The History of Baseball

Introduction:

       From once being called America’s game, to now, being considered one of the most boring sports games to watch, Baseball has grown from only being played in America, to across the globe. The sport has had many ups, Baseball’s growing diversity and global interest and downs, like the original segregation of the league and its steroid era. But Baseball has and always will be considered as a staple of American sports.

Baseball’s Founding:

       The story of the invention of baseball you have heard is most likely incorrect. Back in the early 18^th century, English children brought two games to America, cricket, and rounders. By the American revolution, these games were commonly played throughout the United States by kids in school yards and campuses. In September 1845, a group of New York City men founded the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. One of them, Alexander Joy Cartwright, would create a new set of rules that would form the basics modern baseball. He said that there should be a diamond-shaped infield, foul lines, and the three-strike rule. He also removed the dangerous part of tagging runners by throwing the ball at them. Cartwright’s changes made the soon to be American pastime faster-paced and more challenging while clearly differentiating it from older games like cricket. In 1846, the Knickerbockers played the first official game of baseball against a team of cricket players, beginning a new, uniquely American tradition, at the time.

Baseball’s Development in the mid 1800s

       By the 1860s, the sport, was being described as America's "national pastime." Rules, teams, and leagues were gradually being formalized at this time too. Between 1869 to 1876, The first professional, open salary team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, were founded. The first professional baseball league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, was established. Also the first Major League, and National League, were formed.

The Development and Fall of the Negro League

       Black Americans have played the National Pastime since it first spread across the country during the Civil War, but they were prohibited from the highest levels of organized baseball by unwritten rules, as the 1800s came to a close. Black players still organized teams and played across the country, but it wasn’t in the organized forum fans have come to know today. Pitcher, Rube Foster, envisioned a league in which Black Americans could demonstrate their skills, creating the Negro League.

      Foster spent years convincing his fellow Black club owners that organization was necessary, but on February 13, 1920, those owners came together at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City to form the Negro National League. Operating under the slogan, “We Are the Ship, All Else the Sea” in a nod to its independence, the NNL took off; Foster’s American Giants club, for example, drew nearly 200,000 spectators during the ’21 season.

       Negro League Baseball remained wildly popular through the 1930s and early 1940s, with an estimated 3 million fans coming to ballparks during the ’42 season. The only event that halted the Negro Leagues’ run of success was something many Black players had desired all along: an invitation to prove themselves in the Majors. The death of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, one of the major figures who kept Black players out of MLB for decades, in 1944 opened a new chapter, with Negro Leagues star Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier and making his historic debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers three years later. The Negro Leagues dissolved soon after once more and more of its most talented stars were finally admitted into MLB.