Baseball

Baseball Forms of baseball have been popular for many centuries. The English game of rounders, the children’s game of one-old-cat, and townball are all very similar to baseball and have been popular since the 1700s. In the 1840s, Alexander Cartwright of the New York Knickerbocker Club created the general field dimensions that are in use today. Henry Chadwick, a sportswriter, wrote the first rule book in 1858. The rules continued to change slightly, but by the early 1900s the rules were almost exactly the same as they are today. In the middle of the nineteenth century, baseball was primarily popular in local clubs in the northeast United States, with the members of the local clubs usually being of the same occupation. Competitions between these clubs eventually led to the creation of organized baseball leagues. An organization created to set standardized rules and playing schedules, the National Association of Baseball Players, was formed in 1858 to be baseball’s first official governing body. The travel of soldiers from the Northeast during the Civil War led to the spread of the game throughout the West, East, and South United States. After the Civil War, there were more opportunities for leisure, and the increased ability of league, national, baseball, leagues, american, players, first, tour, team, series, rules, formed, creation, created, competing, clubs, association, in, weakened, war, united, travel, today, throughout, teams, stockings, states, spread, since, several, same, red, professional, popular, played