Baseball wasrecognizable as baseball-nobody would confuse it with

Baseball wasrecognizable as baseball-nobody would confuse it with

Baseball has been providing us with fun and excitement for more than a hundred and fifty years. The first game resembling baseball as we know it today was played in Hoboken ,New Jersey, on June 19, 1846. The New York Nine beat the New York Knickerbokers that day, 23-1.The game was played according to rules drawn up by Alexander J.

Cartwright. A surveyer and amateur athlete.It is a myth that Abner Doubleday1 invented baseball. It was Alexander Cartwright, not Abner Doubleday, who first laid out the present dimensions of the playing fieldand established the basic rules of the game.The first Professional baseball team was the CincinnatiRed Stockings, who toured the country in 1869 and didn’tlose a game all year.

Baseball began to attract so many fans that in 1876 the National league was organized-thesame National league that still exists today.Although the game was played in 1876 it wasrecognizable as baseball-nobody would confuse it with football or basketball-it was quite a bit different from baseball as we know it now. For example, pitchers had to throw underhand, the way they still do in softball;the batter could request the pitcher to throw a “high” or “low”pitch; it took nine balls, rather than four, for a batter to get a base on balls; and the pitching distance was olny 45 The rules were gradually changed over the following 20years, until by about 1900 the game was more or less the same as it is today.

In 1884, the pitchers were permittedto throw overhand; in 1887, the batter was no longer allowed to request a “high”or “low” pitch; by 1889,it took only four balls to get a batter to a base on balls;the pitching distance was legthened to sixty-And since that day in 1846 There have been many greats to make up the game baseball such as Ty Cobb who was born in a small town in Georgia in 1886. He threw right-handed but batted left-handed . He held his hands a few inches apart on the bat and learned to bunt or slap line-drive hits precisely where he wanted them. He In the summer of 1905, Cobb joined a major leaguebaseball taem, the Detroit Tigers .On August 9, Ty Cobb registered his first base hit as a member of the Tigers.In the many years to follow he added over four thousandmore hits. Along with them would come a national rep-Another player who some have said “changed thegame”, is John Roosevelt(“Jackie”) Robinson2.

On April 15, 1947 at two o’clock that tuesday afternoon when nine Brooklyn Dodgers sprang out thier dugout to take the feildto start the 1947 baseball season. It was a memorable event in basebaall history, indeed in American history.Undoubtedly Robinson was a great ballplayer. Hewas National league’s Rookie of the year in 1947 and itsMost valuable player (MVP) in 1949.

He won the electionin 1962 to the Bseball Hall of Fame, the first African-American ever chosen for that honor.And perhaps the greatest ballplayer of all time wasGoerge Herman (Babe Ruth). During the 1920, Ruth’s firstseason as a New York Yankee, he hit .376, not enough to win the American league batting championship but a figurefar beyond what today is registered by major leagues leaders. He also hit safely in 26 consecutive games, clubbed 9 triples and 36 doubles, and batted in 137 runs.Despite his weight of over 215, he stole 14 bases.Most remarkably, however, Ruth slugged 54 home runs for the season.

Closest to him in the American Leaguewas Goerge Sisler, with 19 homers, while the NationalLeague leader recorded a total of only 15. Almost every team in both leagues registered a total number far below There have been many more talented and great ball- players in the game such as (Ted Williams,Leo Durocher,Hank Aaron,Mickey Mantle,Roger Maris,Willie Mays,Joe Ted Williams Brought with him a supurb batting eye and a striving for absolute perfection thateventually produced a .344 lifetime batting average. Bob feller possessed afastball that rivaled Walter Johnson’s. Joe DiMaggio hadstyle, courage and leadership qualities that These and other ballplayers have all done thier part to And today, we now have a new generation of ball-players like Mark McGwire3 who in the 1998 season hit an unpresedented 76 home runs and was closely followed by Sammie Sosa3 with 70 homers which in the 1920 and 30’swas un-thought of un-imagnable, to even hit 15 home runsnow playes can hit 15 home runs by May 15th.Another astonashing differance is players today areearning countless millions of dollars, unlike days of yesteryear whaen players only made if they were lucky Also the equipment has changed some ,for instentsthe glove players didn’t start wearing gloves on the feild until the 1880’s. At first , they wore only a thin peice of leather over the palm of their hand, with five holes cut out for the fingers to go through.

By the 1890’s ,however, the gloves began to look like today’s baseball gloves.Nowadays, the glove is much larger than it used to be,and the ball is not caught in the palm of the hand but be trapped in the “pocket”, between the thumb and fore-finger. Since the mid 1950’s, the glove has become moreof a net with which to snare the ball rather than just a So you may ask why has baseball remained so popular for all these years? Since Alexander Cartwright first laidout the dimentions of the playing field and drew up the rules of the game, it has furnished enjoyment and excite-ment for countless millions of people, young and old alike.1- Abner Doubleday was a young West Point cadet.

He was suposed to in the summer of 1839, in the village of cooper-stown, New York.Start the game of baseball. Because of the numerous types of baseball, or rather games similar to it, some belived Doubleday startedn the game of baseball. 2- Jackie Robinson was the first African-American to play 3- For pitchers in this day and age, the most threateningfigure to stride toward the batter’s box with a piece oflumber in his massive fists is six-foot-five, 250 pound, red-head Mark McGwire. Right-handed at the plate and in the field, the amidable freckle-faced first baseman is the leading power-hitter of his generation.

4- Sammy Sosa signed his first proffessional baseball Right-handed at bat and in the outfeild, he is tremed-ously poplular in Chicago and in all Latin-America. Six-feet and two hundred pounds, he was the smallest of the three challenger for the home-run record. A regular with the Cubs starting in 1993, Sosa is no newcomer to home runs he averaged thirty-six a season over the three-year span fromBibliography: BibliographyRitter, Lawrence S. Story of baseball . New York:Beech Tree Paperback Book, 1999_____________________________________Jacobs,William Jay .

They Shaped The Game .New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1994_____________________________________Kahn, Roger . Memories of Summer. New York:Hook Slide, Inc., 1997_____________________________________Internet: AOL, 2000