Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams

of nine players each. The goal of baseball is to score runs
by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series
of four markers called bases arranged at the corners of a
ninety-foot square, or diamond. Players on one team (the
batting team) take turns hitting while the other team (the
fielding team) tries to stop them from scoring runs by
getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the
batting team can stop at any of the bases and hope to
score on a teammate's hit. The teams switch between
batting and fielding whenever the fielding team gets three
outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning; nine innings make up a professional
game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins.
Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth levels is popular in North America (particularly
in the United States), Central America, parts of South America and the Caribbean, and parts of
East Asia and Southeast Asia. The game is thought to have originated in England some time
before 1755, as noted by William Bray, a lawyer from the period whose diary historians have
recently authenticated[2][3][4][5]. The consensus of historians is that it evolved from earlier bat-and-
ball games, such as cricket and rounders. Baseball was then brought to North America by British
and Irish immigrants. This is contrary to the popular belief that the game was invented in North
America during the eighteenth century. However, by the late nineteenth century, baseball was
widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. The game is sometimes referred to
as hardball in contrast to the very similar game of softball.
Origins of baseball
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 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.[12]
Baseball around the world
Baseball is largely known as America's pastime, but has a fan base in several other countries as
well. The history of baseball in Canada has remained closely linked with that of the sport in the
United States. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featured
teams from both countries. 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. The Blue Jays won the
World Series in 1992 and 1993, the first and still the only club from outside the United States to
do so. In 2004, Major League Baseball relocated the Expos to Washington, D.C., where the team
is now known as the Nationals.
The first formal baseball league outside of the United States and Canada was founded in 1878 in
Cuba, which maintains a rich baseball tradition and whose national team has been one of the
world's strongest since international play began in the late 1930s. Professional baseball leagues
began to form in other countries between the world wars, including the Netherlands (formed in
1922), Australia (1934), Japan (1936), and Puerto Rico (1938). After World War II, professional
leagues were founded in Italy (1948) and in many Latin American nations, most prominently
Venezuela (1945), Mexico (1945), and the Dominican Republic (1951). In Asia, Korea (1982),
Taiwan (1990), and China (2003) all have professional leagues.
Many European countries have pro leagues as well, the most successful beside the Dutch 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.
Recently, the sport has begun to grow in popularity in those nations, most notably in Australia,
which won a surprise silver medal in the 2004 Olympic Games. In 2007, the Israel Baseball
League, featuring six teams, was launched. Competition between national teams, such as in the
Baseball World Cup and the Olympic baseball tournament, has been administered by the
International Baseball Federation since its formation in 1938. As of 2004, the organization has
112 member countries.

Rules and gameplay

A single game is played by two teams, who, during the course of a game, alternate playing
offense and defense. Each couplet of alternations is called an "inning", and there are usually 9
innings in a game. The goal of a game is to score more points, which are called "runs" in the
language of baseball, than the other team. Each team, usually composed of 9 players, attempts to
score runs while on offense, by completing a tour of the bases, which form a square-shaped
figure called a "diamond." A tour starts at home plate and proceeds counter-clockwise. See the
image below.