History
A "Tee Ball" trademark was registered with the United States government by Dayton Hobbs in the early 1970s, but the game's origins date back to at least the 1940s and 50s with several people claiming to be the father of the game. Claude Lewis, director of the Warner Robins, Georgia Recreation Department, formed a tee-ball league in March 1958. 20 children played the first year. Lewis designed rules for the new game and mailed the rule books out to rec departments all over the country and overseas.
Albion, Michigan claims to be the place of invention for the sport in 1956, though Starkville, Mississippi makes a similar claim that t-ball was invented in their town in 1961. According to the Starkville Rotary Club's website: "In 1961, when it was apparent that younger children needed some way to participate in the program, Rotarians Dr. Clyde Muse and W. W. Littlejohn devised the game of t-ball and added it to the summer baseball program." Dr. Hobbs has credited the United States Navy with spreading the game overseas. U.S. presidents since Ronald Reagan have hosted t-ball games on the South Lawn of the White House.
Read more about this topic: Tee Ball
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)