When was professional baseball introduced in France?
Émile Dubonnet
He also helped form the first professional baseball league in France, the French Baseball Union, in 1912.
Promotion and relegation
Baseball's National Association was not able to survive the onset of professionalism. It responded to the trend — clubs secretly paying or indirectly compensating players — by establishing a "professional" class for 1869. As quickly as 1871, most of those clubs broke away and formed the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP). That new, professional Association was open at a modest fee, but it proved to be unstable. It was replaced by the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs in 1876, which has endured to the present day. The founders of the new League judged that in order to prosper, they must make baseball's highest level of competition a "closed shop", with a strict limit on the number of teams, each member having exclusive local rights.
Baseball Ontario
On June 4, 1838, a year before Abner Doubleday was recognized with inventing baseball in Cooperstown, New York, two teams from Oxford and Zorra townships met in Beachville, Ontario in what is now known as the first documented game in North American history. It was Dr. Adam Ford, a former resident of St. Marys, Ontario, now home to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, who later reported details of this game in a letter published in the May 5, 1886 issue of Sporting Life magazine.
While living in Denver, Colorado, he wrote of his recollections that the match was played on a square field in a pasture. The game included five bases, fair and foul balls, players using a hand hewn stick as a bat and a ball made of twisted yarn and covered with calf skin. Ford's account was researched by the Beachville District Historical Society and it was concluded that the information in his letter is authentic.
Jean Faut
In its twelve-year history, the AAGPBL evolved through many stages, which started with baseball rules, including leading off bases. The pitching distance and the base paths were, however, longer than regulation softball. In 1943 the AAGPBL began by using a speeded-up game of fastpitch softball, with a ball 12 inches in circumference. The league introduced an 11½-inch ball in 1944 and 1945, switched to an 11-inch ball in 1946 and 1947, and a 10⅜ inch-ball in 1948. Midway through the 1949 season, a 10-inch ball was employed. In the final season of 1954, the AAGPBL's ball switched to 9¼ inches, the size of a regulation Major League baseball. After four years of fast-pitch motion, the circuit shifted to limited sidearm in 1946, which was modified to full sidearm in 1947, until overhand pitching became effective in 1948.
History of baseball outside the United States
Baseball also made an appearance at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, American players facing a French team (the Ranelagh Club) in an exhibition game. The game lasted only four innings due to poor field conditions, the Americans leading 5–0 at the time. The American media was quick to claim a victory both for the American team and for baseball as a sport.
World Series
The United States, Canada, and Mexico ("Liga Méxicana de Béisbol", established 1925) were the only professional baseball countries until a few decades into the 20th century. The first Japanese professional baseball efforts began in 1920. The current Japanese leagues date from the late 1940s (after World War II). Various Latin American leagues also formed around that time.
Origins of baseball
The first recorded game of modern North American baseball was played in Beachville, Ontario in 1838. A firsthand account and the rules of the game were recalled by Dr. Adam E. Ford, who had witnessed the game as a six-year-old boy, in an 1886 issue of "The Sporting Life" magazine in Denver, Colorado; he described the game in remarkable detail, including the precise distances between the irregular bases and how the ball was constructed.
Baseball
Many European countries have professional leagues as well; the most successful, other than the Dutch league, is the Italian league, founded in 1948. In 2004, Australia won a surprise silver medal at the Olympic Games. The Confédération Européene de Baseball (European Baseball Confederation), founded in 1953, organizes a number of competitions between clubs from different countries. Other competitions between national teams, such as the Baseball World Cup and the Olympic baseball tournament, were administered by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) from its formation in 1938 until its 2013 merger with the International Softball Federation to create the current joint governing body for both sports, the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). Women's baseball is played on an organized amateur basis in numerous countries.
History of Canadian sports
Baseball emerged in the 1870s, as a nonviolent, rules-oriented game that appealed to middle-class reformers seeking antidotes to crime, rowdiness and social disorder. However, when professional baseball emerged in the 1880s, unruly behavior by players and fans contradicted the reformers ideal of a gentleman's game played before a well-behaved audience. Gambling became a major feature, as did the rise of working-class players and rowdy working-class fans. The only solution the reformers found was to separate gentleman elite amateur baseball from the professional version that was getting out of control.
History of sport
Baseball (closely related to English rounders and French la soule, and less clearly connected to cricket) became established in the urban Northeastern United States, with the first rules being codified in the 1840s, while American football was very popular in the south-east, with baseball spreading to the south, and American football spreading to the north after the Civil War. There is documented evidence of baseball in england.London, England (CNN) -- An extract from an 18th-century diary containing the oldest known reference to baseball is among the items on display in a new exhibition in London exploring the English origins and cricketing connections of America's national sport.
Professional sports leagues in the United States
Major League Baseball is the highest level of play of baseball in North America. It consists of the National League (founded in 1876) and the American League (founded in 1901). Cooperation between the two leagues began in 1903, and the two merged on an organizational level in 2000 with the elimination of separate league offices; they have shared a single Commissioner since 1920. There are currently 30 member teams, with 29 located in the U.S. and 1 in Canada. Traditionally called the "National Pastime", baseball was the first professional sport in the U.S.
Baseball in the United Kingdom
Although early varieties of baseball may have originated in England in the 18th century, the modern baseball code started to be played in Britain in 1890, when the National Baseball League of Great Britain and Ireland was established. Professional baseball was especially popular in Britain during the 1930s. Occasional exhibition matches between American teams have been staged in Britain over the years.
History of the St. Louis Cardinals (1875–1919)
With interest in reviving professional baseball in St. Louis steadily growing, grocery and brewery tycoon Chris von der Ahe observed with fascination the team playing near his store and beer garden garnered large crowds. He purchased the club in 1881, and – together with other club owners (who also happened to beer magnates) interested in creating professional league that could rival the National League – made it a charter member of the American Association in 1882, bringing professional baseball back to the Gateway City. This Brown Stockings club became St. Louis' Major League mainstay, now competing as the Cardinals. During their time in the AA, the Cardinals established the first St. Louis professional sports dynasty, finishing with best overall record in the league each year from 1885 to 1888 and the best all-time record in that league's history. They also took their first interleague championship (a precursor to the World Series), finishing off their rivals, the Chicago White Stockings – now the Chicago Cubs – in the 1886 World Series.
Daniel Okrent
Okrent invented Rotisserie League Baseball, the best-known form of fantasy baseball, in 1979. The name comes from the fact that he proposed the idea to his friends while dining at La Rôtisserie Française restaurant in New York City. Okrent's team in the Rotisserie League was called the "Okrent Fenokees", a pun on the Okefenokee Swamp. He was one of the first two people inducted into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame. Okrent was still playing Rotisserie as of 2009 under the team name Dan Druffs. Despite having been credited with inventing fantasy baseball he has never been able to win a Rotisserie League. His exploits of inventing Rotisserie League Baseball were chronicled in "Silly Little Game", part of the ESPN "30 for 30" documentary series, in 2010.
History of baseball in the United States
In 1870, a schism developed 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. Its amateur counterpart disappeared after only a few years.
Provincial League (baseball)
The Provincial League was part of a long history of Quebec-based minor leagues. The first iterations played in 1894 and 1900. Later, the Ontario–Quebec–Vermont League played from 1922 to 1924, spending two years as an independent league before joining the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the governing body of minor league baseball, in its last season. Like later incarnations of the league, it was the product of Canadian Pacific Railway sports promoter Joseph Page and retired Major League Baseball pitcher Jean Dubuc, who labored extensively to set up teams in towns with Canadian Pacific stops.
European Americans
English lawyer William Bray recorded a game of baseball on Easter Monday 1755 in Guildford, Surrey; Bray's diary was verified as authentic in September 2008. This early form of the game was apparently brought to North America by English immigrants. The first appearance of the term that exists in print was in "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book" in 1744, where it is called Base-Ball. Today, Rounders which has been played in England since Tudor times holds a similarity to Baseball. Although, literary references to early forms of "base-ball" in England pre-date use of the term "rounders".
Origins of baseball
In that letter, Ford refers to 'old grayhairs' at the time, who had played this game as children, suggesting that the origins of baseball in Canada go back into the 18th century. Very similar instances were recorded by John Montgomery Ward in his 1888 book "Base-Ball: How to Become a Player, with the Origins, History and Explanation of the Game", in which he recounts several elderly men recalling having played as boys, covering a span from the 1790s to the 1830s; among others, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. recalled playing at Harvard, from which he graduated in 1829.
Ahuntsic Park
On May 11, 2013, the Trois-Rivières Aigles and Québec Capitales of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball, played an exhibition game at Gary Carter Stadium. This marked the first professional baseball game played in Montreal since the last Expos home game on September 29, 2004.
Independence Producers
Prior to Independence playing night baseball, there was a baseball game played at night in 1880. It was an experimental game between two department store teams, and it would take another fifty years before Organized Baseball would sanction night baseball. There were a couple of exhibition night baseball games in the early 1990's between Organized Baseball teams. One was in 1909, and the other in 1927, but the games did not count in league standings. In 1929, the president of the Des Moines, Iowa baseball club announced to the National Association convention his intent to play night baseball in 1930. However, the first official minor league game actually took place in Independence, Kansas on April 28, 1930.
History of baseball
In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area. By 1856, local journals were referring to baseball as the "national pastime" or "national game." A year later, sixteen area clubs formed the sport's first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players. In 1863, the organization disallowed putouts made by catching a fair ball on the first bounce. Four years later, it barred participation by African Americans. The game's commercial potential was developing: in 1869 the first fully professional baseball club, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was formed and went undefeated against a schedule of semipro and amateur teams. The first professional league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, lasted from 1871 to 1875; scholars dispute its status as a major league.
Frank G. Menke
As baseball prepared to celebrate the centennial of the sport in 1939, Menke released the results of his research showing that the sport was not invented in 1839 by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York. Menke first published his findings in a magazine called "Ken" and then reprinted in the first edition of "The Encyclopedia of Sports", which was released in February 1939. Menke concluded that the game had been played along the East Coast since at least 1805 and pointed out that Doubleday was 20 years old and enrolled at a military academy when he was supposed to have invented the game. While the quality of Menke's research was acknowledged by leading newspapers including "The Sporting News", the Little Falls "Times", a newspaper serving the Cooperstown area, wrote that Menke had an ulterior motive for his claims and belonged to "the class that would belittle Washington, Lincoln and other men who have played their part in American history".
Negro league baseball
Baseball featuring African American players became professionalized by the 1870s. The first known professional black baseball player was Bud Fowler, who appeared in a handful of games with a Chelsea, Massachusetts club in April 1878 and then pitched for the Lynn, Massachusetts team in the International Association.
Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother, Welday Wilberforce Walker, were the first two black players in the major leagues. They both played for the 1884 Toledo Blue Stockings in the American Association. Then in 1886 second baseman Frank Grant joined the Buffalo Bisons of the International League, the strongest minor league, and hit .340, third highest in the league. Several other black American players joined the International League the following season, including pitchers George Stovey and Robert Higgins, but 1888 was the last season blacks were permitted in that or any other high minor league.
The first nationally known black professional baseball team was founded in 1885 when three clubs, the Keystone Athletics of Philadelphia, the Orions of Philadelphia, and the Manhattans of Washington, D.C., merged to form the Cuban Giants.
Jean Cione
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was a circuit that began to operate in 1943. Since the only organized ball for women in the United States was softball, the league officials created a hybrid game which included both fast-pitch softball and baseball. Compared to softball, the crucial differences were that nine (not ten) players were used, and runners could lead off, slide and steal bases. In its twelve years of history the AAGPBL evolved through many stages. These differences varied from the beginning of the league, progressively extending the length of the base paths and pitching distance and decreasing the size of the ball until the final year of play in 1954. For the first five years the circuit used a fastpitch underhand motion, shifted to sidearm in 1947, and never really became baseball until overhand pitching began in 1948.
Fantasy baseball
The Rotisserie scoring system was developed independently and popularized in the 1980s by a group of journalists and formalized under the title Rotisserie League Baseball in 1980, named after the New York City restaurant La Rotisserie Française, where its founders met for lunch and first played the game. 
Magazine writer-editor Daniel Okrent is credited with inventing the Rotisserie scoring system, coming up with the idea on a flight to Texas. After presenting his first vision of rotisserie baseball to friends there, none seemed interested. Upon returning to New York a month later, he received an enthusiastic reception from a different group of friends, who then collaborated on the first league to use the system.
Baseball in the United States
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization that is the oldest of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. A total of 30 teams now play in the American League (AL) and National League (NL), with 15 teams in each league. The AL and NL operated as separate legal entities from 1901 and 1876 respectively. After cooperating but remaining legally separate entities since 1903, in 2000 the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball. The organization also oversees minor league baseball leagues, which comprise about 240 teams affiliated with the major-league clubs. With the World Baseball Softball Confederation, MLB manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament.
History of baseball
References to baseball date back to the 1700s, and in 1871 the first professional league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, was founded. Five years later, the National League was created; it was followed by the American League in 1901. The first World Series between the champions of the two major leagues was held in 1903, and by 1905 it became an annual event. Baseball early in the 20th century was characterized by low-scoring games, but the dead-ball era ended in the early 1920s with rule changes and the rise of power hitter Babe Ruth. The major leagues had a color barrier that lasted until 1947, when Jackie Robinson made his debut. The major leagues began the process of expansion in 1961 and attendance increase from the mid-1970s to 1994, when a work stoppage led to the cancellation of the World Series.
Baseball Before We Knew It
The account, first published in 1905, that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 was once widely promoted and widely believed. However, this belief was discredited almost immediately. Although the Doubleday myth was never taken seriously by historians, Block showed that the gospel that supplanted it was also deeply flawed. In this accounting, baseball was understood as the derivation of an English children's game, rounders, but America was allowed to retain patrimony over its national pastime through the assertion that it had been reinvented as a modern sport by the members of the New York Knickerbockers, who codified its rules for the first time in 1845. This idea, according to Block is wrong in almost every aspect. In the book, Block argues that baseball was not a product of rounders, and its essential form had already been established by the late 18th century.
Sports in Toronto
Professional baseball has had a presence in the city at the minor league level since 1896 with the Toronto Maple Leafs of the AAA International League. It was in a game against the Leafs on September 4, 1914 at Hanlan's Point Stadium where Babe Ruth hit his first ever professional home run while also pitching a complete game one-hitter for the visiting Providence Grays. Hall of famer Sparky Anderson was also a member of the Leafs as both a player and a manager.
Baseball in the Dominican Republic
Baseball is the most popular sport in the Dominican Republic. It is a major sport in the country, and was introduced in the late-19th century in the city of San Pedro de Macorís by Cuban immigrants. After the United States, the Dominican Republic has the second-highest number of baseball players in Major League Baseball (MLB). The Dominican Republic national baseball team has won the Baseball World Cup in 1948 and the World Baseball Classic in 2013.
France national baseball team
The French National Team competed in the 2016 World Baseball Classic Qualifiers held in March 2016 in Panama. In game one, Panama beat France behind long time MLB catcher Carlos Ruiz's two home runs in front of a crowd of over 11,000. In game two, Cespedes pitched France to a victory over European rival Spain at Rod Carew Stadium. The 5-3 victory marked the first win in four tries at the WBC Qualifiers for the French. In the semi-final game, France, led by offensively by first baseman Rene Leveret's home run in the fifth inning, found themselves tied with Panama in the fifth inning, but were not able to close out the game, falling 7-4, ending their hopes of qualifying for the 2017 WBC.
Independence Producers
According to a historical marker, the first night game in organized baseball was played in Independence on April 28, 1930, between the Independence Producers and the Muskogee Chiefs. Since there are some people that are not familiar with the term Organized Baseball, it is important to explain the term. It is a specific group of baseball teams, those that are part of Major League Baseball, and the minor league teams associated with Major League Baseball. Organized Baseball games must follow specific rules in order to be Organized Baseball games. The commissioner of Baseball has authority over Organized Baseball. An Organized Baseball game is an official Organized Baseball game.
Baseball in Germany
The first mention of baseball in Germany was found in a 1796 book on sports by German writer Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths, where he was writing about a game called "schlagbal", a very old German-Austrian game. Although Germans were exposed to bat-and-ball games from an early stage, baseball did not rise in popularity until after World War II. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a lot of European countries received interest from major league players, one of which was Hall of Fame member John McGraw. From 1888 to 1889, A.G. Spalding went on a Major League Baseball world tour where he visited Italy, France and the United Kingdom, but not Germany since Berlin was covered in snow that winter. In 1912-1913, John McGraw and Charlie Comiskey went on another world tour, but again Germany, because of the threat of inclement weather during the tour, was left off the schedule. This likely was a reason why baseball was left more undeveloped than in other European countries like Italy or the Netherlands.
History of baseball outside the United States
Baseball began in Puerto Rico in 1896. A Puerto Rican that was born in Brooklyn, Amos Iglesias Van-Pelt, started practicing a group of men, some of them Cuban students who already knew the game from back home. Two years later, January 9, 1898, the first official game was held at the Velodromo, Stop 15, Santurce. The Cubans formed a team known as Almendares and the Puerto Rican ball club was named Borinquen with Amos Iglesias Van-Pelt on the mound. After three innings, the game was postponed by rain. Games kept going until March of that year because of the advent of the Spanish–American War, stopping all baseball activities until November 1899.
Negro league baseball
In 1885 the Cuban Giants formed the first black professional baseball team. The first league, the National Colored Base Ball League, was organized strictly as a minor league but failed in 1887 after only two weeks owing to low attendance. The Negro American League of 1951 is considered the last major league season and the last professional club, the Indianapolis Clowns, operated as a humorous sideshow rather than competitively from the mid-1960s to the 1980s.
Charlene Pryer
The AAGPBL flourished in the 1940s when the Major Leagues went on hold as men went to World War II. The circuit operated from 1943 to 1954 and gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball and to play it at a level never before attained. Since the only organized ball for women in the country was softball, the AAGPBL created a hybrid game which included both softball and baseball. Over the twelve years of history of the league, the rules were gradually modified to more closely resemble baseball, progressively changing the pitching styles, extending the length of the base paths and pitching distance and decreasing the size of the ball until the final year of play.
Professional sports
Baseball originated before the American Civil War (1861–1865). A humble game played on sandlots in particular, scoring and record-keeping gave baseball gravity. "Today," notes John Thorn in The Baseball Encyclopedia, "baseball without records is inconceivable."
History of the St. Louis Cardinals (1875–1919)
With instability plaguing the American Association, the league folded after the 1891 season. Now named "Browns", St. Louis rejoined the National League, only to find a complete reversal of its AA success. From 1892 to 1920 – a span of twenty-nine seasons – St. Louis managed just five winning seasons and finished in last or next-to-last place on 17 occasions. The club also rode out 31 managerial changes and two more name changes, the last being to "Cardinals" in 1900. However, following this extended era of futility, the Cardinals emerged into a renaissance in the 1920s that brought championship baseball back to St. Louis.
The game of baseball as it is played today is significantly removed from the game that originated in the late 19th century in the northeastern United States. Noted baseball historian and statistician Bill James commented that the game and playing field resembled fastpitch softball more than contemporary baseball. The style of play diverged in many facets. Pitchers were prohibited from throwing overhand – they were only permitted to throw underhanded or sidearmed. They threw from a flat outlined box without a designated point of footing to release the ball instead of a mound with a pitching rubber until 1893. The pitcher's mound did not receive official recognition until 1903.
Fantasy sport
An important development in fantasy sports came with the development of Rotisserie League Baseball in 1980 (although research 
suggests a team of players from Southern New Jersey have been running the same style league since 1976 making them the first Rotisserie players). Magazine writer/editor Daniel Okrent is credited with inventing it, the name coming from the New York City restaurant La Rotisserie Francaise where he and some friends used to meet and play. The game's innovation was that "owners" in a Rotisserie league would draft teams from the list of active Major League Baseball players and would follow their statistics during the ongoing season to compile their scores. In other words, rather than running realistic simulations using statistics for seasons whose outcomes were already known, the owners would have to make similar predictions about players' playing time, health, and expected performance that real baseball managers must make.
1969 Major League Baseball expansion
Minor league baseball became a presence in the city. In 1946, the Montreal Royals, a Triple-A team affiliated with the Brooklyn Dodgers of Major League Baseball, became the first team having any affiliation to MLB to break baseball's colour barrier. Jackie Robinson, who had been signed to a contract by Branch Rickey in late 1945, played the entire season for the International League team. He and teammates Roy Partlow and Johnny Wright were the first black players in the league since the 1880s. The next year, Robinson became the first black player to play for a Major League Baseball team. In 1951 in Farnham, a town east of Montreal, Sam Bankhead became the first black manager in Minor League Baseball; he was a player-manager for the Farnham Pirates of the Provincial League that year.
Derby County Baseball Club
Baseball was introduced to Derby by Francis Ley, an industrialist who owned Ley's Malleable Castings. Following a visit to the United States of America in 1889, Ley decided that, as a way of ensuring a healthier and more productive workforce, an investment should be made in promoting recreation for his workers. During his journey to the States, Ley had seen the way in which baseball fields had been laid out by companies and factories for the use by their workers and decided to follow suit on his return to Derby. Consequently, Ley had the Baseball Ground built; a park for the use of workers with cricket and baseball facilities.
Professional baseball in Japan
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 free of charge, as it was considered shameful to take money for doing something the players liked.
Ingersoll, Ontario
The New England settlers of Oxford-on-the-Thames brought with them an early version of the stick and ball game now known as baseball. This was played in the Great Barrington area in the 1790s, and was a part of the Queen's Birthday celebrations in pioneer Oxford, as immortalized in the writings of Dr. Ford which gave nearby Beachville its fame as the birthplace of baseball in Canada. By the 1860s a Canadian championship circuit had been developed from Oxford. Ingersoll's team took the title in 1868 and went on to display its prowess in matches against American teams in the 1870s. By the 1930s Ingersoll had a semi-pro team that recruited Oscar 'Lefty' Judd (1908-1995), a phenomenal pitcher from Nissouri township who helped propel the team to the provincial championship before launching his career as a professional player in the United States.
History of Western civilization
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 18th century brought increased leisure time, leading to more time for citizens to attend and follow spectator sports, greater participation in athletic activities, and increased accessibility. The bat and ball sport of cricket was first played in England during the 16th century and was exported around the globe via the British Empire. A number of popular modern sports were devised or codified in Britain during the 19th century and obtained global prominence – these include Ping Pong, modern tennis, Association Football, Netball and Rugby. The United States also developed popular international sports during this period. English migrants took antecedents of baseball to America during the colonial period. American football resulted from several major divergences from rugby, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield, Massachusetts in the United States. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman, instigated the modern revival of the Olympic Games, with the first modern Olympics were held at Athens in 1896.
Liga de Béisbol Profesional Roberto Clemente
Puerto Rican Baseball began at the end of the 19th century. The first two clubs were founded in 1897: the "Almendares" Baseball Club owned by Francisco Alamo Armas, and the "Borinquen" Baseball Club owned by Santos Filippi. According to "El Pais" newspaper, the first game was played on January 11, 1898 at the old velodrome in Santurce, San Juan. The "Borinquen" beat the "Almendares" 3 to 0. The first game to complete nine innings was played on January 30, 1898, when the "Borinquen" beat the "Almendares" again, 9 to 3. Enrique Huyke, a professor from Mayagüez, originally suggested the establishment of an organized baseball league in Puerto Rico. The idea was adopted by Teofilo Maldonado, president of the Commission on Recreation and Sports. A third party, Gabriel Castro, helped Huyke with the scouting of organizations which had to pay a thousand dollars prior to being admitted, while independent entities like the Guayama Rotary Club collaborated in raising funds for the teams. The "Liga de Béisbol Semiprofesional de Puerto Rico" (LBSPR) was founded in 1938, as a semi-professional league. Six team formed the new organization, these were the Senadores de San Juan, Leones de Ponce, Criollos de Caguas, Brujos de Guayama and Grises Orientales de Humacao. The first Puerto Rican players to play in Major League Baseball, Hiram Bithorn and Luis Olmo, were active in the rosters of San Juan and Caguas. Bithorn became the younger manager in the league's history, receiving the office when he was 22 years old. Huyke served as manager for Mayagüez for less than a month, because the team's owner threatened to remove its entry if he did not take the office. Maldonado was named the league's commissioner.
National Association of Professional Base Ball Players
The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), or known simply as the National Association (NA), was founded in 1871 and continued through the 1875 season. It succeeded and incorporated several professional clubs from the previous National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) of 1857-1870, sometimes called "the amateur association"; in turn several of its clubs created the succeeding National League of Professional Baseball Clubs. Later shortened simply to be called the National League, it was founded 1876, the earliest one half of modern Major League Baseball (MLB) in America, with the later competing American League of Professional Base Ball Clubs in 1901, known too as the American League.
History of baseball
The evolution of baseball from older bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. A French manuscript from 1344 contains an illustration of clerics playing a game, possibly "la soule", with similarities to baseball. Other old French games such as "thèque", "la balle au bâton", and "la balle empoisonnée" also appear to be related. Consensus once held that today's baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, popular in Great Britain and Ireland. "Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game" (2005), by David Block, suggests that the game originated in England; recently uncovered historical evidence supports this position. Block argues that rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of each other, and that the game's most direct antecedents are the English games of stoolball and "tut-ball". It has long been believed that cricket also descended from such games, though evidence uncovered in early 2009 suggests that cricket may have been imported to England from Flanders.
History of baseball team nicknames
The first openly all-professional team was the famous Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869–1870. They began as an amateur organization in the National Association of Base Ball Players in 1866, as interest in baseball grew substantially after the American Civil War. Interest in the Red Stockings themselves grew as they compiled an impressive winning streak while mostly on a road tour or "barnstorming". The nickname "Red Stockings" was again a press appellation based on their uniforms; in fact the 1869 Cincinnati club inaugurated the baseball tradition of wearing knickers with knee socks instead of long trousers, a style some contemporary prudes considered shocking and immoral.
St. Louis Cardinals
Professional baseball began in St. Louis with the inception of the Brown Stockings in the National Association (NA) in 1875. The NA folded following that season, and the next season, St. Louis joined the National League as a charter member, finishing in third place at 45-19. George Bradley hurled the first no-hitter in Major League history. The NL expelled St. Louis from the league after 1877 due to a game-fixing scandal and the team went bankrupt. Without a league, they continued play as a semi-professional barnstorming team through 1881.
Nippon Professional Baseball
The first professional baseball team in Japan was founded by media mogul Matsutarō Shōriki in late 1934 and called the Dai Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Kurabu ("the Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club"). After matching up with a team of visiting American All-Stars that included Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and Charlie Gehringer, the team spent the 1935 season barnstorming in the U.S., winning 93 of 102 games against semi-pro and Pacific Coast League teams. According to historian Joseph Reaves, "The only minor drawbacks to the team's popularity in the States were their kanji characters and their cumbersome Japanese name. They rectified both by renaming themselves the Tokyo Kyojin ['Tokyo Giants'] and adopting a uniform identical to the New York Giants…"
History of baseball
Many European countries have professional leagues as well, the most successful, other than the Dutch league, being the Italian league founded in 1948. Compared to those in Asia and Latin America, the various European leagues and the one in Australia historically have had no more than niche appeal. In 2004, Australia won a surprise silver medal at the Olympic Games. The Israel Baseball League, launched in 2007, folded after one season. The Confédération Européene de Baseball (European Baseball Confederation), founded in 1953, organizes a number of competitions between clubs from different countries, as well as national squads. Other competitions between national teams, such as the Baseball World Cup and the Olympic baseball tournament, were administered by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) from its formation in 1938 until its 2013 merger with the International Softball Federation to create the current joint governing body for both sports, the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). By 2009, the IBAF had 117 member countries. Women's baseball is played on an organized amateur basis in numerous countries. Since 2004, the IBAF and now WBSC have sanctioned the Women's Baseball World Cup, featuring national teams.
Baseball
Widely known as America's pastime, baseball is well established in several other countries as well. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featured teams from both Canada and the US. While baseball is widely played in Canada and many minor league teams have been based in the country, the American major leagues did not include a Canadian club until 1969, when the Montreal Expos joined the National League as an expansion team. In 1977, the expansion Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League.
In 1847, American soldiers played what may have been the first baseball game in Mexico at Parque Los Berros in Xalapa, Veracruz. The first formal baseball league outside of the United States and Canada was founded in 1878 in Cuba, which maintains a rich baseball tradition. The Dominican Republic held its first islandwide championship tournament in 1912. Professional baseball tournaments and leagues began to form in other countries between the world wars, including the Netherlands (formed in 1922), Australia (1934), Japan (1936), Mexico (1937), and Puerto Rico (1938). The Japanese major leagues have long been considered the highest quality professional circuits outside of the United States.
History of baseball outside the United States
Baseball was introduced in Japan in 1872 and is currently among the country's most popular sports. The first professional competitions emerged in the 1920s. The current league, Nippon Professional Baseball, consists of two leagues of 6 teams each. The country's national team has also been successful, having won two Olympic medals (bronze and silver), while the World Championships team never placed worse than 5th in its 13 appearances, winning second place once and third place three times. Recently, several Japanese players have also entered the U.S. major leagues, such as Hideo Nomo, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Tadahito Iguchi, Kenji Johjima, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish, and Masahiro Tanaka. Japan defeated Korea to become champions of the second World Baseball Classic on March 23, 2009 in Los Angeles.
Baseball in the Netherlands
The first official competition was played in 1922. The major league was formed out of four clubs that year: Ajax (a branch of the famous football club), Blue White (also a football club), Hercules and Quick Amsterdam. Quick Amsterdam became the first Dutch champion.
During the early years, baseball was only played in Amsterdam, but quickly spread to Haarlem as well. These two cities dominated Dutch baseball until 1963.
Frank Sexton (baseball)
Sexton appears to have made his professional baseball debut in Canada, playing for the Shamrocks, a team sponsored by the Shamrock Athletic Association in Saint John, New Brunswick. According to one account of the early days of professional baseball in Saint John, the Shamrocks went shopping for a new pitcher in 1890: "They obtained the services of F.J. Sexton from Brown University. Sexton was a superb pitcher and received the princely salary of $150 a month" In August 1890, Sexton helped lead the Shamrocks to the 1890 pennant with a 2–0 victory over the Saint John Athletic Association.
Baseball
Compared with the present, professional baseball in the early 20th century was lower-scoring, and pitchers were more dominant. The so-called dead-ball era ended in the early 1920s with several changes in rule and circumstance that were advantageous to hitters. Strict new regulations governed the ball's size, shape and composition, along with a new rule officially banning the spitball and other pitches that depended on the ball being treated or roughed-up with foreign substances, resulted in a ball that traveled farther when hit. The rise of the legendary player Babe Ruth, the first great power hitter of the new era, helped permanently alter the nature of the game. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey invested in several minor league clubs and developed the first modern farm system. A new Negro National League was organized in 1933; four years later, it was joined by the Negro American League. The first elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame took place in 1936. In 1939, Little League Baseball was founded in Pennsylvania.
Ellen Tronnier
The AAGPBL emerged in the spring of 1943, being formed as a non-profit organization as an initiative of Philip K. Wrigley, chewing gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball club. Wrigley conceived the idea as a promotional sideline to maintain interest in baseball as the World War II military draft was depleting Major League rosters of first-line players. By sending out scouts and setting up tryouts in dozens of major cities, Wrigley attracted hundreds of girls from all over America and Canada who were eager to play in this new professional league. Of these, only 280 were invited to the final tryouts at Wrigley Field in Chicago where 60 were chosen to become the first girls to ever play professional baseball.
Baseball in the Netherlands
The driving force in the early days of Dutch baseball was J.C.G. Grasé of Amsterdam. After discovering baseball while on vacation in the United States, he introduced the game in the Netherlands in 1911. An English teacher by profession, Grasé was able to translate the rules of the game into Dutch. The first official games were played in 1911 and on March 12, 1912, Grasé founded the Dutch Baseball Union. Grasé was also the founder of the oldest baseball club in Europe, Quick Amsterdam (founded 1 March 1913).
Baseball in Japan
Professional baseball in Japan first started in the 1920s, but it was not until the Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club (大日本東京野球クラブ Dai-nippon Tōkyō Yakyū Kurabu) a team of all-stars established in 1934 by media mogul Matsutarō Shōriki, that the modern professional game found continued success—especially after Shōriki's club matched up against an American All-Star team that included Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and Charlie Gehringer. While prior Japanese all-star contingents had disbanded, Shōriki went pro with this group, playing in an independent league.
Major League Baseball
In the 1860s, aided by soldiers playing the game in camp during the Civil War, "New York"-style baseball expanded into a national game and spawned baseball's first governing body, The National Association of Base Ball Players. The NABBP existed as an amateur league for 12 years. By 1867, more than 400 clubs were members. Most of the strongest clubs remained those based in the northeastern U.S. For professional baseball's founding year, MLB uses the year 1869—when the first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was established.
Annabelle Lee
The AAGPBL operated from 1943 to 1954 and gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball and to play it at a level never before attained. The league was conceived by Philip K. Wrigley during World War II. Wrigley, who was in charge both of the Wrigley Company and the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball club, conceived the idea of initiating the innovative project to maintain interest in baseball as the military draft was depleting major-league rosters of first-line players and attendance declined at ballparks around the country. By sending out talent scouts and setting up try-outs in dozens of major cities, Wrigley attracted hundreds of women from all over the United States and Canada who were eager to play in this new professional league. Of these, only 280 were invited to the final tryout at Wrigley Field in Chicago where 60 were chosen to become the first women to ever play professional baseball. League play officially began on May 30, 1943 with the teams Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles, Rockford Peaches and South Bend Blue Sox. Each team was made up of fifteen girls.
Sim Bullas
Bullas left baseball in 1887 and began working in a foundry in Cleveland owned by British industrialist Francis Ley. In 1892, Ley sent Bullas to the United Kingdom to catch for the Derby County Baseball Club, the first professional baseball team organized in that country. After a single season there, he returned to Cleveland. In 1893, former professional baseball players in Cleveland organized a one-off team to play against other retired veterans in other cities. Bullas was loaned to the "old leaguers" team from Detroit, Michigan, who lacked a catcher.
St. Louis Cardinals
With origins as one of the early professional baseball clubs in St. Louis and the nation, entrepreneur Chris von der Ahe purchased a barnstorming club in 1881, then known as the Brown Stockings, and established them as charter members of the old American Association (AA) base ball league which played 1882 to 1891, the following season. Upon the discontinuation of the AA, St. Louis joined the continuing National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, later known simply as the National League, (organized in 1876), in 1892; at that time, they were called the Browns (not to be confused with a later team also known as the St. Louis Browns in the American League, 1902-1953) and also as the Perfectos before they were officially renamed eight years later as the Cardinals in 1900.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
Baseball's National League withstood three challenges in its first quarter century of existence. The American Association began in 1882 in several lucrative markets without a NL team. For several years, the AA was a viable competitor to the NL, and the NL and AA champions competed in an informal World Series. Four of the AA's teams defected to the NL in its later years, before the AA expired in 1891. Labor problems led to the formation of the Players' League for the 1890 season; it attracted a significant percentage of the baseball talent and caused the NL and AA significant financial harm, but it lacked financial backing and folded after only one season. The minor Western League moved several franchises in NL cities and cities abandoned by the NL for the 1900 and 1901 seasons, and renamed itself the American League in direct competition with the NL. The NL and AL made peace in 1903; the resulting agreement formed what today is known as Major League Baseball. MLB withstood the challenge of the Federal League in 1914. Various Negro Leagues peaked from the 1920s to the 1940s, and on barnstorming tours the Negro League players showed themselves to be MLB players' competitive equals, but after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, the influx of black stars into the major leagues drained the Negro Leagues of talent. MLB prevented the Continental League from getting off the ground in 1961–62 by placing teams in four of that league's proposed cities by either expansion or relocation.
History of baseball in the United States
The earliest mention of baseball in the U.S was a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ordinance banning the playing of baseball within of the town meeting house. In 1903, the British sportswriter Henry Chadwick published an article speculating that baseball derived from a British game called rounders, which Chadwick had played as a boy in England. But baseball executive Albert Spalding disagreed. Baseball, said Spalding, was fundamentally an American sport and began on American soil. To settle the matter, the two men appointed a commission, headed by Abraham Mills, the fourth president of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs. The commission, which also included six other sports executives, labored for three years, after which it declared that Abner Doubleday invented the national pastime. This would have been a surprise to Doubleday. The late Civil War hero "never knew that he had invented baseball". [But] 15 years [after his death], he was anointed as the father of the game", writes baseball historian John Thorn. The myth about Doubleday inventing the game of baseball actually came from a Colorado mining engineer. Another early reference reports that "base ball" was regularly played on Saturdays in 1823 on the outskirts of New York City in an area that today is Greenwich Village.
Origins of baseball
The early 1840s saw the formation of at least three more clubs in Manhattan, the New York, the Eagle and the Magnolia; another in Philadelphia, the Athletic; and even a club in Cincinnati. By 1851 the game of baseball was well-established enough that a newspaper report of a game played by a group of teamsters on Christmas Day referred to the game as "a good old-fashioned game of base ball", and the 1858 report of the National Association of Base Ball Players declared that "The game of base-ball has long been a favorite and popular recreation in this country, but it is only within the last fifteen years that any attempt has been made to systematize and regulate the game."
British baseball
Professional American baseball teams toured Britain in 1874 and 1889, and had a great effect on similar sports in Britain. In Wales and Merseyside, a strong community game had already developed with skills and plays more in keeping with the American game and the Welsh began to informally adopt the name "baseball" (Pêl Fas), to reflect the American style. By the 1890s, calls were made to follow the success of other working class sports (like Rugby in Wales and Soccer in Merseyside) and adopt a distinct set of rules and bureaucracy.
Women in baseball
In 2008, Eri Yoshida, at 16 years old, became Japan's first professional female baseball player to play in a men's league by signing a professional contract with a new Japanese independent league. In April 2010, she signed a contract with the Chico Outlaws, becoming the first woman to play professionally in two countries. In 2009, Justine Siegal became the first female coach of a men's professional baseball team. In 2011, she was the first woman to throw batting practice to an MLB team, the Cleveland Indians at spring training. She also threw BP to the Oakland Athletics, Tampa Bay Rays, St. Louis Cardinals, Houston Astros, and New York Mets. In 2015, Justine Siegal became the Oakland Athletics guest instructor for their Instructional League Club, thus making her the first female coach in major league baseball history. For one day in May 2016, Jennie Finch was a guest manager for the Atlantic League's Bridgeport Bluefish, thus becoming the first woman to manage a professional baseball team. The team played and won one game that day.
National Association as a major league
The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was the first professional baseball organization. It operated from 1871 until 1875. Whether to treat it as a major league has been a contentious issue in baseball historiography and statistics, because the major leagues utterly dominate not only publication but thinking, talking, and writing about the history of the game on the field. The careers of players and field managers as participants, of clubs, and even cities, as competitors are all viewed through the prism of what was accomplished during their major league careers.
Jean Faut
By a new All-American Girls Softball League was formed, playing a hybrid form of softball and baseball that never really became baseball until overhand pitching began in . Women's softball was enormously popular in the early 1940s, and often drew good crowds. In June 1943, "Time" magazine estimated there were 40,000 women's softball teams in the U.S., including popular touring clubs such as Barney Ross' Adorables and Slapsie Maxie's Curvaceous Cuties. The new league was conceived by chewing gum magnate and Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley, who decided in 1942 to start a women's professional softball league, concerned that the 1943 major-league season might be canceled because of World War II. The circuit would eventually shift gears and become the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and was dissolved at the end of the season. About 500 women attended the initial call. Of these, 280 were invited to the final try-outs at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where 60 of them were chosen to become the first women to ever play professional baseball. The 60 players were placed on the rosters of four fifteen-player teams: the Rockford Peaches, the South Bend Blue Sox, the Racine Belles and the Kenosha Comets.
Baseball Before We Knew It
English baseball was itself the product of a prolonged, nonlinear evolution. "Tut-ball" may have been its immediate predecessor. "Stool-ball", an earlier sport, may have been even more influential in the evolution of baseball, and is also a likely parent of cricket, which developed independently. Medieval texts also suggest that baseball's English antecedents may themselves have descended from Continental bat-and-ball games. An illustration in the French manuscript "The Romance of Alexander" (1344) depicts a group of monks and nuns engaged in a game, thought to be "la soule", that looks much like co-ed softball. Two other French games, "théque" and "la balle empoisonée" ("poisoned ball"), also bear similarities to early baseball. They could have migrated to England. In Block's words, the field is clear for the French to claim "parental rights over America's National Game."
Deacon White
White learned baseball from a Union soldier who returned to his hometown after the Civil War in 1865. His pro career began in 1868 with the Cleveland Forest Citys club, at a time when no team was entirely composed of professional players. He earned the first hit in baseball's first fully professional league – a double off Bobby Mathews of the Fort Wayne Kekiongas in the first inning of the first game in National Association history on May 4, ; he also made the first catch. His long career allowed him to play with many of the legendary figures of 19th-century professional baseball; White played on the great National Association Boston Red Stockings teams of the early 1870s, and also played with Cap Anson and Al Spalding in Chicago, King Kelly in Cincinnati, Dan Brouthers in Buffalo, and Ned Hanlon and Sam Thompson in Detroit, as well as Jake Beckley and Pud Galvin in Pittsburgh.
Stade Canac
In 1969, the Montreal Expos joined Major League Baseball and became the first non-American major baseball team. Two years later, in 1971, they established their Double-A affiliate in Quebec, where the team was named the Québec Carnavals in honour of the famous Carnaval de Québec. After a difficult inaugural season, the Carnavals finished the 1972 season with a 75-64 record, just 2½ games behind the Trois-Rivières Aigles while breaking the existing attendance record for the Eastern League with a total admissions of 142,818 people throughout their season.
National Association of Professional Base Ball Players
In 1869, the previously amateur National Association of Base Ball Players, in response to concerns that some teams were paying players, established a professional category. The Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first team to declare their intention to become fully professional. Other teams quickly followed suit. By 1871, several clubs, wanting to separate fully from the amateur association, broke away to found the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. (The remaining amateur clubs founded the National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players, which only lasted two years). In 1876, wanting an even stronger central organization, six clubs from the NA and two independents established the National League: Boston Red Stockings, Hartford, Mutual, Athletic, Chicago, and the St. Louis Brown Stockings from the NA plus independent clubs Louisville and Cincinnati.
Baseball in Canada
Baseball in Canada dates back to the 19th century, and is played at various levels of competition throughout the country. There is currently one major league team, the Toronto Blue Jays, founded in 1977; Canada's first major league team, the Montreal Expos, formed in 1969, relocated to Washington, D.C., in 2005.
Frank Sellman
Charles Francis Sellman or Sellman (1852 – May 6, 1907) was one of the first professional baseball players in America. He played third base and catcher and other positions for one team during the one season of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, 1871 to 1875. He was known as one of the best baseball players of his time.
Professional sports
Baseball became popular in the 1920s, when Babe Ruth led the New York Yankees to several World Series titles and became a national hero on the strength of his home runs (balls that cannot be played because they have been hit out of the field). One of the most noteworthy players was the Brooklyn Dodgers' Jackie Robinson, who became the first African-American player in the major leagues in 1947. Prior to Robinson, black players had been restricted to the Negro Leagues.
Montreal Expos
In 1972, the Telemedia radio network brought in Jacques Doucet and Claude Raymond to serve as the Expos' French language broadcast team. They were asked by the Carling O'Keefe brewery, the title sponsor for the French-language broadcasts, to create a French language glossary of baseball terminology. Previously, particularly in the Montreal Royals days, French broadcasters would use English for baseball concepts that didn't have a French equivalent. Through their efforts, a French language baseball lexicon was created: words like "home run" became "" and "hit" became "". A knuckleball became "", literally "butterfly ball".
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization, the oldest of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. A total of 30 teams play in the National League (NL) and American League (AL), with 15 teams in each league. The NL and AL were formed as separate legal entities in 1876 and 1901 respectively. After cooperating but remaining legally separate entities beginning in 1903, the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball in 2000. The organization also oversees Minor League Baseball, which comprises 256 teams affiliated with the Major League clubs. With the World Baseball Softball Confederation, MLB manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament.
Professional sports
In 1871 the first professional baseball league was created. By the beginning of the 20th century, most large cities in the eastern United States had a professional baseball team. After several leagues came and went in the 19th century, the National League (founded in 1876) and American League (recognized as a major league in 1903) were established as the dominant leagues by the early 20th century. The most victorious team in each league was said to have won the "pennant;" the two pennant winners met after the end of the regular season in the World Series. The winner of at least four games (out of a possible seven) was the champion for that year. This arrangement still holds today, although the leagues are now subdivided and pennants are decided in post-season playoff series between the winners of each division.
List of professional sports
The game was invented in the United States in the 1890s, in Springfield, Massachusetts. The first professional basketball leagues emerged in the 1920s in the United States. Prominent among these were the American Basketball League, which formed in 1925, and the National Basketball League, which was launched in 1937 by General Electric, Firestone and Goodyear as a way to improve their national profile. In 1946 the Basketball Association of America was founded by the owners of major sports arenas, particularly the Madison Square Garden. The BAA later merged with the NBL in 1949 to become the National Basketball Association, the preeminent league in the world with 29 teams in the United States and one in Canada. The American Basketball Association, founded in 1967, subsequently joined the NBA in the 1976 ABA-NBA merger.
Dauvray Cup
The Dauvray Cup was a early championship trophy awarded in the sport of professional baseball in the United States from 1887 to 1893. Named after famed actress on the stage, Helen Dauvray (1859-1923), who presented the cup, it was initially awarded to the winner of the professional baseball championship series tournament (similar to the later inter-league World Series established 1903, between the National and newly organized American League of 1901) then between the two major baseball leagues of the time - the National League (organized 1876) and the American Association which played 1882 to 1891. It was the first "World Series" style trophy for the championship team and representative city of American professional sport of baseball.
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Although the AAGPBL was the first recorded professional women's baseball league, women had played baseball since the nineteenth century. The first known women's baseball team played at Vassar College in 1866, while barnstorming Bloomer Girls teams (sometimes including men)
National League
The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest current professional team sports league. Founded on February 2, 1876, to replace the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP) of 1871–1875, (often called simply the "National Association"), the NL is sometimes called the Senior Circuit, in contrast to MLB's other league, the American League, which was founded 25 years later.
Baseball in the United States
Baseball's first professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1869. The first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one team or league to another. The period before 1920 in baseball was known as the dead-ball era; players rarely hit home runs during this time. Baseball survived a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series, which came to be known as the Black Sox Scandal. The sport rose in popularity in the 1920s, and survived potential downturns during the Great Depression and World War II. Shortly after the war, baseball's color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson.
Confederation of European Baseball
In April 1953 in Paris, France, 5 countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) gave birth to the European Baseball Federation, originally named in French "Féderation Européenne de Baseball (FEB)". The first Executive Committee was formed by President Steno Borghese of Italy, Secretary General Roger Panaye of Belgium and Vice President and head of the Technical Commission Luis Barrio of Spain.
Baseball Before We Knew It
Block's new evidence in the matter includes the first known record of the term "base-ball" in the United States. It came in a 1791 ordinance in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, that banned ballplaying near the town's new meetinghouse. However, that was not the first appearance of "base-ball" in print. That distinction belongs to an English book, "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book" (1744). By 1796 the rules of this English game were well enough established to earn a mention in German scholar Johann Gutsmuths book on popular pastimes, that described ""Englische Base-ball"" involved a contest between two teams, in which "the batter has three attempts to hit the ball while at the home plate"; only one out was required to retire a side. The book also predates the rules laid out by the New York Knickerbockers by nearly fifty years. In the book, Block suggests that it was the English game of baseball that had arrived in the U.S. as part of "a sweeping tide of cultural migration" during the colonial period. Once on American soil, the game developed popular regional variations that included "town-ball", "round-ball" and the "New York game".
History of baseball outside the United States
While baseball is widely played in Canada, the American major leagues did not include a Canadian team until 1969, when the Montreal Expos joined the National League (the London Tecumsehs were refused admission to the National League in 1877 because they refused to stop playing exhibition games against local teams). The team enjoyed a widespread following until about 1994 (when the Expos were in first place in the NL East); after the strike shortened year a series of poor management decisions, disputes with the city, and neglect by the ownership caused the Expos to be routinely last in MLB attendance. In 2004, the Expos, then owned by MLB itself, moved to Washington, D.C. and became the Washington Nationals.
Gary Carter, a popular player in Montreal along with Andre Dawson are members of the Hall of Fame whose plaques have an Expos cap on.
United States national baseball team
Although single exhibition games had been played in conjunction with five previous Olympics, the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles was the first to feature a tournament in the program, and also the first time that the sport was played in Olympics held in the United States. Eight teams competed in the tournament held at Dodger Stadium. Cuba, after winning the gold medal at the 1983 Pan American Games, was to participate, but did not as a result of the Soviet-led boycott. The U.S. national team finished second to Japan, however, no medals were given as baseball was a demonstration sport. Professional baseball players were introduced in 2000, though no active players from Major League Baseball have competed since then, and the Americans were forced to rely on minor leaguers. Cuba and some other nations used their strongest players, as they had no commitments with the MLB. The IOC cited the absence of the best players as the main reason for baseball being dropped from the Olympic program.
Origins of baseball
The question of the origins of baseball has been the subject of debate and controversy for more than a century. Baseball and the other modern bat, ball, and running games, cricket and rounders, were developed from folk games in early Britain and Continental Europe (such as France and Germany). Early forms of baseball had a number of names, including "base ball", "goal ball", "round ball", "fetch-catch", "stool ball", and, simply, "base". In at least one version of the game, teams pitched to themselves, runners went around the bases in the opposite direction of today's game, and players could be put out by being hit with the ball. Just as now, in some versions a batter was called out after three strikes.
Major League Baseball
In 1876, the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (later known as the National League or NL) was established after the NA proved ineffective. The league placed its emphasis on clubs rather than on players. Clubs could now enforce player contracts, preventing players from jumping to higher-paying clubs. Clubs were required to play the full schedule of games instead of forfeiting scheduled games when the club was no longer in the running for the league championship, which happened frequently under the NA. A concerted effort was made to curb gambling on games, which was leaving the validity of results in doubt. The first game in the NL—on Saturday, April 22, 1876 (at the Jefferson Street Grounds, Philadelphia)—is often pointed to as the beginning of MLB.
The early years of the NL were 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. Competitor leagues formed regularly and also disbanded regularly. The most successful was the American Association (1882–1891), sometimes called the "beer and whiskey league" for its tolerance of the sale of alcoholic beverages to spectators. For several years, the NL and American Association champions met in a postseason championship series—the first attempt at a World Series. The two leagues merged in 1892 as a single 12-team NL, but the NL dropped four teams after the 1899 season. This led to the formation of the American League in 1901 under AL president Ban Johnson, and the resulting bidding war for players led to widespread contract-breaking and legal disputes.
Albert Spalding
Having played baseball throughout his youth, Spalding first played competitively with the Rockford Pioneers, a youth team, which he joined in 1865. After pitching his team to a 26–2 victory over a local men's amateur team (the Mercantiles), he was approached at the age of 15 by another squad, the Forest Citys, for whom he played for two years. In the autumn of 1867 he accepted a $40 per week contract ($ in today's dollars), nominally as a clerk, but really to play professionally for the Chicago Excelsiors, not an uncommon arrangement used to circumvent the rules of the time, which forbade the hiring of professional players. Following the formation of baseball's first professional organization, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (which became known as the National Association, the Association, or NA) in 1871, Spalding joined the Boston Red Stockings (precursor club to the modern Atlanta Braves) and was highly successful; winning 206 games (and losing only 53) as a pitcher and batting .323 as a hitter.
Origins of baseball
In 1869 the first openly professional baseball team formed. Earlier players were nominally amateurs. The Cincinnati Red Stockings recruited nationally and effectively toured nationally, and no one beat them until June 1870. Their success led to the founding of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871 and its successor, the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs in 1876, the elder of baseball's two Major Leagues and the oldest professional sports league in the world.
History of baseball outside the United States
The first World Cup (or World Championships) in baseball were held in 1938, as teams from the United States and United Kingdom played a series of five games. Britain won four and became the first baseball World Champion. After this championship, the IBF was founded (see above). World Cups have been played at irregular intervals ever since; the 36th took place in the Netherlands in September 2005. Until 1996 professional players were not allowed to participate in the World Cups; since then major league players generally have not participated because the tournaments have conflicted with regular season games.
History of baseball in the United States
The history of baseball in the United States can be traced to the 19th century, when amateurs played a baseball-like game by their own informal rules using homemade equipment. The popularity of the sport inspired the semi-pro national baseball clubs in the 1860s.
History of baseball
After World War II, professional leagues were founded in many Latin American countries, most prominently Venezuela (1946) and the Dominican Republic (1955). Since the early 1970s, the annual Caribbean Series has matched the championship clubs from the four leading Latin American winter leagues: the Dominican Professional Baseball League, Mexican Pacific League, Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League, and Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. In Asia, South Korea (1982), Taiwan (1990) and China (2003) all have professional leagues.
Baseball in Germany
Baseball in Germany started in 1936, with the first official baseball game being played at the 1936 Olympics. After World War II, baseball was popularized by American soldiers who were stationed in Germany. Today, baseball is a minor sport in Germany, although the country is still home to one of Europe's biggest baseball communities, with around 30,000 active players. The national governing body is the Deutscher Baseball und Softball Verband (German Baseball and Softball Federation), and the highest baseball league is the 1. Baseball Bundesliga. Max Kepler is currently the only German-developed player in Major League Baseball.
Provincial League (baseball)
The Provincial League, sometimes known as the Quebec Provincial League, was a minor league baseball league based in the Canadian province of Quebec. It went through a number of incarnations during the 20th century, spending time as both an independent baseball league (1922–23, 1935–39, 1948–49, and 1958–71) and as a member of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (1924, 1940, and 1950–55). It is notable as a successful independent league at a time when few existed, and was a haven for black and Indian players excluded from organized baseball.
History of baseball in the United States
At the same time, a gentlemen's agreement was struck between the clubs to exclude non-white players from professional baseball, a bar that remained until 1947. It is a common misconception that Jackie Robinson was the first African-American major-league ballplayer; he was actually only the first after a long gap (and the first in the modern era). Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy 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 by representing themselves 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 the signing of Robinson (in the National League) and Larry Doby (in the American League) that baseball began to remove its color bar.
History of baseball
In 1845, Alexander Cartwright, a member of New York City's Knickerbocker Club, produced a code of baseball rules now called the Knickerbocker Rules. The practice, common to bat-and-ball games of the day, of "soaking" or "plugging"—effecting a putout by hitting a runner with a thrown ball—was barred. The rules thus facilitated the use of a smaller, harder ball than had been common. Several other rules also brought the Knickerbockers' game close to the modern one, though a ball caught on the first bounce was, again, an out and only underhand pitching was allowed. While there are reports that the New York Knickerbockers played games in 1845, the contest long recognized as the first officially recorded baseball game in U.S. history took place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey: the "New York Nine" defeated the Knickerbockers, 23–1, in four innings. With the Knickerbocker code as the basis, the rules of modern baseball continued to evolve over the next half-century.
Antioch College
In 1869, when the Cincinnati Red Stockings began their inaugural season as history's first professional baseball team, they played a preseason game at the site of what is now the Grand Union Terminal in Cincinnati against the Antiochs, who were regarded as one of the finest amateur clubs in Ohio. The game was played on May 15, 1869, and Cincinnati defeated Antioch 41-7. Antioch had been scheduled to host the first game of this professional tour on May 31, 1869, but pouring rain and an unplayable field kept the teams off the diamond. So, while Antioch was not a part of the first professional baseball game, the college does hold claim to hosting the first ever rainout in professional baseball.