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The Change of Baseball Over the Years Essay

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From the sandlot to stadiums seating over fifty thousand people, the game of baseball has provided people of all ages with a common foundation; a sport we can all call our national pastime. Though its concept sounds simple, a game using a ball and a bat, millions of people all over the world have sought involvement in it by either playing at some level, or just sitting back and watching a game. With professional baseball attracting more and more fans each season, no one knows what limits this sport can reach. For the time being though, it has been a real "home run."

Like any other sport, baseball developed over an extended period of time spanning way back to the 1600’s. The first evidence of the sport was a game called rounders, …show more content…

A man by the name of Alexander Cartwright, a sportsman from New York started the first organized baseball club, the
Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York (30). Along with establishing the first baseball club, he added a set of written rules, which are extremely parallel to the ones of today (30). Some of these rules, stated in 1845, include, the distance between all the bases being ninety feet, and having nine players on each side. No longer would players be plugging runners, but now they would be tagging them with the ball. The rule of forcing a player out at a base was also introduced in 1854. Finally, other rules changed over time such as the length of the game change to nine innings and the distance from the pitchers found to home plate now being sixty feet. Another major landmark in the history of baseball, the invention of the newspaper box score, occurred in 1845 as well. With all these new advances, the game naturally began to spread across the country (32).

Not only did the famous Civil War (1861-1865) spread our nation into the north and south, but on a positive note, it also spread the sport of baseball all over the country. As an example, the union soldiers would play the game as a form of recreation as the rest of the union troops and even confederate prisoners would watch (47). Something similar to a domino effect started as the prisoners and soldiers came home from

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