, in order to make the media happy, trades, rather than call-ups, became the order of the day. It was much better to buy someone else's short-stop that was a known quantity to the national sports media than to take a chance on a player with no name value and no visibility if you were in a major market ballclub.

Tactics on the field changed too. Risky moves that could get players hurt, and sideline millions of dollars in payroll on the disabled list, became less common. Stealing home, a popular tactic of great stars of the day like Ty Cobb or Pete Rose, became infrequent occurrences.

The perception of players by the general public changed from larger-than-life heroes to a more cynical view of many of them as spoiled and overpaid. This was fed by the growing legions of television reporters, commentators, and print sports writers who also started asking questions about what justified the kind of money being paid to these players.

Free agency added gasoline to that fire as well. With players seeking greener pastures when their contracts came up, fewer players became career members of one ballclub. In the modern era, it is almost unusual to see a player stay with any one club for more than a few years if they are good enough to command a better salary.

Players with any ability increasingly gravitated towards the money. Large market clubs like the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and the Chicago Cubs given big revenues from their cable television operations signed more and more of the big name players away from mid-sized and smaller market baseball clubs that could not afford to compete with them for salaries.

Owners and players feud in the 1980s

All was not well with the game. The many contractual disputes between players and owners came to a head in 1981. On June 12, the Major League Baseball Players Association called their first in-season work stoppage. Previous players' strikes (in 1972, '73 and 80) had been held in preseason, with only the '72 stoppage — over benefits — causing disruption to the regular season. Furthermore, in 1976 the owners had locked the players out of spring training in a dispute over free agency.

The crux of the 1981 dispute was about compensation for the loss of players to free agency. After losing a top-rank player in such a way the owners wanted a mid-rank player in return, the so-called sixteenth player (each club was allowed to protect 15 players from this rule). Losing lower rated free agents would have correspondingly smaller compensation. The players, only recently freed from the bondage of the reserve clause, found this unacceptable, and withdrew their labor. Immediately, the U.S. Government National Labor Relations Board ruled that the owners had not been negotiating in good faith, and installed a federal mediator to reach a solution. Seven weeks and 713 games were lost, before the owners backed down, settling for much lower ranked players as compensation. By then much of the season had been lost, and the season was continued as distinct half, with the playoffs reorganised to reflect this.

Throughout the 1980s then, baseball seemed to prosper. The competitive balance between franchises saw fifteen different teams make the World Series, and nine different champions during the decade. Also, every season from 1978 through 1987 saw a different World Series winner, a streak unprecedented in baseball history. Turmoil was, however, just around the corner. In 1986 Pete Rose retired from playing for the Cincinnati Reds, having broken Ty Cobb's record by accumulating 4,256 hits during his career. He continued as Reds manager until, in 1989 it was revealed that he was being investigated for sports gambling, including the possibility that he had bet on teams with which he was involved. While Rose admitted a gambling problem, he denied having bet on baseball. Federal prosecutor John Dowd investigated and, on his recommendation, Rose was banned from organised baseball, a move which precluded his possible inclusion in the Hall of Fame. In a meeting with Commissioner Giamatti, Rose, having failed in a legal action to prevent it, accepted his punishment. It was, essentially, the same fate that had befallen the Black Sox seventy years previously. (Rose, however, would continue to deny that he bet on baseball until he finally confessed to it in his 2004 autobiography.)

Strike two (1994)

Labor relations were still strained. There had been a two day strike in 1985 (over the division of television revenue money), and a 32-day spring training lockout in 1990 (again over salary structure and benefits). By far the worst action would come in 1994. The seeds were sown earlier: in 1992 the owners sought to renegotiate on salary and free-agency terms, but little progress was made. The standoff continued until the beginning of 1994 when the existing agreement expired, with no agreement on what was to replace it. Adding to the problems was the perception that "small market" teams, such as the struggling Seattle Mariners could not compete with high spending teams such as those in New York or Los Angeles. Their plan was to institute TV revenue sharing to increase equity amongst the teams and impose a salary cap to keep expenditure down. Players, naturally, felt that such a cap would reduce their potential earnings.

The players officially went on strike in August 1994. In September 1994 Major League Baseball announced the cancellation of the World Series.

Main article: 1994 baseball strike

Baseball fans became increasingly disaffected. Both the NFL and the NBA cashed in on the self-inflicted wounds that baseball had dealt itself.

Home run mania and the second coming of baseball

Mark McGwirehits a home run during his last Major League season in 2001

After the 1994 strike, baseball lost much of its popularity. Fans of the Montreal Expos, the team who had uncharacteristically been in first place when the strike hit and were likely to advance well into the playoffs that year, were particularly irate, and the team never regained its fan base. Major League Baseball, well aware of its public relations problems, tried to find a hook to bring fans back to a positive viewpoint of the game.

Cal Ripken, Jr. symbol of old-school baseball, who hadn't been absent a day, and who had loyally played for the same team even with the opportunity for free agency, became the first public attempt at baseball healing its relationship with America's fans.

On September 6, 1995, Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. played his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking Lou Gehrig's 56 year old record, which had seemed untouchable. That evening is generally considered to be the beginning of baseball's "rebirth." Ripken's streak was the first high-profile moment in baseball after the strike, and his record-setting evening was the first time baseball re-gained the nation's attention. Cal continued his streak for another five years, voluntarily ending it at 2,632 consecutive games played, on September 20, 1998.

1998 was what many consider to be one of the game's greatest seasons. St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa that year engaged in a home run race for the ages. With both rapidly approaching Roger Maris's record of 61 home runs (set in 1961), seemingly the entire nation watched as the two power hitters raced to be the first to break the record. McGwire reached 62 first on September 8, 1998, with Sosa also eclipsing it later. Sosa finished with 66 home runs, just behind McGwire's unheard-of 70. However, recent steroid allegations have marred the season in the minds of many fans.

Incredibly, McGwire's astronomical record of 70 would last a mere three years following the meteoric rise of veteran San Francisco Giants left fielder Barry Bonds in 2001. Some analysts consider Bonds's 2001 season to be among the greatest hitting seasons in baseball history. That year Bonds knocked out an extraordinary 73 home runs, breaking the record set by McGwire by hitting his 71st on October 5, 2001. In addition to the home run record, Bonds also set single-season marks for bases on balls with 177 (breaking the previous record of 170, set by Babe Ruth in 1923) and slugging percentage with .863 (breaking the mark of .847 set by Ruth in 1920). Bonds continued his torrid home run hitting in the next few seasons, hitting his 660th career home run on April 12, 2004, tying him with his godfather Willie Mays for third on the all-time career home run list. He hit his 661st home run the next day, April 13, to take sole possession of third place.

The 1990s also saw Major League Baseball expand into new markets as four new teams joined the league. In 1993, the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins began play, and in just their fifth year of existence, the Marlins became the first wild card team to win the championship (see 1997 World Series). The year 1998 brought two more teams into the mix, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks, the latter of which become the youngest expansion franchise to win the championship (see 2001 World Series). For the most part, the late 1990s were dominated by the New York Yankees, who won four out of five World Series championships from 1996–2000.

Drugs, baseball, and records

The lure of big money pushed players harder and harder to perform at their peaks. There is only so much conditioning that one can do to obtain an edge over their competitors. Major League players turned to performance enhancing drugs, including ephedra and steroids.

Ephedra, a Chinese herb used to cure cold symptoms, and also used in some allergy medications, sped up the heart and was considered by some to be a weight-loss short-cut. Overweight pitcher [Steve Bechler], who wanted to stay on the Baltimore Orioles roster, took just such a short-cut. In the middle of an outing pitching, he collapsed, and was soon pronounced dead. The death rocked the baseball world, and started a number of investigations into the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Ephedra was banned, and soon the furor died down.

The home run race that had generated so much positive publicity, and Barry Bonds run for the all-time home run record began more whispers about drugs. This time it was steroids, which increase a person's testosterone level and subsequently enable that person to bodybuild with much more ease. Some athletes have said that the main advantage to steroids is not so much the additional power or endurance that they can provide, but that they can drastically shorten rehab time from injury.

Steroids were also linked to challenges of the record setting feats of modern athletes. If a home run record was broken by a player using performance enhancers, was it valid to give it to him?

Major League Baseball was considered lax on their anti-drug policies, particularly on steroids. Baseball had done well with the renewed interest in records. It didn't want the drug issue to drag the sport down yet again. Commissioner Selig was unable to convince PA union boss Donald Fehr of any solution to the problem though. The players would not go along with tougher testing that was common in other major league sports as well as in the international sports communities.

Commissioner Bud Selig imposed a very strict anti-drug policy upon its minor league players, who are not part of the Major League Baseball Players Association (the PA). Random drug testing, education and treatment, and strict penalties for those caught were the rule of law. Anyone on the forty man roster, including 15 minor leaguers that are on that list, were exempt from that program. It was called window dressing.

Jose Canseco published a book admitting steroid usage and saything that it was prevalent throughout major league baseball. When the United States Congress decided to investigate the use of steroids in the sport, some of the games most prominent players have come under scrutiny for possibly using steroids. Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi, and Mark McGwire have been suspected of using steroids. Other players, such as Jose Canseco and Gary Sheffield have admitted to have either knowingly (in Canseco's case) or not (Sheffield's) using steroids. Many lesser players (mostly from the minor leagues) have tested positive for use.

Baseball was taken to task for turning a blind eye to its drug problems. It benefitted from these drugs in the ever-inreasingly competitive fight for airtime and media attention. MLB and its Players Association finally announced tougher measures, but many felt that they did not go far enough. (See: List of Major League Baseball players suspended for steroids)

The BALCO Labs scandal

In 2002, a major scandal arose when it was discovered that a company called BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative), owned by Victor Conte, had been producing so called "designer steroids," (specifically the "clear" and the "cream") which are steroids that cannot be detected by current drug testing policies. In addition, the company had connections to several San Francisco Bay Area sports trainers and athletes, including the trainers of Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds. This revelation lead to a vast criminal investigation into BALCO's connections with athletes from baseball and many other sports. In the fall of 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that it had secretly received the testimony transcripts of Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi from the case. In the transcripts, Giambi allegedly admitted to using many different steroids, including fertility drugs (which could account for his declining health in the past few years), and Bonds admitted to using two steroids that he claims he was told were arthritis drugs.

Baseball Cards

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Baseball card is a small card printed on heavy paper stock, featuring one or more baseball players. The typical format for a card is to have an image of a player on the front, with information such as statistics on the back. While baseball cards may be of any size, the standard size in the industry is 2-½ inches by 3-½ inches (on most cards, the image is oriented vertically so that 2-½ inches would be the width, and 3-½ inches the height).

Contents
1 Early history
2 Tobacco cards
3 The modern sports card industry
4 External links

Early history
With the development of photography, baseball teams began to pose for group and individual pictures, much like members of other clubs and associations. Some of these photographs were printed onto small cards similar to modern wallet photos. As baseball increased in popularity and became an openly professional sport during the late 1860s, a sporting goods store named Peck and Snyder began producing trade cards featuring baseball teams. Peck and Snyder sold baseball equipment, and the cards were a natural advertising vehicle. The Peck and Snyder cards are sometimes considered the first baseball cards.
Typically, a trade card featured an image on one side and information advertising the business on the other. Trade cards featuring baseball players were used by a variety of businesses, even if the products being advertised had no connection with baseball. Advances in color printing increased the possible appeal of the cards. As a result, different types of cards might use photographs, either in black-and-white or sepia, or color artwork, which might or might not be based on photographs.
Although the function of trade cards had much in common with business cards, the format of baseball trade cards also often resembled that of playing cards. Some early baseball cards could be used as part of a game, which might be either a conventional card game or a simulated baseball game. While most modern cards are purely collectibles, the concept of cards that allow for a game format still recurs periodically.

Tobacco cards
Reverse side of a baseball card listing player statistics
The blow to production from World War I was compounded by the Black Sox scandal's blow to baseball's public image, and cards were not produced in significant quantities for more than a decade. In the 1930s, baseball cards finally began to reappear with various candy products. Beginning in 1933, a chewing gum company named Goudey began producing cards, and gum became the product predominantly associated with baseball cards. Goudey produced larger sets of cards than usual, and numbered them to facilitate collecting. Goudey also released a new set annually for several years to coincide with the cycle of baseball seasons, until World War II curtailed baseball card production once again.
This time baseball cards were resurrected by Bowman Gum, a former competitor of Goudey in the 1930s. However, another company that sold bubblegum, Topps, soon added baseball cards to its product line as well. The two companies competed for consumers, but also for rights to the baseball players featured on their cards, with each company trying to sign players to exclusive contracts to appear only on its cards. After several years of this, Topps bought out Bowman and enjoyed a largely unchallenged monopoly for more than two decades.
The Topps monopoly ended in 1981, as Fleer and Donruss issued baseball card sets in that year. Topps sued both companies, but a court ruled that Topps' exclusive rights only applied to cards sold with gum. During the following years a number of other companies, such as Score in 1988 and Upper Deck in 1989, entered the market, saturating the hobby with cards until the 1994 players' strike caused a decline in interest and industry consolidation. In the meantime, the competition brought many innovations, such as improvements in card quality and measures to discourage counterfeiting. Companies also released multiple brands of cards, as well as artificially rare and unique cards, to appeal to different types of collectors. In 2001, Wizards of the Coast introduced MLB Showdown, the flagship game of its Showdown Sports series of trading card games, adding a twist to traditional baseball cards by making them into a playable game.

External links
Illustrated History of 19th Century Baseball Cards by Cycleback

Origins of baseball

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Part of the History of baseball series.

Surprisingly little is known about the origin of baseball. The question has been the subject of considerable debate and controversy for more than 100 years. Baseball (and softball), as well as the other modern bat, ball and running games, cricket and rounders, developed from earlier folk games, many of which were similar to each other, but there were certainly local, regional and national variations, both in how they were played and what they were called, such as stoolball, poison ball, and goal ball. Few details of how the modern games developed from earlier folk games are known. Some think that various folk games resulted in a game called town ball from which baseball was eventually born.

A number of early folk games in England had characteristics that can be seen in modern baseball (as well as in cricket and rounders). Many of these early games involved a ball that was thrown at a target while an opposing player defended the target by attempting to hit the ball away. If the batter successfully hit the ball, he could attempt to score points by running between bases while fielders would attempt to catch or retrieve the ball and put the runner out in some way.

Since they were folk games, the early games had no 'official' rules, and they tended to change over time. To the extent that there were rules, they were generally simple and were not written down. There were many local variations, and varied names.

Many of the early games were not well documented, first, because they were generally peasant games (and perhaps children's games, as well); and second, because they were often discouraged, and sometimes even prohibited, either by the church or by the state, or both.

Aside from obvious differences in terminology, the games differed in the equipment used (ball, bat, club, target, etc., which were usually just whatever was available), the way in which the ball is thrown, the method of scoring, the method of making outs, the layout of the field and the number of players involved.

An old English game called "base," described by George Ewing at Valley Forge, was apparently not much like baseball. There was no bat and no ball involved! The game was more like a fancy game of "tag", although it did share the concept of places of safety (ie, bases) with modern baseball.

In an 1801 book entitled The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, Joseph Strutt claimed to have shown that baseball-like games can be traced back to the 14th century, and that baseball is a descendant of a British game called stoolball. The earliest known reference to stoolball is in a 1330 poem by William Pagula, who recommended to priests that the game be forbidden within churchyards.

In stoolball, a batter stood before a target, perhaps an upturned stool, while another player pitched a ball to the batter. If the batter hit the ball (with a bat or his/her hand) and it was caught by a fielder, the batter was out. If the pitched ball hit a stool leg, the batter was out. It was more often played by young men and women as a sort of spin the bottle.

In 1700, a Puritan leader of southern England, Thomas Wilson, expressed his disapproval of "Morris-dancing, cudgel-playing, baseball and cricket" occurring on Sundays. A 1744 publication in England by John Newbery called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book includes a woodcut of stoolball and a rhyme entitled "Base-ball." The book was later published in Colonial America in 1762. In 1748, the family of Frederick, Prince of Wales partook in the playing of a baseball-like game.

A 1791 bylaw in Pittsfield, Massachusetts bans the playing of baseball within 80 yards of the town meeting house.

Les Jeux des Jeunes Gar�ons is the first known book to contain printed rules of a bat/base/running game. It was printed in Paris, France in 1810 and lays out the rules for "poison ball," in which there were two teams of eight to ten players, four bases (one called home), a pitcher, a batter, and flyball outs.

Another early print reference is Jane Austen's posthumous 1818 novel Northanger Abbey.

In 1829, William Clarke in London, published The Boy’s Own Book which included rules of rounders. Similar rules were published in Boston, Massachusetts in 1834, except the Boston version called the game "Base" or "Goal ball." The rules were identical to those of poison ball, but also added fair and foul balls and strike outs.

Stoolball
Origins of Stoolball:

1) In stoolball, which developed by the 11th century, one player throws the ball at a target while another player defends the target. Stob-ball and stow-ball were regional games similar to stoolball.

In stob ball and stow ball the target was probably a tree stump, since both "stob" and "stow" mean stump in some dialects. ( "Stow" could also refer to a type of frame used in mining). What the target originally was in stoolball is not certain. It could have been a stump, since “stool” in old Sussex dialect means stump.

2) According to one legend, milkmaids played stoolball while waiting for their husbands to return from the fields. Another theory is that stoolball developed as a game played after attending church services, in which case the target was probably a church stool.

Originally, the stool was defended with a bare hand. Later, a bat of some kind was used (in modern stoolball, a bat like a very heavy ping-pong paddle is used).

Clear regional variation:

There were several versions of stoolball. In the earliest versions, the object was primarily to defend the stool. Successfully defending the stool counted for one point, and the batter was out if the ball hit the stool. There was no running involved. Another version of stoolball involved running between two stools, and scoring was similar to the scoring in cricket. In perhaps yet another version there were several stools, and points were scored by running around them as in baseball.

Because of the different versions of stoolball, and because it was played not only in England, but also in colonial America, stoolball is considered by many to have been the basis of not only cricket, but both baseball and rounders as well.

[edit]
Tip-cat, Trap Ball
Tip-cat is an early game, which was played well into the middle of the Twentieth Century, but has since declined in popularity. It involves striking a piece of wood (known as the 'cat') lying on the ground with a stick, so that it spins vertically into the air, then using a horizontal swing to strike the 'cat' on its downfall. The object is to hit the 'cat' as far as possible over three consecutive strikes, the next strike taking place where the previous strike landed. A swing that fails to connect with the 'cat', or an initial strike that fails to spin the 'cat' into the air high enough to swing at, still counts toward the three strike total. While each 'cat' is different, typically being fashioned from whatever wood was lying around at the time, a typical one would be a straight piece of stick about four inches (10 centimetres) long, one inch (2.5 centimetres) in diameter, and cut at an angle at each end to resemble a parallelogram in cross-section. When the 'cat' is on the ground, it will be possible to strike one or the other end of the 'cat' with a stick approximately 30 inches (75 centimetres) long, held one-handed, to cause it to fly up in the air so it can be hit with the stick.

Trap-ball, which developed by the 14th century, is somewhat similar to tip-cat, except that, instead of striking a cat with a stick to get it to fly in the air so it can be hit, a ball is launched from a kind of catapult.

Cat and Dog
Another early folk game was cat and dog (or "dog and cat"), which probably originated in Scotland. In cat and dog a piece of wood called a cat is thrown at a hole in the ground while another player defends the hole with a stick (a dog). In some cases there were two holes and, after hitting the cat, the batter would run between them while fielders would try to put the runner out by putting the ball in the hole before the runner got to it. Dog and cat thus resembled cricket.

Cricket
The history of cricket prior to 1650 is something of a mystery. Games believed to have been similar to cricket had developed by the 13th century. There was a game called "creag", and another game, Handyn and Handoute (Hands In and Hands Out), which was made illegal in 1477 by King Edward IV, who considered the game childish, and a distraction from compulsory archery practice.

References to a game actually called "cricket" appeared around 1550. It is believed that the word cricket is based either on the word cric, meaning a crooked stick possibly a shepherd's crook (early forms of cricket used a curved bat somewhat like a hockey stick), or on the Flemish word “krickstoel", which refers to a stool upon which one kneels in church.

There was at least one official Cricket Club open to membership, established in 1846 in the US at New York. However it appears the popularity of the sport waned during the US civil war; to which baseball became the more popular sport.

Cat, One Old Cat
A game popular in colonial America was one hole catapult, which used a catapult like the one used in trap-ball.

The game of cat (or "cat-ball") had many variations but usually there was a pitcher, a catcher, a batter and fielders, but there were no sides (and often no bases to run). A feature of some versions of cat that would later become a feature of baseball was that a batter would be out if he swung and missed three times.

Another game that was popular in early America was one ol' cat, the name of which was possibly originally a contraction of one hole catapult. In one ol' cat, when a batter is put out, the catcher goes to bat, the pitcher catches, a fielder becomes the pitcher, and other fielders move up in rotation. One ol' cat was often played when there weren't enough players to choose up sides and play townball. Sometimes running to a base and back was involved. Two ol' cat was the same game as one ol' cat, except that there were two batters.

[edit]
Early baseball
A game called "base-ball" had developed in England by the early 18th century, and it continued to be called "baseball" until after 1800. It was mentioned in a book published in 1744 called Little Pretty Pocket-Book. As is the case with all folk games, there were many variations. Similar games were played in America well before 1800.

Rules for "baseball" appeared in 1796, in a German book by Johann Guts Muths, who called the game "English base-ball". In the game described by Guts Muths, the number of bases varied with the number of players, and a single out retired the entire side.

In Northanger Abbey (written 1798), Jane Austen wrote (emphasis added): (Catherine) should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country, at the age of fourteen, to books.

In 2004, historian John Thom discovered a reference to a bylaw prohibiting anyone from playing "baseball" within 80 yards of the new meeting house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A librarian found the actual by-law in the Berkshire Athenaeum library, and its age was verified by researchers at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.

If authentic and if actually referring to a recognizable version of the modern game, the 1791 document, would be, as of 2004, the earliest known reference to the game.

[edit]
Did Abner Doubleday invent baseball?
Contrary to a once-widely promoted theory that Abner Doubleday invented baseball (presumably in 1839), there is no evidence that he did other than the testimony of one man decades after the fact. Doubleday, in fact, never claimed that he did. The legend of Doubleday’s invention was itself an invention of Al Spalding, a former star pitcher who had become a sporting goods manufacturer. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, debates raged over the origins of baseball. To end the arguments and speculation, Spalding organized a panel in 1907. The panel consisted of Spalding, two United States Senators (one a former National League president), two other former National League presidents, and two other former stars turned sporting goods entrepreneurs (George Wright and Alfred Reach). The final report entailed three sections: a summary written by Spalding of the panel’s findings, a letter by John M. Ward supporting the panel, and a dissenting opinion by Henry Chadwick. The research methods were, at best, dubious. It was not history Spalding was after, but the perfect story: baseball was invented in a quaint rural town that lacked foreigners and lacked industry by a young man who later went on to graduate West Point, and be a hero in the Mexican-American War, Civil War, and in wars against Indians.

Spalding's summary concluded that baseball had been invented by Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York in 1839; that Doubleday had invented the word baseball, designed the diamond, indicated fielder positions, wrote down the rules and the field regulations. However, no written records from 1839 or the 1840s have ever been found to corroborate these claims; nor could Doubleday be questioned, because he had died in 1893. The primary source for the panel's conclusions was the 1907 testimony of Abner Graves, a five-year-old resident of Cooperstown in 1839. Graves, however, never mentioned a diamond, positions or the writing of rules. Graves' reliability as a witness is questionable as he was later convicted of murdering his wife and spent his final days in an asylum for the criminally insane. To further cloud the panel's findings, Doubleday was not in Cooperstown in 1839. He was enrolled in West Point and there are no records of any leave time. A.G. Mills, a lifelong friend of Doubleday’s, had never heard Doubleday mention inventing baseball.

At his death, Doubleday left a considerable supply of letters and papers, none of which describe baseball, or give any suggestion that Doubleday considered himself a prominent person in the evolution of the game. An encyclopedia article about Doubleday published in 1911 makes no mention of the game.

As noted elsewhere in the text, versions of baseball rules have since been found in publications that significantly predate the alleged invention in 1839.

Jeff Idelson of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York has stated, "Baseball wasn't really born anywhere," meaning that the evolution of the game was long and continuous and has no clear, identifiable single origin.

1845 / The Knickerbocker Rules
The first published rules of modern baseball were written in 1845 for a Manhattan team called the Knickerbockers. The author of those rules, Alexander Cartwright, has come to be known as the father of modern baseball. The evolution of the so-called "Knickerbocker Rules" into the rules of today is fairly well documented. The role of Cartwright himself has been alleged by some baseball historians to be significantly exaggerated, a modern attempt similar to the Doubleday story, to try to pinpoint a single "inventor" of the game, albeit with at least some measure of substantiation. One factor that is undisputed by historians is the direct evolution from the amateur urban teams (not the Cooperstowns of America) of the 1840s to the modern professional major leagues which began in the 1870s.

Before 1845
The evolution of the game which became modern baseball prior to 1845 is unclear. The Knickerbocker Rules describe a game that people had been playing for some time. But exactly how long is uncertain, as is the question of how that game developed.

Early theorists tended to fall into two camps. One group, mostly English, asserted that baseball evolved from a game of English origin (probably rounders), while the other group, almost entirely American, argued that baseball was an American invention (perhaps derived from the game of one ol' cat). Proponents of these two views apparently saw them as mutually exclusive. Some of their conclusions seem based more on a sense of national loyalty than on any actual evidence.

American historians tended to reject any suggestion that baseball evolved from an English game, while some English observers concluded that baseball was little more than rounders without the round. The theory that baseball is based on English games (such as cat, cricket and rounders) is difficult to dispute. On the other hand, baseball has many elements that are uniquely American.

Cricket and Rounders
Baseball is almost certainly related to cricket and rounders, but exactly how, or how closely, has not been established.

The theory that baseball is derived from cricket is difficult to document, although it is certainly true that modern cricket is considerably older than modern baseball.

People have been playing games with ball and stick for centuries. These various bat-and-ball games are all, at the very least, cousins to each other. Although there are many specific differences between the games, in general they all involve throwing a ball to a batsman who attempts to hit it and run to a goal of some kind.

After 1845
In 1857, 25 Northeastern clubs sent delegates and standardized the rules. In 1858, they formed the first baseball league, the National Association of Base Ball Players. The league started giving games to the public and charged an admission.

During the American Civil War, soldiers from the Northeast, where baseball was flourishing, spread the game all over the country. After the war ended, baseball had more than 100 clubs.

In 1869, the world's first openly professional baseball team formed. All previous players were at least theoretically amateur and unpaid. The Cincinnati Red Stockings recruited the best players and no one beat the Red Stockings that year.

Regardless of this and later changes, several clubs exist in the present-day United States that play "the old game", either according to the 1845, 1858, or post-Civil War rules.

Bibliography
Henderson, Robert W. Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origin of Ball Games

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