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The story that
Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 was once widely promoted and
widely believed, but there was and is no evidence for this claim,
except for the testimony of one man decades after the fact, and there
is a great deal of persuasive counter-evidence. Doubleday left many
letters and papers, but they contain no description of baseball or even
a suggestion that he considered himself a prominent person in the
history of the game. His New York Times obituary makes no mention of
baseball, nor does a 1911 encyclopedia article about Doubleday.
The distinct evolution of baseball from among the various bat-and-ball
games is difficult to trace with precision. Oina, a very similar
bat-and-ball traditional game played in Romania was mentioned for the
first time during the rule of King Vlaicu Voda, in 1364. Typically,
consensus was that today's baseball is a North American development
from the older game rounders, however a 2005 book Baseball Before We
Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, and
historical evidence argues against that notion. Several references to
"baseball" and "bat-and-ball" have been found in British and American
documents of the early eighteenth century. The earliest known
description is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty
Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of
boys playing "base-ball," showing a baseball set-up roughly similar to
the modern game, and a rhymed description of the sport. However, on
September 11th 2008, the Surrey County Council's History Centre gave
documentary proof that the game was being played by the British before
anywhere else and have written to Major League Baseball explaining
this. The diarist William Bray recorded a game of baseball on Easter
Monday 1755 in Guildford. The earliest known unambiguous American
discussion of "baseball" was published in a 1791 Pittsfield,
Massachusetts town bylaw, which prohibited the playing of the game
within 80 yards (70 m) of the town's new meeting house. The English
novelist Jane Austen made a reference to children playing "base-ball"
on a village green in her book Northanger Abbey, which was written
between 1798 and 1803 (though not published until 1818).
The first full documentation of a baseball game in North America is Dr.
Adam Ford's contemporary description of a game that took place in 1838
on June 4 (Militia Muster Day) in Beachville, Ontario, Canada; this
report was related in an 1886 edition of Sporting Life magazine in a
letter by former St. Marys, Ontario, resident Dr. Matthew Harris.
In 1845, Alexander Cartwright of New York City led the codification of
an early list of rules (the so-called Knickerbocker Rules), from which
today's rules have evolved. He had also initiated the replacement of
the soft ball used in rounders with a smaller hard ball. While there
are reports of Cartwright's club, the New York Knickerbockers, playing
games in 1845, the game now recognized as the first in U.S. history to
be officially recorded took place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New
Jersey, with the "New York Nine" defeating the Knickerbockers, 23–1, in
four innings.
On June 3, 1953, the United States Congress officially recognized
Cartwright as the inventor of modern baseball.
History of baseball in the United States
Semiprofessional baseball started in the United States in the 1860s. 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. By the following decade, American newspapers were
referring to baseball as the "National Pastime" or "National Game." The
first attempt at forming a "major league" was the National Association,
which lasted from 1871 to 1875. The "major league" status of the NA is
in dispute among present-day baseball historians, and Major League
Baseball does not include the NA among the major leagues. The National
League, which still exists, was founded in 1876 in response to the NA's
shortcomings. Several other major leagues formed and failed, but the
American League, which evolved from the minor Western League (1893) and
was established in 1901 as a major league, succeeded. The two leagues
were initially rivals that actively fought for the best players, often
disregarding one another's contracts and engaging in bitter legal
disputes. A modicum of peace was established in 1903, and the World
Series was inaugurated that fall, albeit without formal major league
sanction or governance. The next year, the National League champion New
York Giants did not participate, as their manager, John McGraw, refused
to recognize the major league status of the American League and its
champion, the Boston Americans who beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the
first World Series. The following year, Giants' management relented,
and actually led the formal establishment of rules that standardized
the format of the World Series and made participation compulsory.
The New York Giants baseball team, circa 1910.Compared with the present
day, games in the early part of the 20th century were lower scoring and
pitchers were more successful. The "inside game", whose nature was to
"scratch for runs", was played more violently and aggressively than it
is today. Ty Cobb said of his era especially, "Baseball is something
like a war!" This period, which has since become known as the
"dead-ball era", ended in the 1920s with several rule changes that gave
advantages to hitters and the rise of the legendary baseball player
Babe Ruth, who showed the world what power hitting could produce,
altering the nature of the game. Two of the changes introduced were the
construction of additional seating to accommodate the rising popularity
of the game, which often had the effect of bringing the outfield fences
closer to the infield in the largest parks; and the introduction of
strict rules governing the size, shape and construction of the ball
which, coupled with superior materials becoming available following
World War I, caused the ball to travel farther when hit. The aggregate
result of these two changes was to enable batters to hit many more home
runs.
In 1884, African American Moses Walker (and, briefly, his brother
Welday) had played for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the major league
American Association. An injury ended Walker's major league career, and
by the early 1890s, a "gentlemen's agreement" in the form of the
baseball color line effectively barred African-American players from
the majors and their affiliated minor leagues, resulting in the
formation of several Negro Leagues. There was never any formal
segregation rule in baseball, which presented an opportunity for
integration for someone bold enough to attempt it. The first crack in
the unwritten agreement occurred in 1946, when Jackie Robinson was
signed by the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers and began playing for
their minor league team in Montreal. Finally, in 1947, the major
leagues' color barrier was broken when Robinson debuted with the
Dodgers. Larry Doby debuted in the American League the same year.
Although the transformation was not instantaneous, baseball has since
become fully integrated.
Major League baseball finally made it to the West Coast of the United
States in 1958, when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated
to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively. The first American
League team on the West Coast was the Los Angeles Angels, who were
founded as an expansion team in 1961.
Pitchers dominated the game in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the early
1970s the designated hitter (DH) rule was proposed. The American League
adopted this rule in 1973, though pitchers still bat for themselves in
the National League to this day. The DH rule now constitutes the
primary difference between the two leagues.
Despite the popularity of baseball, and the attendant high salaries
relative to those of average Americans, the players have become
dissatisfied from time to time, as they believed the owners had too
much control and retained an unfair share of the money. Various job
actions have occurred throughout the game's history. Players on
specific teams occasionally attempted strikes, but usually came back
when their jobs were sufficiently threatened. The throwing of the 1919
World Series, the "Black Sox Scandal", was in some sense a "strike" or
at least a rebellion by the ballplayers against a perceived stingy
owner. But the strict rules of baseball contracts tended to keep the
players "in line" in general.
This began to change in 1966 when former United Steelworkers chief
economist (and assistant to the president) Marvin Miller became the
Baseball Players Union executive director. The union became much
stronger than it had been previously, especially when the reserve
clause was effectively nullified in the mid-1970s. Conflicts between
owners and the players' union led to major work stoppages in 1972,
1981, and 1994. The 1994 baseball strike led to the cancellation of the
World Series, and was not settled until the spring of 1995. During this
period, as well, many of the functions — such as player discipline and
umpire supervision — and regulations that had been administered
separately by the two major leagues' administrations were united under
the rubric of Major League Baseball.
The number of home runs increased dramatically after the strike. Mark
McGwire and Sammy Sosa both surpassed Roger Maris's long-standing
single season home run record in 1998. In 2001, Barry Bonds established
the current record of 73 home runs in a single season. In 2007, Bonds
became MLB's all-time home run leader, surpassing Hank Aaron's total of
755. Even though all three sluggers (McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds) have
been accused in the steroid-abuse scandal of the mid-2000s, their feats
did do a lot at the time to bolster the game's renewed popularity.
Currently, baseball makes up around 20 percent of the franchise sports
industry. The team with the highest average game attendance is the New
York Yankees, with 51,848 spectators. The New York Yankees are closely
followed by the Los Angeles Dodgers (46,400) and the New York Mets
(42,327). The 30 Major League Baseball teams earned $5.11 billion in
revenue in 2006.
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