While the invention of baseball is often credited to an American Civil War hero, Abner Doubleday, the timeline above demonstrates that it is much more complicated than that. Baseball was not simply invented on one day by one person. The sport began to take shape in the early 18th century when two English games (cricket and rounders) became popular in the United States during English colonization. By the time of the American Revolution, cricket and rounders were being played in fields and on campuses across the nation. In 1845, a group of New York men formed the first baseball club and put together a set of codified rules. These rules included a diamond-shaped infield, foul lines, the three strike rule, and also eliminated the dangerous rule of throwing the ball at a baserunner to get an out. In 1846, the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club played their first official game against a team of cricket players.
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juliamarina September 29, 2023
Hi Devon! I’m catching up on your blog posts so far so I can follow along on your baseball inquiry! I had no idea what rounders was (my mind immediately went to the schoolyard game of grounders) so I hit up wikipedia to learn about it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounders) – thanks for teaching me something new through your blog! I also love knowing the origins of the sport, especially because I find cricket so fascinating and complicated. It actually maybe makes me like baseball a little more (I’m not the biggest fan), knowing a little bit more about it’s history. Looking forward to reading more of your posts!