Is America’s Favorite Past Time Really American? By Wyatt Hoke

I have been playing baseball since I was six, and I have always loved it. In second grade, while I was living in Boston, I remember hitting a long bomb and running all the way to home plate, even though little league rules only allowed me to run to second base. Ever since, I have been working on getting better and playing harder. I know that most people don’t know where, how, when, and why baseball was created and I didn’t either. Through this blog post I am going to change that.

Baseball’s first origins were formed in England in the 1600’s. The  people of England played a similar game called rounders. Just like the game that we play in P.E except you kick it. The players on the other team tried to tag the runner by throwing the ball at him and hitting them with it! Ouch! Then in the 1700’s Americans started to play a game just like rounders, but called it “town ball.” All the players gathered at town hall to play. Originally they played with 25 players and all 25 players had to hit before the opposing team could hit. Alexander Cartwright, a usual player on the team came to the game with a piece of paper that had rules on it. The first rule was that they had to use a bat instead of a paddle, the second rule was that they had to run to a flat square base. The third rule said there had to be 9 players per team instead of 25. On the paper he had a drawing on the back that showed a diamond shape as the field. Then Alexander made the first official baseball team called the Knickerbockers Baseball Club. The first game was played June, 19 1846, the Knickerbockers played the New York Nines and lost 23-1. There are many differences between the baseball back in the 1800’s and now, for example today batters get three strikes and they are out, and back in the 1800’s the batter told the pitcher what pitch to throw.

The rules have changed a lot over the years, and so has the language. First, a walk was six balls, not four. A "bamboozle" was when a foul ball was caught after the first bounce and results in the batter being out. If a batter was hit by a pitched ball, it only counted as a “ball”. There was no infield fly rule. No gloves. Pitchers were called “Hurlers”. Catchers were known as "the behind". Fans were called cranks. And Hurlers threw underhand (they did not throw overhand until 1880). No spitting, swearing, or acting in a manner that was unacceptable to a lady. If a batter did not swing at five or more hittable pitches, he got a warning. If a pitcher failed to throw enough strikes, he got a warning, and then the umpire would begin to call balls. Early rules stated that "three balls being struck at and missed and the last one caught, is a hand-out; if not caught is considered fair, and the hitter must run”.

Can you believe what the baseball players wore when they played? The bats didn’t even look like bats. They were huge, and there was almost no handle, and no knob at the end. The bats usually had a stripe of color to show what team it was for, and who used it. In 1885 The National League made two big changes to the bat, they allowed the bats to have twine around the handle, and the bat could be flat on one side and round on the other. In 1893, in the second season the National League, they did not allow flat bats to be used anymore, and the sweet spot of the bat couldn't be bigger than two and a half inches wide, but then they increased it to two and three quarters of an inch, which they still use today. And the mitts, don't get me started on the mitts. They started out as just work gloves, but soon a man named Arthur Irwin, had to protect his 2 broken fingers while playing shortstop, so he had to put padding in for extra protection, and the first mitt was made. The ball used to be made by the pitcher, he would take a solid object, such as a chestnut or a rock, and wrap yarn and string around it and then cover it with leather, and voila, a ball. But soon Spalding started to make baseballs with cork in the middle. It got harder for the pitcher and easier for the batter, and they changed it to a kind of rubber. Now they use cowhide as the cover of the ball instead of horsehide. What I like about baseball’s beginning is the players didn’t even have mitts, helmets, gloves, and bases, in the end they still found a way to play the game. That is what I love about baseball, all you need is a ball, a big stick, some friends, and you are set to play America's favorite pastime.