The question of the origins of baseball has been the subject of debate and controversy for more than a century. Baseball and the other modern bat, ball and running games, cricket and rounders, were developed from earlier folk games in England.
Early forms of baseball had a number of names, including "Base Ball", "Goal Ball", "Round Ball", "Fletch-catch", "stool ball", and, simply, "Base". In at least one version of the game, teams pitched to themselves, runners went around the bases in the opposite direction of today's game, and players could be put out by being hit with the ball. Then as now, a batter was called out after three strikes.
Few details of how the modern game developed from earlier folk games are known. Some think that various folk games resulted in a game called town ball from which baseball was eventually born. Others believe that town ball, a game similar to rounders, played in 18th and 19th century North America, was independent from baseball.
Read more about Origins Of Baseball: Folk Games in England, Abner Doubleday Myth, Alexander Cartwright, Before 1845, Elysian Fields, After 1845
Famous quotes containing the words origins of, origins and/or baseball:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)