BASEBALL
SUMMARY
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport in which two opposing teams of nine players alternate batting and fielding duties. The game begins when a pitcher from the fielding team tosses a ball that a batter from the batting team attempts to hit with a bat. The offensive team’s (batting team) goal is to hit the ball into the field of play and away from the opposing team’s players, allowing their players to run the bases and score “runs.” The defensive team’s (fielding team’s) goal is to keep hitters from becoming runners and runners from advancing around the bases. When a runner legally moves around the bases in order and touches home plate, a run is scored (the place where the player started as a batter). The winning team is the one that scores the most runs by the end of the game.
The batting team’s first goal is to have a player reach first base safely; this usually happens when the batter gets first base before an opponent holding the ball hits the base, or when the pitcher continues to toss the ball out of reach of the batter. If a batter reaches first base without being ruled “out,” he or she might attempt to move to the next base as a runner, either immediately or during teammates’ turns at bat. The fielding team seeks to prevent runs by getting hitters or runners “out,” or removing them from the game. Both the pitcher and the fielders have strategies for getting the batters out.
The opposing teams alternate batting and fielding turns, with the batting team’s turn ending once the fielding team registers three outs. An inning is one turn of batting for each team. A game normally consists of nine innings, with the team scoring the most runs at the end of the game winning. Extra innings are frequently played if the score is tied after nine innings. Although most games terminate in the ninth inning, baseball does not have a game clock.
By the mid-eighteenth century, earlier bat-and-ball sports were already being played in England. Immigrants took this game to North America, where it evolved into its contemporary form. Baseball was largely acknowledged as the national sport of the United States by the late nineteenth century. Baseball is very popular in North America, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, especially in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
A Brief History Of Baseball
Baseball’s real history is a little more difficult, and its true origins are still unknown.
Since ancient Egypt, bats have been used to hit balls. Bat and ball games were popular in many European communities. One popular hypothesis claims that American baseball evolved from the British game of rounders, while it is more likely that both rounders and baseball have roots in cricket. Although there are allusions to a British game named baseball dating back to the 18th century, the sport bears little resemblance to the American pastime.
Baseball would take off in America during the nineteenth century, but the origins of the game are still a source of discussion and speculation. For a long time, the New York Knickerbockers were thought to be the first club to play baseball under current rules. In 1845, team founder Alexander Cartwright and a committee drafted the Knickerbocker Rules, which addressed both organizational issues and game rules. Many of these regulations, however, appear to have been drafted for the Gotham Club in 1837, the team from which the Knickerbockers had broken away.
On June 19th, 1846, in Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, the first documented competitive baseball game between two teams under these “Knickerbocker Rules” was played. Despite the fact that the New York Nine defeated the Knickerbockers 23 to 1, the new regulations would be implemented throughout the New York area.
Rules Of BASEBALL
- Baseball features two nine-player teams.
- Pitcher, catcher, first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, third baseman, and three outfielders (left field, center field, and right field) make up the fielding squad.
- Both teams get a chance to bat once during the 9-inning game. After 9 innings, if the game is still tied, an additional inning will be played until a winner is determined. The team batting second at the bottom of the ninth inning does not have to finish their batting innings if they are already ahead in points.
- After deciding on a batting order, it cannot be modified during the game. Substitutes are allowed, but they must bat in the same order as the player they are replacing.
- If the hitter manages to hit the pitcher’s pitch, they must at least attempt to reach first base. Before being tagged out, they can sprint to as many bases as they like. When the hitter runs past each base, he must contact it with some part of his body.
- Before being struck out, a battery can get up to three strikes. When a batter swing for a ball and misses it, it is called a strike. The batter has the option of leaving the ball, but if it is within a particular area (known as the strike zone,’ a strike will be called. The hitter can walk to first base if four balls miss the strike zone and the batter does not swing his bat.
- The batter can run to the next base at any time while on base.
- A’strike out’ (when a batsman misses the ball three times), a ‘force out’ (when a player fails to reach base before the defensive player), a ‘fly out’ (when the ball is hit in the air and caught without bouncing), and a ‘tag out’ (when the ball is hit in the air and caught without bouncing) can all be used to dismiss a player (where a defensive player with the ball tags the batsman with the ball all whilst they are running).