Difference between revisions of "Baseball"

Revision as of 01:45, April 10, 2007

Originally created by an unknown person this game consists of nine players on each team. Unless you have a designated hitter. This abomination also known as the DH detracts from the purity of the game. Except for Big Papi. He's a beast.

Barry Bonds is a CHEATER!!! MASSIVE STEROID USE HAS TAINTED BASEBALL FOREVER

Jose Reyes is sweet

Daisuke Matsuzaka (DICE-KAY) star pitcher from Japan signed with the red sox for $26 million. He can apparently throw

the gyroball or miracle pitch (movement is not well know outside of japan and the "miracle pitch" phrase is questionable) developed my some genius Japanese dudes. The gyro spins opposite to conventional spin, horizontally like a bullet causing weird movement. 

History

A well-publicized tradition holds that the game was invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York in 1839. In fact, the origins of the game are unknown. Famous baseball writer Henry Chadwick stated that the game evolved from the British game of "rounders."^[1] In response, Albert G. Spalding, another baseball pioneer, urged the formation of a commission to determine the game's origin; one was formed, and in due course issued a report on December 30, 1907 stating "the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839." This well-publicized tradition led to the 1939 founding of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in that city.^[2]

"Base-ball" or "base ball" was being played, under that name, during the Civil War:

Captain Kimberly was an experienced and skillful player and base ball player and took the lead in inaugurating a series of games of base ball.^[3]

The air seemed full of heavy shot, and as the flew they could be seen as plainly as a base-ball in one of our games.^[4]

A 1902 book about Philadelphia says that "base-ball" was simply a new name for an older game:

During the Civil War there was an interesting athletic development when the old game of "town-ball" was rechristened "base-ball." It is believed that the first town-ball club, called the Olympic, was established in 1833.^[5]

In 2004, a baseball historian made national news with the apparent discovery of 1791 bylaw of the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, stating that

for the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House... no Person or Inhabitant of said town, shall be permitted to play at any game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Football, Cat, Fives or any other game or games with balls, within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House.^[6]

The baseball as we know it—or at least the familiar "figure-eight" stitched cover—was invented in the 1840s by Ellis Drake of Stoughton, Massachusetts.^[7]

The umpire's hand signals for "strike" and "out" were invented by deaf baseball player William "Dummy" Hoy (1861-1961)^[8]

Notes and references

1. ↑ The Origins of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
2. ↑ The National Baseball Hall of Fame was inspired by the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York. Established in 1901, with a 600-foot colonnade ultimately containing bronze busts of 98 great Americans, the Hall of Fame was at one time a major landmark, and the additions of honorees to it was a national news event. Ironically, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans has itself passed into obscurity; today, the phrase "Hall of Fame" has practically come to mean the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
3. ↑ Nash, Eugene Arus (1910) A History of the Forty-fourth Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, in the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 166
4. ↑ Johnson, Robert Underwood and Clarence Clough Buel (1888), Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume IV, p. 37
5. ↑ Edmond, Franklin Spencer, History of the Central High School of Philadelphia p. 251
6. ↑ Pittsfield is "Baseball's Garden of Eden"
7. ↑ Nineteenth-century baseballs
8. ↑ Deaf Place Names