Baseball

BASEBALL

Baseball, a stick-and-ball sport played with four bases arranged in a diamond, was first organized in the mid-1800s in the United States. In June 1846 two amateur teams of nine players played each other in a ball game on the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City. The game was umpired by U.S. sportsman, Alexander J. Cartwright (1820–1892), who established the rules of play. The game is similar in some ways to the English games of Cricket and Rounders. A legend grew up that baseball's beginnings on U.S. soil dated to 1839 when U.S. Army officer Abner Doubleday (1819–1893) invented the game in Cooperstown, New York. Though Doubleday helped popularize games resembling modern baseball, there is little evidence that he developed the game that people in the United States know today, which became a favorite pastime during the late 1800s.

The first baseball club, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, was organized by Alexander Cartwright (1820–1892) in 1842 in New York City. By 1845 the team developed a set of twenty rules which included specifications for where the bases are to be positioned, how runners can be tagged as out, and defined a field of play, outside of which balls are declared "foul." The so-called "New York Game" spread in popularity after the 1846 Hoboken match. By 1860 there were at least fifty ball clubs. Pick-up games were played in fields across the country. Union soldiers helped spread the game during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Its popularity increased during the last three decades of the nineteenth century.

The first professional baseball team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings formed in 1869. In 1876 the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was founded; it included teams in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. By the 1880s the sport became big business: an 1887 championship series between St. Louis and Detroit drew 51,000 paying spectators. The American League was formed in 1901 and two years later the American and National leagues staged a championship between their teams. In 1903 the Boston Red Socks beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series.

During the early decades of its existence as an organized sport, baseball reflected the racism of U.S. society by excluding African American players. When one all-black team applied for admittance in 1876 the National League adopted an unwritten "gentlemen's agreement" denying entry to any baseball club with black players. For the most part this exclusionary clause was effective in segregating baseball, but African American players occasionally found positions in the minor leagues.

The unfairness of excluding excellent players solely because of their skin color occasionally led to challenges of the color line. Catcher Moses Fleetwood ("Fleet") Walker was actually the first black player to break into the major leagues. In 1883 Fleet and his Toledo teammates (Toledo then had a team that belonged to the American League) won the pennant. Still most black baseball players were relegated to the Negro leagues. Because of their limited audience, the Negro leagues had difficulty in establishing themselves. However in 1920 Rube Foster, a talented black pitcher and manager for the Chicago American Giants, formed the Negro National League. A number of African American teams and leagues were formed in the 1920s and the Negro leagues flourished for about 25 years, mostly in Mid-western cities. The Negro leagues fielded some excellent players, including Satchel Paige, Ray Dandridge, and John Henry "Pop" Lloyd. Paige was so devastating as a pitcher that he would often call his outfielders in and have them sit down in the infield while he retired the side. The color line was definitively broken when in 1947 Brooklyn Dodger Manager Branch Rickey (1881–1965) signed second baseman Jackie Robinson (1919–1972). Although he had to put up with ostracism from many of his teammates and cat-calls from the crowds Robinson eventually won acceptance and respect. Once Robinson became a hero to the general audience, African American players were signed by other major league teams, and the Negro leagues died.

The rise of organized professional sports is tied to the greater affluence that an industrialized society provided. People now had more money to spend, and an overall increase in leisure time as the workweek declined allowed baseball to become the national sport. Played on an open field, the game recalled the nation's agrarian roots. But with standardized rules, reliance on statistics, and the larger audience provided by radio and television, baseball looked forward to a modern, industrialized future.

See also: Amusement Parks, Bicycles