History of Baseball
While you may be thinking that this blog post may be boring, you may be surprised. I feel as if people have this connotation that reading blog posts about things related to history are boring, but learning how your favorite sport– baseball here in particular– developed and started is actually more interesting than you may think.
For baseball in particular, a young man named Abner Doubleday was said to have invented the game of baseball during the summer of 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. Doubleday then went on to become a hero in the Civil War and baseball soon became America’s beloved pastime.
Plot twist, that is not even true! Fooled you huh? Yeah me too. I was surprised to read that the article stated that this story was completely untrue and it even stated that Doubleday claimed that he never had anything to do with baseball. Until the 1930’s Cooperstown businessmen and major league officials relied on this so-called myth when the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was established.
Alexander Joy Cartwright codified a set of new rules that would eventually form the set basis for baseball. This included a diamond-shaped infield, foul lines and a three-strike rule. He also excluded the danger of tagging runners by throwing the ball at them. This all happened in September of 1845 when a group of NYC men created the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. The changes made during this time ultimately led to a Knickerbockers playing the first official game of baseball, which began a unique tradition for Americans.