Everything about Baseball Player totally explained
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's 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 doesn't 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 didn't 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's 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 wasn't 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 wasn't 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 didn't 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 that'll 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 isn't 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 ). 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 doesn't 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's called a "strike". (However, if the ball is hit over the outfield and exits the field there, it's 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's then referred to as a "runner". Runners attempt to reach a base, where they're "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're 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 can't 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 don't 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's 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's 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.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Baseball Player'.
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