Dictionary Definition
baseball
Noun
1 a ball game played with a bat and ball between
two teams of 9 players; teams take turns at bat trying to score
run; "he played baseball in high school"; "there was a baseball
game on every empy lot"; "there was a desire for National League
ball in the area"; "play ball!" [syn: baseball
game, ball]
2 a ball used in playing baseball
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Noun
- A sport common in North America, the Caribbean, and Japan, in which the object is to strike a ball so that one of a nine-person team can run counter-clockwise among four bases, causing a run. The team with the most runs after nine or more innings wins.
- The ball used to play the sport of baseball.
- A variant of poker in which cards with baseball-related values have special significance.
Derived terms
Translations
ballgame
- Albanian: bejsbol
- Asturian: beisbol
- Chinese: 棒球 (bàngqiú)
- Croatian: bejzbol
- Czech: baseball
- Danish: baseball
- Dutch: honkbal
- Estonian: pesapall
- Finnish: baseball, pesäpallo (Finnish variety of the game)
- French: baseball, base-ball
- German: Baseball
- Greek: μπέισμπολ (x-lit: mpéismpol)
- Hebrew: כדור-בסיס (kadur-basys)
- Hungarian: baseball
- Icelandic: hafnabolti, hornabolti
- Indonesian: bisbol
- Irish: baseball
- Italian: baseball
- Japanese: 野球 (やきゅう)
- Korean: 야구
- Latvian: beisbols
- Macedonian: бејзбол (x-lit: bejzbol)
- Maltese: bejżbol
- Norwegian:
- Bokmål: baseball
- Polish: baseball
- Portuguese (Braz.): beisebol
- Portuguese (Euro.): basebol
- Romanian: baseball
- Russian: бейсбол (x-lit: beĭsbol)
- Serbian: бејзбол (x-lit: bejzbol)
- Slovak: baseball
- Spanish: béisbol
- Swahili: besiboli
- Swedish: baseball
- Turkish: bejsbol, bejzbol
- Ukrainian: бейсбол (x-lit: beĭsbol)
- Vietnamese: ba-dờ-bon
- West Frisian: basebal
ball used in baseball-game
- Finnish: baseball-pallo
- Icelandic: hafnabolti, hornabolti
- Maltese: ballun tal-bejżbol
variety of poker
Czech
Noun
- baseball (game)
Extensive Definition
Baseball is a bat-and-ball
sport played between two
teams
of nine players each. The goal of baseball is to score runs by
hitting a thrown ball with a bat and
touching a series of four markers called bases
arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond.
Players on one team (the batting team) take turns hitting while the
other team (the fielding team) tries to stop them from scoring runs
by getting hitters out in any
of several ways. A player on the batting team can stop at any of
the bases and hope to score on a teammate's hit. The teams switch
between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team gets three
outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning;
nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most
runs at the end of the game wins.
Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth
levels is popular in North
America, Central
America, parts of South
America and the Caribbean, and
parts of East Asia and
Southeast
Asia. The modern version of the game developed in North
America, beginning in the eighteenth century. The consensus of
historians is that it evolved from earlier bat-and-ball games, such
as cricket and rounders, brought to the
continent by British and Irish immigrants. By the late nineteenth
century, baseball was widely recognized as the national
sport of the United
States. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball in
contrast to the very similar game of softball.
In North
America, professional Major
League Baseball teams are divided into the National
League (NL) and American
League (AL). Each league has three divisions: East, West, and
Central. Every year, the champion of Major League Baseball is
determined by playoffs
culminating in the World
Series. Four teams make the playoffs from each league: the
three regular season division winners, plus one wild
card team. The wild card is the team with the best record among
the non–division winners in the league. In the National League, the
pitcher is required to
bat, per the traditional rules. In the American League, there is a
tenth player, a designated
hitter, who bats for the pitcher. Each major league team has a
"farm system" of minor league
teams at various levels. These teams allow younger players to
develop as they gain on-field experience against opponents with
similar levels of skill.
History of baseball
Origins of baseball
The distinct evolution of baseball from among the various bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. Oina, a very similar bat-and-ball traditional game played in Romania was mentioned for the first time during the rule of King Vlaicu Voda, in 1364. While there has been general agreement that modern baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, the 2006 book Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, argues against that notion. Several references to "baseball" and "bat-and-ball" have been found in British and American documents of the early eighteenth century. The earliest known description is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of boys playing "base-ball," showing a baseball set-up roughly similar to the modern game, and a rhymed description of the sport. The earliest known unambiguous American discussion of "baseball" was published in a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, town bylaw that prohibited the playing of the game within of the town's new meeting house. The English novelist Jane Austen made a reference to children playing "base-ball" on a village green in her book Northanger Abbey, which was written between 1798 and 1803 (though not published until 1818).The first full documentation of a baseball game
in North America is Dr. Adam Ford's contemporary description of a
game that took place in 1838 on June 4 (Militia
Muster Day) in Beachville, Ontario, Canada; this report
was related in an 1886 edition of Sporting Life magazine in a
letter by former St.
Marys, Ontario, resident Dr. Matthew Harris. In 1845, Alexander
Cartwright of New York City led the codification of an early
list of rules (the so-called Knickerbocker
Rules), from which today's have evolved. He had also initiated
the replacement of the soft ball used in rounders with a smaller
hard ball. While there are reports of Cartwright's club, the
New
York Knickerbockers, playing games in 1845, the game now
recognized as the first in U.S. history to be officially recorded
took place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken,
New Jersey, with the "New York Nine" defeating the
Knickerbockers, 23–1, in four innings.
History of baseball in the United States
Semiprofessional baseball started in the United States in the 1860s; in 1869, the first fully professional baseball club, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was formed and went undefeated against a schedule of semipro and amateur teams. By the following decade, American newspapers were referring to baseball as the "National Pastime" or "National Game." The first attempt at forming a "major league" was the National Association, which lasted from 1871 to 1875. The "major league" status of the NA is in dispute among present-day baseball historians, and Major League Baseball does not include the NA among the major leagues. The National League, which still exists, was founded in 1876 in response to the NA's shortcomings. Several other major leagues formed and failed, but the American League, which evolved from the minor Western League (1893) and was established in 1901 as a major league, succeeded. The two leagues were initially rivals that actively fought for the best players, often disregarding one another's contracts and engaging in bitter legal disputes. A modicum of peace was established in 1903, and the World Series was inaugurated that fall, albeit without formal major league sanction or governance. The next year, the National League champion New York Giants did not participate, as their manager, John McGraw, refused to recognize the major league status of the American League and its champion, the Boston Americans who beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series. The following year, Giants' management relented, and actually led the formal establishment of rules that standardized the format of the World Series and made participation compulsory.Compared with the present day, games in the early
part of the 20th century were lower scoring and pitchers were more
successful. The "inside game", whose nature was to "scratch for
runs", was played more violently and aggressively than it is today.
Ty Cobb
said of his era especially, "Baseball is something like a war!"
This period, which has since become known as the "dead-ball
era", ended in the 1920s with several rule changes that gave
advantages to hitters and the rise of the legendary baseball player
Babe
Ruth, who showed the world what power hitting could produce,
altering the nature of the game. Two of the changes introduced were
the construction of additional seating to accommodate the rising
popularity of the game, which often had the effect of bringing the
outfield fences closer to the infield in the largest parks; and the
introduction of strict rules governing the size, shape and
construction of the ball which, coupled with superior materials
becoming available following World War
I, caused the ball to travel farther when hit. The aggregate
result of these two changes was to enable batters to hit many more
home runs.
In 1884, African
American Moses
Walker (and, briefly, his brother Welday) had played for the
Toledo
Blue Stockings of the major league
American Association. An injury ended Walker's major league
career, and by the early 1890s, a "gentlemen's agreement" in the
form of the baseball
color line effectively barred African-American players from the
majors and their affiliated minor leagues, resulting in the
formation of several Negro
Leagues. There was never any formal segregation rule in
baseball, which presented an opportunity for integration for
someone bold enough to attempt it. The first crack in the unwritten
agreement occurred in 1946, when Jackie
Robinson was signed by the National League's Brooklyn
Dodgers and began playing for their minor league team in
Montreal. Finally, in 1947, the major leagues' color barrier was
broken when Robinson debuted with the Dodgers. Larry Doby
debuted in the American League the same year. Although the
transformation was not instantaneous, baseball has since become
fully integrated.
Major League baseball finally made it to the West
Coast of the United States in 1958, when the Brooklyn Dodgers and
New York Giants relocated to Los
Angeles and San
Francisco respectively. The first American League team on the
West Coast was the
Los Angeles Angels, who were founded as an expansion team in
1961.
Pitchers dominated the game in the 1960s and
early 1970s. In the early 1970s the designated
hitter (DH) rule was proposed. The American League adopted this
rule in 1973, though pitchers still bat for themselves in the
National League to this day. The DH rule now constitutes the
primary difference between the two leagues.
Despite the popularity of baseball, and the
attendant high salaries relative to those of average Americans, the
players have become dissatisfied from time to time, as they
believed the owners had too much control and retained an unfair
share of the money. Various job actions have occurred throughout
the game's history. Players on specific teams occasionally
attempted strikes, but usually came back when their jobs were
sufficiently threatened. The throwing of the 1919
World Series, the "Black Sox
scandal", was in some sense a "strike" or at least a rebellion
by the ballplayers against a perceived stingy owner. But the strict
rules of baseball contracts tended to keep the players "in line" in
general.
This began to change in 1966 when former United
Steelworkers chief economist (and assistant to the president)
Marvin
Miller became the
Baseball Players Union executive director. The union became
much stronger than it had been previously, especially when the
reserve clause was effectively nullified in the mid-1970s.
Conflicts between owners and the players' union led to major work
stoppages in 1972, 1981, and 1994. The 1994
baseball strike led to the cancellation of the World Series,
and was not settled until the spring of 1995. During this period,
as well, many of the functions — such as player discipline and
umpire supervision — and regulations that had been administered
separately by the two major leagues' administrations were united
under the rubric of Major
League Baseball.
The number of home runs increased dramatically
after the strike. Mark McGwire
and Sammy
Sosa both surpassed Roger Maris's
long-standing single season home run record in 1998. In 2001,
Barry
Bonds established the current record of 73 home runs in a
single season. In 2007, Bonds became MLB's all-time home run
leader, surpassing Hank Aaron's
total of 755. Even though all three sluggers (McGwire, Sosa, and
Bonds) have been accused in the steroid-abuse scandal of the
mid-2000s, their feats did do a lot at the time to bolster the
game's renewed popularity.
Currently, baseball makes up around 20 percent of
the franchise sports industry. The team with the highest average
game attendance is the New York Yankees, with 51,848 spectators.
The New York Yankees are closely followed by the Los Angeles
Dodgers (46,400) and the New York Mets (42,327). The 30 Major
League Baseball teams earned $5.11 billion in revenue in
2006.
Baseball around the world
Baseball is largely known as America's pastime, but has a fan base in several other countries as well. The history of baseball in Canada has remained closely linked with that of the sport in the United States. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featured teams from both countries. While baseball is widely played in Canada, and many minor league teams have been based in the country, the American major leagues did not include a Canadian club until 1969, when the Montreal Expos joined the National League as an expansion team. In 1977, the expansion Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League. The Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, the first and still the only club from outside the United States to do so. In 2004, Major League Baseball relocated the Expos to Washington, D.C., where the team is now known as the Nationals.The first formal baseball league outside of the
United States and Canada was founded in 1878 in Cuba, which maintains
a rich baseball tradition and whose national team has been one of
the world's strongest since international play began in the late
1930s. Professional baseball leagues began to form in other
countries between the world wars, including the Netherlands
(formed in 1922), Australia (1934),
Japan (1936),
and Puerto Rico
(1938). After World War
II, professional leagues were founded in Italy (1948) and in
many Latin
American nations, most prominently Venezuela (1945),
Mexico
(1945), and the Dominican
Republic (1951). In Asia, Korea (1982),
Taiwan
(1990), and China (2003) all have
professional leagues.
Many European countries have pro leagues as well,
the most successful beside the Dutch being the Italian league
founded in 1948. Compared to those in Asia and Latin America, the
various European leagues and the one in Australia historically have
had no more than niche appeal. Recently, the sport has begun to
grow in popularity in those nations, most notably in Australia,
which won a surprise silver medal in the 2004
Olympic Games. In 2007, the Israel
Baseball League, featuring six teams, was launched. Competition
between national teams, such as in the Baseball
World Cup and the
Olympic baseball tournament, has been administered by the
International Baseball Federation since its formation in 1938.
As of 2004, the organization has 112 member countries.
Since the early 1970s, the annual Caribbean
Series has matched the league-winning clubs from Puerto Rico,
Venezuela, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. The Confédération
Européene de Baseball (European Baseball Confederation), founded in
1953, organizes a number of competitions between clubs from
different countries as well as national squads. The inaugural
World
Baseball Classic, held in March 2006, had a much higher profile
than previous tournaments featuring national teams, owing to the
participation for the first time of a significant number of players
from Major League Baseball.
The 117th
meeting of the
International Olympic Committee, held in Singapore in July
2005, voted not to hold baseball and softball tournaments at the
2012 Summer Olympic Games, but they will remain Olympic
sports during the
2008 Summer Olympic Games and will be put to vote again for
each succeeding Summer Olympics. The elimination of baseball and
softball from the 2012 Olympic program enabled the IOC to consider
adding two different sports to the program, but no other sport
received the majority vote required for inclusion. While baseball's
lack of substantial appeal in much of the world was a factor; more
important is the unwillingness of Major League Baseball to have a
break during the Games so that its players can participate,
something that the National
Hockey League now does during the Winter
Olympic Games. Because of the seasonal nature of baseball and
the high priority its fans place on the integrity of major-league
statistics from one season to the next, it would be more difficult
to accommodate such a break in Major League Baseball.
For further information, see also:
Rules and gameplay
A single game is played by two teams, who, during
the course of a game, alternate playing offense
and defense.
Each alternation is called an "inning", and there are usually 9
innings in a game. A "season" is played over the course of many
months by a group of teams, called a league. Each team in the
league plays all the other teams in the league a fixed number of
times, though it is not always in round robin
format. At the end of the season, the team with the most wins is
the winner of the regular season.
The goal of a game is to score more points, which
are called "runs" in the language of baseball, than the other team.
Each team, usually composed of 9 players, attempts to score runs
while on offense, by completing a tour of the bases, which form a
square-shaped figure called a "diamond."
A tour starts at home plate and
proceeds counter-clockwise.
See the image below.
There are four basic tools of baseball: the
bat,
the ball, the
mitt, and
the field.
- The bat is an offensive tool, either made of wood or aluminum depending on the game being played. It is a long, hard stick, about 2 inches (5 centimeters) in diameter, except at the handle, which is about 1-inch (2.5 centimeters) diameter.
- The ball in baseball is about the size of a fist and white (though other colors can be used) with red lacing. Softball uses a white or yellow ball (usually) about the size of two fists with white lacing.
- The glove or mitt is a defensive tool, made of leather, worn on the player's hand to aid in catching the ball. It takes various shapes to meet the unique needs of the defensive position of the player.
- The game is played on a field, whose dimensions vary depending on the age of the players. However, every field has a diamond, with bases at its corners, which the offensive players circumnavigate, as mentioned above. The part of the field closest to the bases is called the infield, and the part most distant from the bases is called the outfield.
Baseball is played in a series of (usually 9)
"innings", each of which is divided into two halves (called "top"
and "bottom" in that order: hence the phrase bottom
of the ninth). In each half-inning, the offensive team attempts
to score runs until three of its players are put "out" (removed
from play by actions of the defensive team; discussed below). After
the third out, the teams switch roles for the other half of the
inning. The "home" team plays defense first, and so plays defense
in the top of every inning and offense in the bottom of every
inning.
At the beginning of each half-inning, the nine
defensive players arrange themselves on the field. One defensive
player is called the "pitcher" and stands at the
center of the diamond on a designated spot, called the mound or the
rubber - a reference to the rectangular rubber plate at the center
of the mound. Another defensive player is called the "catcher" and stands on the other
side of home plate from the pitcher. Typically four more players
are arranged along the lines between first, second, and third
bases, and the other three are in the outfield.
Runs are scored as follows: starting at home
plate, each offensive player attempts to earn the right to run
(counterclockwise) to the next base (corner) of the diamond, then
to touch the base at that corner, continuing on to each following
base in order, and finally returning to home, whereupon a run
(point) is scored. Often an offensive player will achieve a base
but be forced to stop there; on future plays (usually in concert
with other runners), the player may continue to advance, or else be
put out.
A play begins with an offensive player called a
"batter" standing at home plate, holding a bat. The batter then
waits for the pitcher to throw a "pitch" (the ball) toward home
plate, and attempts to hit the ball with the bat. If the batter
hits the ball into play, the batter must then drop the bat and
begin running toward first base.
(There are other ways to earn the right to run the bases, such as
"walks" or being hit by a pitched ball. See baseball for more.) The catcher
catches pitches that the batter does not hit (either by choice or
simple failure to make contact) and returns them to the
pitcher.
If the batter fails to hit a well-pitched ball
(one within the strike zone) or if he hits it so that it goes
outside of the field of play it is called a "strike". (However, if
the ball is hit over the outfield and exits the field there, it is
instead (one type of) a "home run": the
batter and all other offensive players on bases may complete a tour
of the bases and score a run. This is the most desirable result for
the batter.)
When a batter begins running, he or she is then
referred to as a "runner". Runners attempt to reach a base, where
they are "safe" and may remain there. The defensive players attempt
to prevent this by putting the runners out using the ball; runners
put out must leave the field (returning to the "bench" or "dugout",
the location where all the other inactive players and managers
observe the game).
There are many ways that the team on defense can
get an offensive player out. For the sake of simplicity, only the
five most common ways are listed here:
- The "strikeout": occurs when the batter acquires three strikes before hitting the ball (within the field); the batter never becomes a runner. (Hence the phrase "Three strikes and you are out".)
- The "ground out": when the batter hits the ball but a defensive player retrieves it after it has touched the ground and throws it to another defensive player standing on first base before the runner arrives there.
- The "forceout": occurs when a runner is required to run to advance bases ahead of a teammate's hit but fails to reach it before a defensive player reaches the base with the ball. The "ground out" is actually a special case of "force out."
- The "flyout": if a defensive player catches a hit ball before it touches the ground, the batter (now a runner) is out (regardless of his location).
- The "tag out": while between bases, a runner is out if a defensive player touches him with a held ball.
Other personnel
Any baseball game involves one or more umpires,
who make rulings on the outcome of each play. At a minimum, one
umpire will stand behind the catcher, to have a good view of the
strike zone, and call each pitch a ball or a strike. Additional
umpires may be stationed near the bases, thus making it easier to
see plays in the field. In Major
League Baseball, four umpires are used for each game, one near
each base. In the all-star game and playoffs, six umpires are used:
one at each base and two in the outfield along either foul
line.
Baseball's unique style
Baseball is unique among American sports in several ways. This uniqueness is a large part of its longstanding appeal and strong association with the American psyche. The philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen described baseball as a national religion. Many Americans believe that baseball is the ultimate combination of skill, timing, athleticism, and strategy. In this, baseball is similar to its cousin game cricket: in many Commonwealth nations, cricket and the culture surrounding it hold a similar place and affection to baseball's role in American culture.Time element
Basketball, ice hockey, American football, and soccer all use a clock, and games often end by a team with the lead killing the clock rather than competing directly against the opposing team. In contrast, baseball has no clock; a team cannot win without getting the last batter out and rallies are not constrained by time. Other sports popular on the professional level in the U.S. that do not have a time limit are tennis and golf, although these are individual as opposed to team sports.In recent decades, observers have criticized
professional baseball for the length of its games, with some
justification as the time required to play a baseball game has
increased steadily through the years. At the turn of the 20th
century, games typically took an hour and a half to play. In the
1920s, they averaged just less than two hours, which eventually
ballooned to 2 hours and 38 minutes in 1960. Though this average
dipped to 2 hours 25 minutes in 1975, by the turn of the 21st
century, games had become so long that Major League Baseball's goal
in 2004 was to get the average game down to 2 hour and 45 minutes,
after coming close in 2003 at 2 hours and 46 minutes.
Statistics are more important to baseball than to
other sports for a variety of reasons. Primary among them is the
fact that every play has only a finite (and relatively limited)
number of possible outcomes, unlike sports like hockey, basketball, soccer, and to a lesser extent
American
football, all of which are more fluid and open. This
facilitates a statistical analysis of baseball, and allows a deeper
level of mathematical study than that provided by other
sports.
Traditionally, statistics like batting
average for batters—the number of hits divided by the number of
at bats—and earned
run average—approximately the number of runs given up by a
pitcher per nine innings—have governed the statistical world of
baseball. However, the advent of sabermetrics has brought an
onslaught of new statistics that perhaps better gauge a player's
performance and contributions to his team from year to year.
Some sabermetrics have entered
the mainstream baseball statistic world. On-base
plus slugging (OPS) is a somewhat complicated formula that some
say gauges a hitter's performance better than batting average. It
combines the hitter's on base
percentage—hits plus walks plus hit by
pitches divided by at bats plus
bases on
balls plus hit by
pitches plus sacrifice
flies—with their slugging
percentage—total bases
divided by at bats.
Walks plus hits per inning pitched (or WHIP) gives a good
representation of a pitcher's abilities; it is calculated exactly
as its name suggests.
Also important are more specific statistics for
particular situations. For example, a certain hitter's ability to
hit left-handed pitchers might cause his manager to give him more
chances to face lefties. Some hitters hit better with runners in
scoring position, so an opposing manager, knowing this statistic,
might elect to
intentionally walk him in order to face a worse hitter.
There are some other statistics, perhaps less
important than those mentioned. For hitters, these include at-bats, the
number of hits and extra-base hits, and runs batted
in, or RBIs. For
pitchers, these include total innings pitched, strikeouts per nine
innings, walks, and the pitch
count.
Popularity
The majority of baseball's popularity resides in East Asia, and the Americas, although in South America its popularity is mainly limited to the northern portion of the continent. Baseball is among the most popular sports in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Japan, Cuba, Panama, Canada, Venezuela, Nicaragua, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.Baseball's biggest market is the United
States where it is the second most popular sport. This
popularity has resulted in baseball being regarded as more than
just a "major sport".
Since the 19th Century, it has been popularly referred to as the
"national
pastime" and Major
League Baseball has been given a unique monopoly status by the
Supreme Court of the United States. This popularity continues
with Baseball
Commissioner Bud Selig
commenting that baseball is currently more popular now than it has
ever been.
Worldwide, baseball is estimated as being the
seventh most popular sport, behind Association
football (soccer), cricket, field
hockey, tennis,
volleyball and
table
tennis. However, on the 8th July 2005 the IOC controversially
decided to drop baseball from the 2012
Olympics.
Organized leagues
See List of organized baseball leagues.Baseball is played at a number of levels, by
amateur and professionals, and by the young and the old. Youth
programs use modified versions of adult and professional baseball
rules, which may include a smaller field, easier pitching (from
a coach, a tee, or a machine), less contact, base running
restrictions, limitations on innings a pitcher can throw, liberal
balk rules, and run limitations, among others. Since rules vary
from location-to-location and among the organizations, coverage of
the nuances in those rules is beyond this article.
See also
General information
- Baseball clothing and equipment
- Baseball fielding positions
- Baseball scorekeeping
- Baseball slang (slang also used outside the scope of baseball)
- List of rare baseball events (occurring within a single game)
- Baseball terminology
- Sports league attendances
- National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
- Baseball awards
- Vintage base ball
- Baseball batting robot
- Safe haven games
- Comparison between cricket and baseball
Culture
- Take Me Out to the Ball Game
- English language idioms derived from baseball
- Ceremonial first pitch
- "Casey at the Bat"
- "Curse of the Bambino"
- "Curse of the billy goat"
- "Who's on First?"
- Rawlings (company)
- Baseball superstition
- Baseball card
- Baseball movie
- Fantasy baseball
- Baseball metaphors for sex
- George Carlin: "Baseball & Football"http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml
- Moundball
Related sports
Notes
Sources and further reading
Published
- Robert K. Barney and Nancy Bouchier, "A Critical Examination of a Source in Early Ontario Baseball: The Reminiscence of Adam E. Ford," Journal of Sport History (1988)
- Joe Brinkman and Charlie Euchner, The Umpire's Handbook, rev. ed. (1987)
- Bob Elliott, The Northern Game: Baseball the Canadian Way (Sport Classic, 2005)
- Charles Euchner, The Last Nine Innings: Inside the Real Game Fans Never See (2006)
- William Humber, Diamonds of the North: A Concise History of Baseball in Canada (Oxford University Press, 1995)
- Bill James and John Dewan, Bill James Presents the Great American Baseball Stat Book, ed. by Geoff Beckman et al. (1987)
- Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (ISBN 0-7432-2722-0)
- Mark Kearney, "Baseball's Canadian Roots: Abner Who?" The Beaver: Exploring Canada's History (October-November 1994)
- Michael Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports (PublicAffairs) (ISBN 1-58648-252-1)
- Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (1984 [1970])
- Joseph L. Reichler (ed.), The Baseball Encyclopedia, 7th rev. ed. (1988)
- Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig, The Image of Their Greatness: An Illustrated History of Baseball from 1900 to the Present, updated ed. (1984)
- 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)
- Seth Swirsky, Baseball Letters, A Fan's Correspondence With His Heroes (Crown Books, 1996).
- David Quentin Voigt, Baseball, an Illustrated History (1987)
Online
- Pittsfield: Small city, big baseball town, earliest known baseball reference
External links
wikibooks Baseball * mlb.com Major League Baseball- milb.com Minor League Baseball
- baseballsoftballuk.com British Baseball Federation
- boltonbaseball.co.uk Bolton Blaze Baseball Club
- baseball.wikia.com The Baseball Wiki
- baseball-reference.com Baseball stats
- thebaseballcube.com Baseball stats
- sabr.org Society for American Baseball Research
- baseball-almanac.com Baseball Almanac with Stats/history/anecdotes
- cycleback.com Online museum of early baseball
- memory.loc.gov Library of Congress of Spalding Guides
- pbs.org PBS documentary - "Baseball" by Ken Burns
- pbs.org PBS documentary - "Stealing Home"
- Seth.com Extensive collection of historic baseball memorabilia
- probaseballarchive.com Baseball newspaper archive
- robbinssports.com Baseball in China
- sportscollectorsdaily.com online news/collecting magazine
- HKsportsFields.com Baseball Field Construction, Design, Renovation
- European Baseball & Softball News and Information
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