How old is baseball a sport

MMA is taking away from baseball's core young audience. Once upon a time, there was no other sport in America that captured the attention of this country's youth quite like baseball. It was a sport that was passed down from generation to generation. It was a sport that truly earned its beloved nickname "America's Pastime! And of course, the popularity of the NFL continued to rise and rise and rise and before you knew it, a major shift in the American sports landscape had just taken place.

In fact, I'll tell you about my year old brother Ahmaad. Like other boys his age he's obsessed with video games. He has a Nintendo Wii. His favorite game is the baseball game that comes with the game console. He loves it and he loves to play me in it. But you know what he doesn't like? He doesn't like watching the actual game. He doesn't want to look at it on TV, he doesn't want to go any games.

He would much rather play an imaginary baseball game than to watch the actual game. My brother represents a microcosm of today's teenage boys. Of course I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But what really made me jump up and write this column was not just because of the earlier points I made, but also due to the curious response from fans and writers in regards to the horrific performance of these umpires during this postseason.

Everybody watching that game thought it was a double. Almost everybody, at least. But, to everyone's surprise, umpire Phil Cuzzi called it a foul ball. Replays clearly showed that it was a fair ball. It was a terrible call by the veteran umpire and Minnesota fans were rightfully upset. If Cuzzi's tragic blunder was the warm-up act, then the shoddy performance of the umpire crew in Game Four of the ALCS, had to be the main event.

Gaffe No. On a headfirst slide into second base, Angels shortstop Erick Aybar tagged Swisher on the hand before he slid back to base. But umpire Dale Scott called him safe. Swisher, now on third base, waited until the ball was caught by center fielder Torii Hunter. Then he ran home for the score. But head crew chief and third base umpire Tim McClelland called him out, claiming that Swisher took off before Hunter caught the ball. Not only did replays show that McClelland was wrong, replays showed that McClelland wasn't even looking at Swisher as he left third base!

After being trapped in a rundown between home and third base, Posada was tagged out by catcher Mike Napoli right in front of McClelland. For some bizarre reason, Cano was simply standing at third base but wasn't actually standing on the base and was immediately tagged out by Napoli as well.

Batting is done by the offense team and the fielding is played by the defense team. The players of the batting team take turns in batting the ball and once they hit the ball, they need to run counter-clockwise to the bases of the field until they reach the home plate again.

They score when they return to the home base before the ball is returned. The batting team only has three chances to hit the ball. After that, teams change positions. The fielding team is the one in charge of pitching the ball to the batter and making sure that the ball reaches a particular base before the player of the batting team could.

When both teams have had a turn at batting, an inning is completed. For baseball, there is a total of nine innings and there is no time limit for this sport. Spalding was set up to determine baseball's origins—namely if it was invented in the United States or derived from games in the United Kingdom. The commission used flimsy evidence—the claims of one man, mining engineer Abner Graves, who said he went to school with Doubleday—to come up with the origin story, which managed to stick.

As it turns out, the real history of baseball is a little more complicated than the Doubleday legend. References to games resembling baseball in the United States date back to the 18th century. By the time of the American Revolution , variations of such games were being played on schoolyards and college campuses across the country. They became even more popular in newly industrialized cities where men sought work in the midth century.

One of them—volunteer firefighter and bank clerk Alexander Joy Cartwright—would codify a new set of rules that would form the basis for modern baseball, calling for a diamond-shaped infield, foul lines and the three-strike rule. He also abolished the dangerous practice of tagging runners by throwing balls at them. In , the Knickerbockers played the first official game of baseball against a team of cricket players, beginning a new, uniquely American tradition.