America is known for sports asides the well recognized football as there are other sports like Rugby, pickleball and baseball taking place in several region in America.

However, Americas past time got it name through baseball.

Stick-and-ball games were in existence as far back as ancient Egypt. However, modern baseball developed from variations of the English game of rounders, from related regional and local games, and from children’s games like “one old cat,” all of which had evolved through centuries. The traditional story that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, N.Y., has been discredited. 

Rather, in the 1840s and 50s members of the New York Knickerbocker Club standardized some of the features still in use today, modifying rules used by older clubs to codify fundamental rules for the game. It is widely thought that the first game of modern baseball was played by the Knickerbockers in the fall of 1845 in a park called Elysian Fields in Hoboken, N.J. In 1857 the Knickerbockers’ Daniel L. “Doc” Adams presided at a convention during which the modern standards regarding the number of players and innings and the dimensions of the infield were adopted; the Knickerbockers’ Louis Wadsworth also was an influential presence at the convention. Sportswriter Henry Chadwick edited (1860–81) the first published guide to the game, and though the rules continue to change by small degrees, by 1900 the game was essentially that of today.

The Development of Professional Baseball in the United States

In the mid-19th cent. baseball was primarily popular among local clubs in the Northeast, often made up of members of the same occupation. Eventually, competition broadened, and an organization to promote standardized rules and facilitate scheduling, the National Association of Baseball Players, was formed in 1858. The movement of Union soldiers during the Civil War helped to spread the game, and increased opportunities for leisure, improved communications, and easier travel after the war fostered a wider competitive base and increased interest.

In 1869, Harry Wright organized the Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball’s first professional team, and took them on a 57-game national tour, during which they were unbeaten. Seeking to expand on the Reds’ success, the National Association of Professional Baseball Players in 1871 chartered nine teams in eight cities as the first professional league. In the 1870s a number of competing leagues were formed, including the National League, which soon became the predominant association.

Financial hardships, gambling-related scandals, and franchise upheaval plagued all the leagues, and a players’ revolt in 1890, which resulted in a short-lived Players Association, weakened the National League. A competing league, the Western Association, changed its name to the American League in 1900 and placed clubs in several eastern cities. In 1903 the champions of the American and National leagues met for the first time in what became known as the World Series.

Both leagues fought off the challenge of the Federal League in 1914–15, but baseball’s popularity and stability were threatened when the 1919 Chicago White Sox conspired to lose the World Series. Club owners then hired Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first baseball commissioner (1920–44) and charged him with resolving the crisis. Landis banned eight members of the “Black Sox” for life (despite their acquittal in a court of law), helping to lift suspicion from the professional game.

The Golden Years

The years between 1920 and World War II were the heyday of Babe Ruth, the game’s preeminent legend. Other stars made their names as well: Ruth’s durable New York Yankee teammate, Lou Gehrig; the contentious batting champion Ty Cobb; outstanding pitchers like Lefty Grove, Dizzy Dean, and Walter Johnson; graceful Yankee center fielder Joe DiMaggio; and sluggers Hank Greenberg and Jimmie Foxx, among others. Fans flocked to the large stadiums built in the 1920s.

When the Depression threatened spectatorship in the 1930s, night baseball, experimented with a half century earlier, became reality. Beginning in Cincinnati in 1935, organized baseball gradually became primarily an evening event. A network of minor league teams, scattered across the nation in smaller cities and towns, supported the two major leagues with developing talent and fan interest.

Integration of Professional Baseball

During World War II, many major league stars served in the armed forces. By the mid-1940s most had returned to their teams, but major league baseball continued to exclude black players, who, barred by a color line drawn in the 1880s, showcased their skills in separate leagues, especially the Negro National League (1920, folded late 1920s, revived 1933), the Eastern Colored League (1923, folded late 1920s), and the Negro American League (1936). Black players like Satchel Paige, Buck Leonard, Josh Gibson, and Judy Johnson, among the best in baseball, often played before large crowds, “invisible” to the white public. In 1947, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn’s general manager, began the integration of the major leagues by bringing Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers. Weathering great pressure and the hatred of many players and fans, Robinson became one of the most electrifying performers in the game, paving the way for other black stars like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. Integration became a fact of baseball life so quickly that the remaining Negro Leagues began to fold in 1948 and by the mid-1950s there were more African-American players on major league teams than there had been in the Negro leagues at their height of popularity just a decade earlier. The records of those leagues’s players were not classified as major league statistics, however, until 2020.