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[[File:Baseball game between Union prisoners at Salisbury, North Carolina, 1863 - NARA - 530502.jpg|thumbnail|left|400px250px|Figure 1. Baseball being played in a prisoner of war camp in the American Civil War.]] Baseball has been called America's pastime and for most of the 20th Century , it was the most popular sport in the country. Even though baseball is an iconic American sport, it developed over an extraordinarily long period of time. It is a descendant of ball games that were played in the early Medieval period and overtime over time adapted into a very different game. As with other major American sports, Great Britain played a key role in baseball's development.

In Medieval England, during the Anglo and Norman periods, there appears to have been a game played in a type of field or clearing in the woods. This may have involved some type of ball game and some have suggested the word for this game, craic, which may have developed into the term cricket.<ref>For more on this early development, see: Williams, J. (1999) <i>Cricket and England: A Cultural and Social History of the Inter-war Years.</i> Sport in the global society. London ; Portland, OR, F. Cass.</ref> The game may have been played by children but almost no records exist of how this game was played.  Another game developed in France in the Medieval period, which may have had similarities to craic, was La soule. This was a type of ball game using a leather or wooden ball that would involve people forming teams in a field and the ball would be hit or kicked around. Scoring a goal was likely the objective and, similar to many other games of the day, the game seemed violent and injury was common.<ref>For more on La soule, see: Baker, W.J. (1988) <i>Sports in the Western world. Sport and Society</i>. Rev. ed., Illini books ed. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, pg. 46.</ref> Recently it has emerged that the closest and oldest ancestor to baseball is a game called rounders.<ref>For more on rounders, see: Block, D. (2006) <i>Baseball Before we knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game</i>. Lincoln, NE, Bison Books.</ref> This is a game that involves using a round bat that would hit a leather ball. The game also has four bases that a runner would go around.

Recently it has emerged that the closest and oldest ancestor to baseball is a game called rounders.<ref>For more on rounders, see: Block, D. (2006) <i>Baseball Before we knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game</i>. Lincoln, NE, Bison Books.</ref> This is a game that involves using a round bat that would hit a leather ball. The game also has four bases that a runner would go around. The field was square rather than diamond -shaped and the ball smaller than a baseball today. Bats were also flat although the ends were round. Very likely in the 18th -century immigrants from England or Ireland, where the game was played, brought this game to the United States. By 1791 in the United States, the term baseball had been used to describe the game in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.<ref>For more on the emerging game of baseball in the 18th century, see: Light, J.F. (2005) <i>The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball.</i> 2nd ed. Jefferson, N.C, McFarland & Co.</ref> Earlier references to the term baseball exist in Great Britain in the 1740s, but the game seemed different, as it involved triangle-shaped configuration for bases and the bases were posts rather then than relatively low or flat objects.

A key development was the Knickerbocker Rules, developed in 1845 in New York. Some of the rules are still utilized from these rules today, such as the rule that the baseball must be pitched and not thrown. However, many rules, such as the number of outs (21) and hitting the ball out of the filed is a foul are not.<ref>For more on the Knickerbocker Rules, see: Melville, T. (2001) <i>Early Baseball and the Rise of the National League</i>. Jefferson, N.C, McFarland, pg. 12</ref> Nevertheless, the standardization attempt now began to harmonize baseball rules across different areas, leading to the eventual merger of the game.

By the 1850s, baseball had now become popular, particularly in on the east coast. In 1857, at a convention of clubs around New York City occurred. The Knickerbocker rules were seen as vague and the increasingly popular and competitive nature of baseball meant that the rules began to be exploited. In particular, new clubs were emerging outside of the small click of clubs in New York that had adopted the Knickerbocker rules.<ref>For more on the 1857 convention and early rules development, see: Anon (2014) <i>Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game</i>. 8, 8,. Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Company.</ref>

Rules such as bats had to be round, home base was where the ball was hit, pitching came from a fixed distance, a foul ball caught means the batter is out, and players had to run relatively straight between bases and outside given parameters would mean they are out. These and other rules advanced in this convention are still with us today and many recognize these rules as the true origin of modern baseball. Other minor rule changes followed in the 1860s. It was also in the 1860s that baseball was become commercialized, with tickets being now sold and advertisers taking advantage of the gatherings watching the game. <ref>For more on the mid-late 19th -century development of baseball, see: Peter Morris (ed.) (2012) <i>Base ball pioneers, 1850-1870: The Clubs and Players who spread the Sport Nationwide</i>. Jefferson, N.C, McFarland & Co.</ref>

In the 1860s, the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) developed, which was an amateur association for players and clubs. By the late 1860s, the popularity of baseball led to the development of the first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Even before the development of the Red Stockings, some of the best amateur players were now getting paid to play for specific clubs, indicating the increasingly competitive nature of baseball. Soon in the 1870s , other teams followed, including the Chicago White Stockings and Boston Red Stockings , and a league of professional teams playing each other was formed. The first professional association was called the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, although it only lasted from 1871-1875. With the professionalization of baseball, players now had contracts and were given strict rules to follow.<ref>For more on the early professional development of baseball, see: Furst, R.T. (2014)

By the first decade of the 20th century, players were now becoming national superstars. This included Honus Wagner, who was adept at stealing bases as well as hitting.<ref>For more on the early 20th -century development of baseball, see: Ritter, L.S. (1992) OCLC: 24792523. <i>The Glory of their Times: The Story of the early days of baseball told by the men who played it</i>. New York, Quill, William Morrow.</ref> One major difference in the game was the ball itself. Baseballs in the early 20th century were expensive, making a single ball often used in an entire game.

The big turnaround though came with the Babe Ruth era, as his slugging and popularization of the home run in the 1920s now made baseball an internationally known game and synonymous with the United States.<ref>For more on the Golden Age of baseball, see: Frommer, H. (2004) <i>New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age, 1947-1957</i>. Madison, Wis, University of Wisconsin Press.</ref> The combination of radio, increased offense, and the larger -than -life appearance of Babe Ruth popularized the game to a level unseen for any other sport in the United States. This was time commonly called as the "Golden Age" of baseball, as its popularity was at a frenzy level across the country. Parallel to the Major League teams was the Negro League created by Rube Foster (Figure 2). It was a league of originally eight teams for African Americans and also Latino players. Earlier manifestations of the Negro League existed, but those folded quickly. The Negro National League and Eastern Colored League formed the two mains leagues that played in their own World Series in the 1920s. Players just as skillful as Major League players emerged, such as Satchel Paige, who became a Major League rookie in 1948 at the age of 42.

Financial problems occurred soon after, however, with a new Negro league forming in the 1930s. In World War II, many African American players were older and so they did not serve in the war effort. They remained and played in the United States, where African Americans working in factories and other work increasingly came to watch their games. In effect, as World War II limited the Major League because so many players left for the war effort, the Negro league proved to be a diversion for those in the home front, including many whites. This likely helped setup set up the stage for the integration and raising of the ban on African American players in baseball in 1947.<ref>For a history on the Negro league and the African American experience with baseball in the early 20th century, see: Hogan, L.D. (2014) <i>The Forgotten History of African American Baseball</i>. Santa Barbara, California, Praeger, ABC-CLIO, LLC.</ref>

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