BASEBALL

Figure 1: Layout of a representative baseball field Figure 2: (Top) The pitcher's mound and (bottom) home plate game played with bat, ball, and gloves between two teams of nine players each on a field on which four bases are laid out in a square (see Figure 1). Teams alternate positions as batters and fielders, exchanging places when three members of the batting team are put out. As batters, players stand at home plate (see Figure 2) and try to hit a pitched ball out of reach of the fielding team and run a complete circuit around the bases for a run. The team that scores the most runs in nine innings (times at bat) wins the game. Baseball is traditionally considered to be the national pastime of the United States. It was once thought to have been invented in 1839 by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, N.Y., but it is more likely that baseball developed from an 18th-century English game called rounders (q.v.). The innovation that runners be tagged with the ball rather than hit with it was among the rules adopted by Alexander J. Cartwright and a group of New York City players who established the modern game. The tag rule made possible the introduction of a smaller hard ball and a larger, diamond-shaped field. During the American Civil War (186165), baseball became popular among the troops, and following the war professional players appeared from the ranks of amateur associations. A National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was formed in 1871 and became the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs in 1876. A rival American League was founded in 1900, comprising mostly cities outside of the National League. Since 1903 the winning teams of each league have played a postseason championship, known as the World Series. Canadian teams were admitted to the major leagues in 1968 and 1976. The National and American leagues remain the two major-league components of professional baseball in the United States and Canada. In the first half of the 20th century there were separate leagues for black athletes that produced many fine players. Black players had briefly appeared in the short-lived American Association League during the 1880s, but it was only after Jackie Robinson began playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s that black players became integrated into major-league baseball. Each league now has Eastern, Central, and Western divisions. (See American League; National League.) The season extends from early April to early October and is concluded by divisional playoffs. Winners of these contests then contend for the World Series. Major-league baseball in the United States and Canada is generally considered to be the apex of the sport as an organized profession, although the game is also played in Japan and in Latin-American countries. Baseball was a demonstration sport at seven Olympic Games, beginning in 1912, before it became a full-medal Olympic sport at the 1992 Games. pocket-billiards game, named for the similarity in its scoring system to the American game played with bat and ball, in which players attempt to score runs by pocketing 21 consecutively numbered object balls, the number of runs scored corresponding to the total of the numbers on the balls pocketed. Players are allowed nine innings, in each of which they play until they foul or fail to score. As each player begins his innings, which are taken in succession, the balls are racked in a pyramid with the one ball at the apex, the two at the left point, the three at the right, and the nine near the centre. After the first (break) shot, players must call both the ball and the pocket aimed for before each shot. For fouls, see pocket billiards. game played with bat, ball, and gloves between two teams of nine players each on a field on which four bases are laid out in a square (diamond). Teams alternate positions as batters and fielders, exchanging places when three members of the batting team (the team at bat) are put out. As batters, players try to hit the ball out of the reach of the fielding team and make a complete circuit around the bases for a run. The team that scores the most runs in nine innings (times at bat) wins the game. Baseball is played most in the United States, where it is regarded as the national pastime, the game of summer, as cricket is in England. So entwined is baseball in the fabric of American life that many of its terms, originally applicable only to baseball, have come into common idiomatic usage among Americans. When in close combat with American troops during World War II, Japanese soldiers are said to have shouted what they believed to be the ultimate outrage: To hell with Babe Ruth!a reference to the most heroic figure in baseball history. The president of the United States often throws the ceremonial first pitch in early April to inaugurate the new major-league professional baseball season. As many as 50,000,000 spectators annually watch the best players (a number of whom earn more than $1,000,000 a year) perform with the professional American and National major league teams. The seven-month season is climaxed by the World Series, a best-four-out-of-seven competition between the championship teams of the two major leagues. It is an event of enormous nationwide interest and the focus of some international attention; in the late 20th century the U.S. television audience was estimated at more than 100,000,000, with some one-third of the households equipped with television sets watching the series. A World Series income share for players on the winning team grew steadily toward the $100,000 range in response to increasing television revenues. Baseball's appeal is universal, crossing all classes and age groups. It is a game of both individual and collective strengths, including intricate strategic maneuvers, providing a kind of intellectual attraction as well as feats of physical skill and prowess. Of all the major American team sports, it has probably undergone the fewest basic rule changes; to hit for a .300 batting average, the hallmark of outstanding offensive play, is as meaningful today as it was in the 19th century. In addition to its vast literature (the world-champion 1969 New York Mets were the inspiration for nine books), the game is supported by a perpetually growing bank of statistics and records that have been officially kept since 1900 and afford the fan with a constant source of interest. This historical treasure and scores of traditional yarns and legends have made baseball comparable only to itself. It is, for some, not only a memorable but an almost essential event when a father takes his son to his first game. The heroes of the past have been elevated to a state bordering on mythology, their deeds passed on from generation to generation. The tradition is supported and certified by a hall of fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., a pantheon housing thousands of the game's artifacts. Baseball is played at a leisurely pace on a field of greenoften natural grass, but also lately artificial turf. This setting, unchanged through time except for larger stadiums, provides a nostalgic tie to baseball's pastoral roots. It satisfies, for some, especially older fans, the yearning for what are deemed as the lost values of a kinder age, when most small towns and villages had their local nine. It is not unusual for fans to retain a lifelong love of the game. It was the zealotry associated with American baseball fans that led to a long period of confusion over the game's proper roots. A.G. Spalding, a wealthy sporting goods manufacturer, around the turn of the century had felt it demeaning that what had come to be an American institution found its origins in an English game, rounders. Consequently, Spalding in 1904 assembled some like-minded baseball friends and established them, with the aid of a U.S. senator, as an investigative commission. In 1908 the commission issued a report attributing the inventing of the game to Abner Doubleday, a Civil War general, who, it said, devised the game with its name and modern attributes in 1839 at Cooperstown. The ancestor of baseball was said to be a U.S. children's game, old cat, called one-old cat, two-old cat, etc., depending on the number of players. This revisionist interpretation was widely accepted until 1939, when investigations revealed the essentially mythical nature of the theory. Meanwhile, in 1936 the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum had already been established at Cooperstown. Additional reading Historical works include Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig, The Image of Their Greatness: An Illustrated History of Baseball from 1900 to the Present, updated ed. (1984); and Lawrence S. Ritter (comp.), The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, new ed. (1984). For a history of black players and the Negro leagues, see Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (1970, reprinted 1984). David Quentin Voigt, Baseball, an Illustrated History (1987), includes such topics as black baseball and intercollegiate sports.The Official Baseball Guide, containing records and a narrative review of the previous season, and the Official Baseball Register, giving the career record of each major league player of the previous season, are published annually by The Sporting News. The standard reference work covering the records of professional players since 1871 is Joseph L. Reichler (ed.), The Baseball Encyclopedia, 7th rev. ed. (1988). Organization and play of the game itself is the basis of Joe Brinkman and Charlie Euchner, The Umpire's Handbook, rev. ed. (1987). Bill James and John Dewan, Bill James Presents the Great American Baseball Stat Book, ed. by Geoff Beckman et al. (1987), is a massive collection of the game's statistics. Jerome Holtzman