Origins of Baseball
Rounders and Town Ball
Although it wasn't always known what sport baseball came from. It’s now known that it was based off a game called town ball. And town ball was based off a game called rounders. Which was based off of a game called cricket. Town ball was a game that changed from town to town that had no exact way of playing. But the basic way of playing was, the batter could have unlimited swings and if he didn't like the pitcher he could request a new pitcher. There was no foul and everything was a live ball. The defense got outs when they caught the ball in the air, on the first bounce, or when they hit the runner with the ball. The runner ran around wooden pegs instead of bases. A score was credited to a team when they ran around the pegs, but they didn't score at the base that they started at.
Alexander Cartwright
Alexander Cartwright
Baseball
Glove, Bat, and Ball
Doubleday Wrongly Credited
In the early 1900’s everyone in america was obsessed with baseball. But no one knew who invented the game. When Henry Chadwick -British native- said that the game started from rounders a game started in Britain. His boss Al Spalding was mad with him, because Spalding was certain that the game had been completely american. So Spalding set out an investigation to find the creator of the game. When three years of investigating had passed and there was no sign of finding anything. Abner graves wrote a letter saying that his long time friend Abner Doubleday had made the game. And since Cartwright died in 1892 there was no one to prove him wrong, so Doubleday was considered inventor until 1947. 1947 is when Robert Henderson proved in a book he wrote that Cartwright was in fact the creator of the beloved game. He also found that Doubleday couldn't have because he was a military cadet at west point academy during the time of the creation of the game. He also proved that Henry Chadwick was correct in his assumption that the game was based off of rounders.
Teams
Throughout baseballs history there were always many teams. Some of the first teams ever were the Knickerbockers the first team ever. Also the New York Nines, the first team to ever win a game. There were also the first professional teams like the Cincinnati red stockings. The Cincinnati red stockings along with 8 other teams from Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, troy, fort Wayne, Rockford, and Cleveland. Made the first Major League. Some teams from the first league are still in the league today like the Philadelphia Athletics. But there were also many teams that didn't make it like the fort Wayne Kekiongas.