Hardball Dollars

Baseball evokes more nostalgia for the American people than any other sport. So many people play the game as children (or play its close relative, softball) that it became known as "the national pastime." It is also very democratic game. Unlike football and basketball, Baseball can be played well by people of average size and weight.

The baseball game has been started before the Civil War (1861-1865) and was known as a library, a simple game on Sandlot. At first, players of the refined to include the type of skills and mental trial was such a game of cricket in the major countries of the Commonwealth. In particular, scoring and record-keeping gave baseball gravity. "Today," notes John Thorn in The Baseball Encyclopedia, "undocumented baseball is inconceivable." More Americans undoubtedly know that Roger Maris 61 home runs in 1961 broke Babe Ruth's record 60 in 1927 that 525 electoral college votes to President Ronald Reagan in 1984 broke the record of President Franklin Roosevelt 523 in 1936.

The first recorded baseball contest took place in 1846. Cartwright Knickerbockers lost to the Baseball Club of New York in a game at Champs-Elysees in Hoboken, New Jersey. These amateur games became more frequent and more popular. By 1857, an agreement to amateur teams has been called to discuss rules and other issues. Twenty-five teams of delegates sent to the north-east. The following year, they formed the National Association of Base-Ball Players, League first organized baseball. In its first year of operation, the league supported itself by occasionally charging fans for admission. The future looked very promising.

Throughout the first part of this century, small towns formed teams and clubs in baseball have been trained in major cities. In 1845, Alexander Cartwright wanted to formalize a list of rules by which all team could play. Much of the original code is still in place today. Although popular legend says that the game was invented by Abner Doubleday, baseball true father was Cartwright.

In 1871, the league first professional baseball was born. In the early 20th century, most major cities in the eastern United States had a professional baseball team. The teams were divided into two leagues, the National and America during the regular season, a team that played against other teams in the league. The most successful team in each league was said to have won the pennant, "the two pennant winners met after the end of the regular season in the World Series

The winner of at least four games (out of seven) was the champion this year. This is still available, although the leagues are now subdivided and pennants are decided in playoffs end of the season between the winners of each division.

Baseball came of age in the 1920s, when Babe Ruth (1895-1948) led the Yankees to several world titles in the series and became a national hero on the strength of his home runs (balls that can not not be read because they were struck by the field). Over the decades, each team had its great players.

In the early 1950s a rapid expansion of baseball. Western cities had teams or by attracting them to move from eastern cities or by forming teams of expansion is called with players made available by the teams in place. Until the 1970s, because of strict contracts, owners of baseball teams also virtually owned the players, since the rules have changed so players are free, within certain limits, to sell their services to whole team.

The results have been bidding wars and the stars are paid millions of dollars a year. Disputes between the players union and owners were sometimes interrupted baseball for months at a time. If baseball is both a sport and a business in the late 20th century many disgruntled fans view the business side than the dominant.

Baseball became popular in Japan after American soldiers introduced it during the occupation of that country after the Second World War. In the 1990s a Japanese player, Hideo Nomo, became a star pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Baseball is also widely played in Cuba and other Caribbean countries. In the 1996 Olympics, he was able to call a baseball outside the United States that the contest for the gold medal came down to Japan and Cuba (Cuba won)