A view of the playing field at Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois

Baseball is a team sport popular in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean and East Asia. The modern game was developed in the United States from early bat-and-ball games played in Britain, and it has become the national sport of the United States. It is a ball game in which a pitcher throws (pitches) a hard, fist-sized ball past the hitting area of a batter. The batter attempts to hit the baseball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat that in professional baseball must be made out of wood. A team scores only when batting, by advancing counter-clockwise past a series of four markers called bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Each base is 90 feet from the previous base. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

Picture of Fenway Park. Part of the “Green Monster” can be seen on the right side of this picture

References

• Joe Brinkman and Charlie Euchner, The Umpire’s Handbook, rev. ed. (1987)
• Bill James and John Dewan, Bill James Presents the Great American Baseball Stat Book, ed. by Geoff Beckman et al. (1987)
• Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, (ISBN 0743227220)
• Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (1970, reprinted 1984)
• Joseph L. Reichler (ed.), The Baseball Encyclopedia, 7th rev. ed. (1988). (since 1871)
• Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig, The Image of Their Greatness: An Illustrated History of Baseball from 1900 to the Present, updated ed. (1984)
• Lawrence S. Ritter (comp.), The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, new ed. (1984)
• David Quentin Voigt, Baseball, an Illustrated History (1987)
• Charles Euchner, The Last Nine Innings: Inside the Real Game Fans Never See (2006)
• Jeff MacGregor, The New Electoral Sex Symbol: Nascar Dad, The New York Times (January 18, 2004)
• Michael Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, (PublicAffairs, ISBN 1-58648-252-1).
• Diamonds of the North: A Concise History of Baseball in Canada by William Humber (Oxford University Press, 1995).
• Old Time Baseball and the London Tecumsehs of the late 1870s by Les Bronson, a recorded (and later transcribed) talk given to the London & Middlesex Historical Society on February 15, 1972. Available in the London Room of the Central Branch of the London Public Library.
• Journal of Sport History (1988), A Critical Examination of a Source in Early Ontario Baseball: The Reminiscence of Adam E. Ford by UWO Professor Robert K. Barney and Nancy Bouchier.
• The Beaver, Exploring Canada’s History October-November 1994, Baseball’s Canadian Roots: Abner Who? by Mark Kearney.
• The Northern Game: Baseball the Canadian Way by Bob Elliott (Sport Classic, 2005).
• ‘The 1948 London Majors: A Great Canadian Team by Dan Mendham (unpublished academic paper, UWO, December 7, 1992).
• An Eight-Page Indenture/ Instrument #33043 between The London and Western Trusts Company Limited, The Corporation of The City of London and John Labatt, Limited, dated December 31, 1936, and registered on title in the Land Registry Office for the City of London on January 2, 1937, conveying Tecumseh Park to the City of London along with $10,000 on the provisos that the athletic field be preserved, maintained and operated “for the use of the citizens of the City of London as an athletic field and recreation ground” and that it be renamed “The John Labatt Memorial Athletic Park.”
• Heritage Baseball: City of London a souvenir program from July 23, 2005, celebrating the history of Labatt Park and London, Ontario’s 150th anniversary as an incorporated city.
• Pittsfield: Small city, big baseball town, earliest known baseball reference

Links

• Official Website of Major League Baseball
• Daily MLB News and Analysis
• Baseball Reference
• Details regarding the proliferation of steroids in baseball
• Official Website of the British Baseball Federation
• New York Mutuals Vintage Base Ball Club
• 19th Century Base Ball at Old Bethpage Long Island
• Baseball Basics from MLB.com
• MLB Official Rules
• Online Museum of Early Baseball Memorabilia
• Baseball Blogs Directory
• Baseball Statistics
• Major and Minor League Baseball Coverage
• International Baseball
• Stealing Home – PBS documentary about baseball and society in Cuba
• Baseball in China Article
• MLB News and Facts
• A look at baseball through rarely seen postcards
• Pro Baseball Newspaper Articles Archive
• The Baseball Catcher – Information on Catching
• The Official Site of Minor League Baseball
• Baseball Photographs in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri-St. Louis
• Library of Congress Baseball Cards 1887-1914
• Library of Congress Spalding Baseball Guides 1889-1939
• Library of Congress Baseball and Jackie Robinson 1860-1972

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Baseball….the greatest moments

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 am and is filed under Baseball, Fixed odds gambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.