Baseball

C

Team Management

Every major league baseball team is part of a baseball club, which includes the team, the owner, and the team management. The owner may be an individual, a group, or a corporation. Club owners provide the money that a team needs to operate. They work with the team management to organize activities such as running a stadium and selling tickets and concessions.

Club owners and management recruit players for the team. The complicated system of recruitment and payment of players is controlled by strict league rules, which involve the number of players clubs may have and the contracts, or agreements, that clubs and players sign. A union, called the Major League Players Association, advises players in these matters.

D

The Minor Leagues

A minor league is any association of professional baseball clubs apart from the major leagues that is recognized by the official Minor League Baseball association. This organization ranks leagues into various classes, depending on the players’ level of skill. Ranked from the lowest level of skill to the highest, these include Rookie, Class A, Class AA, and Class AAA.

Many major league baseball clubs own or operate minor league teams, known as farm teams. Major league clubs use these teams to give players the opportunity to develop their skills in minor league competition. Exceptional players on farm teams may then be brought up to play on the major league team. Farm teams also enable major league clubs to keep additional talented players whom they may trade for players from other major league teams. Minor League Baseball has helped form agreements between the management of minor and major league teams.

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E

Amateur Baseball

Amateur baseball is the oldest form of organized baseball. The first professional teams began as amateur baseball clubs. Today many youth groups, high schools, universities, branches of the military, businesses, and social groups, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), continue to sponsor amateur baseball teams and leagues. Many of the greatest professional baseball players began their careers in amateur baseball before signing with professional teams.

The most common amateur leagues include those organized for young people. Little League, established in 1939, is an organization that operates baseball programs in communities of many countries. Boys and girls from 5 to 18 years old can play Little League. Each year an annual Little League World Series is held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where Little League was founded.

Many high schools and universities have baseball teams made up of student players. They usually play against other teams in their athletic conference during the spring. Professional baseball clubs often recruit outstanding players from high schools, colleges, or universities.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, businesses commonly organized amateur teams made up of their employees. These teams played in leagues that were sometimes called industrial leagues. Teams sometimes hired former professional players to improve their squads, and large crowds attended some of the best industrial league baseball games. Today softball has largely replaced baseball as a favorite athletic competition among businesses.

IV

The History of Baseball

Although it is clear that modern baseball developed in North America, the exact origin of the game is difficult to determine. Most scholars believe that baseball evolved from a variety of similar games that have been played for centuries. A popular legend claims that Abner Doubleday, who was a Union officer during the American Civil War (1861-1865), invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. But there is little support for this story.

A

Origins

There is evidence that people played games involving a stick and a ball since the early days of civilization. Ancient cultures in Persia, Egypt, and Greece played stick-and-ball games for recreation and as part of certain ceremonies. Games of this type had spread throughout Europe by the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) and became popular in a variety of forms. Europeans brought stick-and-ball games to the American colonies as early as the 1600s. Until the late 1700s, however, they were widely considered children’s games.

By the early 1800s, a variety of stick-and-ball games had become popular in North America. Most of these games originated in England. Many people in northeastern cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia played cricket, a traditional game of English aristocrats. But an English game called rounders, which was eventually played in rural and urban communities throughout North America, most closely resembled modern baseball.

Rounders called for a batter to strike a ball and run around bases without being put out. Balls that were caught on the fly, or in some cases after one bounce, were commonly outs. Rounders also involved the practice of plugging, soaking, or stinging, in which fielders could put runners out by throwing the ball at them as they ran between bases. The rules of rounders varied widely from place to place, and people used various names to describe it, including town ball, one o’ cat, and base ball (which was eventually shortened to baseball).

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