8/14/2019 Basebal2

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/basebal2 1/2

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 aninety-foot square, or diamond. Players on one team (thebatting team) take turns hitting while the other team (the fielding  team) tries to stop them from scoring runs bygetting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team can stop at any of the bases and hope toscore on a teammate's hit. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team gets threeouts. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning ; nine innings make up a professionalgame. 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 haverecently 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 Britishand Irish immigrants. This is contrary to the popular belief that the game was invented in NorthAmerica during the eighteenth century. However, by the late nineteenth century, baseball waswidely recognized as the national sport of the United States. The game is sometimes referred toas 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 andwidely believed, but there was and is no evidence for this claim, except for the testimony of oneman decades after the fact, and there is a great deal of persuasive counter-evidence. Doubledayleft many letters and papers, but they contain no description of baseball or even a suggestion thathe 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'scontemporary description of a game that took place in 1838 on June 4 (Militia Muster Day) inBeachville, Ontario, Canada; this report was related in an 1886 edition of Sporting Life magazinein 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 aswell. The history of baseball in Canada has remained closely linked with that of the sport in theUnited States. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featuredteams from both countries. While baseball is widely played in Canada, and many minor leagueteams have been based in the country, the American major leagues did not include a Canadianclub until 1969, when the Montreal Expos joined the National League as an expansion team. In1977, the expansion Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League. The Blue Jays won theWorld Series in 1992 and 1993, the first and still the only club from outside the United States to

8/14/2019 Basebal2

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/basebal2 2/2

do so. In 2004, Major League Baseball relocated the Expos to Washington, D.C., where the teamis now known as the Nationals.

The first formal baseball league outside of the United States and Canada was founded in 1878 inCuba, which maintains a rich baseball tradition and whose national team has been one of theworld'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 in1922), Australia (1934), Japan (1936), and Puerto Rico (1938). After  World War II, professionalleagues were founded in Italy (1948) and in many  Latin American  nations, most prominentlyVenezuela (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 beingthe Italian league founded in 1948. Compared to those in Asia and Latin America, the variousEuropean 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 theInternational Baseball Federation since its formation in 1938. As of 2004, the organization has112 member countries.

Rules and gameplay

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