How did baseball develop

Baseball is called America's pastime and looking at it one can see that the modern sport of baseball not only developed in the United States but it continues to be associated with the United States, similar to iconic places such as the Statue of Liberty or the Grand Canyon. The path baseball took to becoming the sport it is today started in the early Medieval period, where it was a very different game. As with other major American sports, key developments occurred in Great Britain before then developing differently in the United States.

The Origins of Baseball

In Medieval England, during the Anglo and Norman periods, there appears to have been a game played in a type of field or clearing in the woods. This may have involved some type of ball game and some have suggested the word for this game, craic, which may have developed into the term cricket. The game may have been played by children but almost no records exist of how this game was played. Another game developed in France in the Medieval period, which may have had similarities to craic, was La soule. This was a type of ball game using a leather or wooden ball that would involve people forming teams in a field and the ball would be hit or kicked around. Scoring a goal was likely the objective and, similar to many other games of the day, the game seemed violent and injury was common.

Recently it has emerged that the closest and oldest ancestor to baseball is a game called rounders. This is a game that involves using a round bat that would hit a leather ball. The game also has four bases that a runner would go around. The field was square rather than diamond shaped and the ball smaller than a baseball today. Bats were also flat although the ends were round. Very likely in the 18th century immigrants from England or Ireland, where the game was also played, brought this game to the United States. By 1791 in the United States, the term baseball had been used to describe the game in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Earlier references to the term baseball exist in Great Britain in the 1740s, but the game seemed different, as it involved triangle-shaped configuration for bases and the bases were posts rather than relatively low or flat objects.

The late 18th century game of baseball was still quite different. It seems to involve one out before the opposing team would then get an opportunity to hit the ball. The batter had three attempts to hit the ball. Nevertheless, very likely the rules were not well codified and variations existed. In fact, even the term baseball was not universally agreed upon, as variations such as town- or round-ball were used.

A key development was the Knickerbocker Rules, developed in 1845 in New York. Some of the rules are still utilized from these rules today, such as the rule that the baseball must be pitched and not thrown. However, many rules, such as the number of outs (21) and hitting the ball out of the filed is a foul are not. Nevertheless, the standardization attempt now began to harmonize baseball rules across different areas, leading to the eventual merger of the game.