Baseball: the story of an American passion

The smell of hot dogs drifts over the stands, the sharp crack of a bat on the ball tears through the hubbub, and forty thousand people rise as one to follow a small white sphere streaking towards the sky. Between innings, the whole stadium stands up to stretch and sing. This blend of slowness and sudden brilliance, of ritual and fervour, is the soul of baseball.

Baseball is the great historic sport of the United States, long nicknamed the national pastime. Born in the nineteenth century from English ball games, codified as early as 1845, it accompanied America through its wars, its migrations and its struggles for equality. To understand it is to read a whole chapter of American cultural history.

From English games to an American sport#

Contrary to a stubborn legend, baseball was not invented all at once by a single man. It descends from English bat-and-ball games, in particular rounders and, more distantly, cricket, brought to North America by the colonists. Throughout the early nineteenth century, people played local variants with shifting names and rules, in villages as in the cities of the east coast.

The turning point came in 1845, when Alexander Cartwright and his New York club, the Knickerbockers, set down in writing a body of rules — the Knickerbocker Rules — that drew the modern game: a diamond, bases, three outs per side. These rules, more than any other step, moved baseball from informal amusement to organised sport, with a clear and reproducible framework.

Baseball had no single inventor: it had codifiers, who turned a children's game into a national institution.

The Abner Doubleday myth#

A long-official story credits the invention of baseball to Abner Doubleday, who supposedly created it from scratch in Cooperstown, New York State, in 1839. This version, popularised in the early twentieth century by a commission tasked with finding a "purely American" origin for the sport, is today refuted by historians: nothing proves that Doubleday ever played baseball, and the tale is largely a patriotic construction.

Yet the myth dies hard, to the point that the baseball Hall of Fame was established in Cooperstown, on the supposed site of that imaginary invention. It is a textbook case of how a nation forges its founding legends — here, the need for a sport born of American soil, free of any debt to the old English motherland.

How a game is played#

Baseball pits two teams of nine players against each other over nine innings. In each inning, one team bats while the other fields. The pitcher throws the ball towards the batter, who tries to send it into the field and run to the bases. Three strikes put the batter out; three outs end the batting team's turn.

The crowning act remains the home run: a ball struck so far, often beyond the outfield walls, that the batter can circle all the bases and score. The goal is simple — score more runs than the opponent by bringing your runners back to home plate — but the tactical richness of the pitcher-batter duel makes baseball a game of endless subtlety.

The golden age and the heroes of the diamond#

Professional baseball began in 1869 with the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first fully paid team. The leagues took shape until they formed Major League Baseball (MLB), split between the National League and the American League, whose champions meet each autumn in the World Series, the great showcase of American sport.

In the 1920s, one figure tipped baseball into legend: Babe Ruth. A prodigious hitter, piling up home runs, he embodied the exuberant America of the Roaring Twenties and turned the game into mass spectacle. His aura was such that he was simply called the Bambino, and his name remains, a century later, a synonym for baseball.

Jackie Robinson and the end of segregation#

For decades, professional baseball was racially segregated: Black players, barred from the major leagues, played in the Negro Leagues. Everything changed in 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and became the first African American player of the modern era in the Major Leagues — facing insults and threats with a composure that became legendary.

The event reached far beyond sport: it preceded the great civil rights laws by several years and seared the American imagination. Robinson's number 42 is today retired throughout MLB, a unique honour: no team will ever wear it again, except each 15 April, Jackie Robinson Day, when all players wear it together.

An American game gone global#

Though baseball remains an emblem of the United States, it has long since conquered the world. Introduced to Japan in the late nineteenth century, it became a national sport there in its own right, yakyū, followed with passion; it also reigns in South Korea, Taiwan, the Caribbean and Latin America, from which many of MLB's greatest stars come today.

From stadium culture — the hot dog, the seventh-inning stretch where the crowd rises midway through the seventh inning to sing — to legendary heroes, baseball is far more than a sport: it is an American story. To discover it is to understand part of America — and to learn English is to be able to follow a game, grasp the vocabulary from home run to strike, and thrill along with the stands.

FAQ#

Who really invented baseball? No one in particular. Baseball descends from English ball games such as rounders. The myth crediting Abner Doubleday with its invention in 1839 is refuted by historians; the first modern rules were codified by Alexander Cartwright in 1845.

What does a game of baseball involve? Two teams of nine players face off over nine innings. One team bats while the other fields; the pitcher throws the ball to the batter, who tries to run to the bases. Points are scored by bringing runners home, and the home run is the most spectacular play.

What are the World Series? It is the annual final of Major League Baseball, pitting the champions of the National League and the American League against each other. Held each autumn, it is one of the greatest sporting events in the United States.

Why is Jackie Robinson so important? In 1947 he became the first African American player of the modern era in the Major Leagues, breaking baseball's racial segregation. His struggle reaches beyond sport and marks the history of civil rights: his number 42 is retired throughout MLB.

Photo credits: the images used in this article come from Pexels and Unsplash and are royalty-free.