Baseball Geek Group: Jimm Hendren, Origins
The real origin of baseball has been disputed since it became popular because of its similarities with other older games. A number of games are said to be early forms of baseball like “stool ball”, “round ball” and “goal ball”. The basic premise of each game is the ball pitching and player running around bases and getting tagged out.
Actually, there were very few details on how the modern baseball evolved from folk games. A popular notion is that the different folk games came together and was made into a game called “town ball”, the eventual precursor of baseball while others assert that that game is totally different from baseball.
Several folk games in England are similar to the modern baseball or cricket as they involve a bat thrown at a target item (ball). And since they were folk games, there were official rules as they change over time or the rules are simply too basic that they did not find it necessary at that time to document it.
Two major groups have surfaced, English and American, claiming that baseball evolved from their own local games — the English claim it was from their folk game called “rounders” while the Americans claim it’s from their game one-ol’-cat).
Baseball Geek Group: Jimm Hendren, Basics
A baseball game is played with 2 competing teams, each having 9 players in the field. The batting (hitting) team plays offense while the fielding (pitching) team goes on defense. They take turns in batting — with the visiting team normally the first — and when each team has had their chance to play offense, it is what we call an inning. One game usually consists of 9 innings but can have extra if there is the score is draw by the end of the ninth one.
Winning is determined by the number of points or runs made by the teams — the one with the most number of runs is the winner.
The goal of the batting team (offense) is to score as many runs as possible by hitting the ball thrown by the pitcher and running across the 4 bases around the field (diamond). On the other hand, the fielding team (defense) will try to ‘out’ players of the batting team by various means ergo preventing any runs. Once 3 outs have been made, the fielding team will take its turn to bat while the batting team takes defense.
The essential equipment in playing baseball are the bat, the glove (mitt) and the ball. The bat is used by the batting team to hit the ball thrown by the pitcher, made of a solid piece of wood. The fielding team uses the gloves made of leather in order to catch the ball while the ball itself is made of yarn wound around a small rubber core and then covered with hide.