Baseball Influence On American Sports

It is a game played everywhere, in parks, playgrounds, and prison yards, in back alleys and farmers fields, by small children and old men, raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. It is the only game in which the defence has the ball. It follows the seasons beginning each year with the expectancy of spring time, and ending with the hard facts of autumn. Americans have played baseball for more then 200 years, while they conquered a continent, fought at war with one another, struggled over labour and civil rights, and the meaning of freedom. Baseball is a deeply conservative game that manages to be years ahead of it’s time. It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers. It also reflects age old American tensions between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective. It is a game in which every player is measured against all of those who have gone before them. “But most of all baseball is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and success, and in the end coming home” ( Burns, K) .

Because of the numerous types of baseball, or rather games similar to it, the origin of the game has been disputed for decades by sport historians all over the world. These sport historians have presented impressive evidence showing that American baseball, far from being an independent invention, evolved out of various ball-and-stick games that had been played in many areas of the world before the times of recorded history. The foundation of baseball included games of English origin, such as paddleball, trap ball, rounders, and town ball. Cricket also played a major roll in evolution of organized baseball. From the game of cricket came