Welcome
Welcome to The Baseball Zone
Baseball is not only America's favorite past-time but a fun and popular sport the world over. I remember as a kid going to the park with my friends with nothing more than a bat, a ball, and maybe enough gloves for half the people playing...and the hours would just melt by, before we knew it it'd be time to go home and it would feel as though we just got there!
Baseball and its Origins by Frankie Herban
The exact
origins of baseball are unknown, but most historians concur that it was
derived from the English game of rounders. It started gaining
population in the United States in the early 19th century, and many
sources report the growing popularity of the game, sometimes called
"townball" or simply "base." During this period, small towns formed
teams and larger cities established baseball clubs. In 1845, Alexander
Cartwright established a formal list of rules for play. Many of those
rules are still in place today. Abner Doubleday is widely credited with
inventing the game, but baseball's true father was Cartwright.
The
first recorded baseball game took place in 1846 when Cartwright's
Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club in Hoboken, New
Jersey. Baseball continued to grow in popularity after this game until
the Cincinnati Red Stockings decided to become the first entirely
professional team in 1869. Two years later the first professional
baseball league, the National Association, was formed. This association
was short-lived because the teams were owned and operated by the
players themselves. A group of businessmen formed the National League
in 1875, giving birth to modern professional baseball. The American
League formed in 1901 and raided many of the National League's players,
causing the National League's commissioners to turn on each other. A
court injunction, which impaneled a three-man commission to run the
league, paved the way for the two-leagues to peacefully co-exist.
During
the first decade of the 20th century, baseball remained a game of
strategy. Its so-called "dead ball" led to few homeruns.
Contact-hitters, base stealing and bunting provided most of its
offense. The 1911 adoption of cork- centered ball changed the game
dramatically. With the use of the new ball, forty years of batting
records began to fall, and the game's popularity exploded.
One
of the most popular people in U. S. history is George "Babe" Ruth. He
alone revolutionized the game because he could hit a home run just
about every time his bat hit the ball. He first started baseball as a
pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, then became an outfielder for the New
York Yankees. The year was 1920, and it was a very good year for
baseball.
Some really great players have come from the game of
baseball since the days of Babe Ruth. Men like Hank Aaron, Pete Rose,
Ted Williams, Reggie Jackson and Roger Maris have all contributed to
this great game. Labor disputes and work stoppages have also marred the
game over the years but the worst was in 1994 when the World Series was
actually cancelled because the players were on strike. The game picked
up in 1998 and regained some of its popularity since the 1994 strike
due in large to the race for the home-run record in a single season
between Mark McGuire and Sammy Sousa. McGuire won by beating Maris
longstanding record of 61 home runs by hitting 70 of his own. His glory
didn't last long though because in 2001, Barry Bonds beat McGuire's 70
home runs by hitting 73 home runs of his own.
About The Author
Frankie
Herban operates the website and writes for Fohi Baseball, Inc. which is
a one-stop research center for all the very latest news and views
baseball related. For more details please visit
http://www.fohibaseball.com.
Any of the associations of teams of
African-American baseball
players active largely between 1920 and the late 1940s, when
black players were at last contracted to play major and minor
league baseball. The principal Negro leagues were the Negro
National League (1920), the Eastern Colored League
(1923), and the Negro American League (1937-1960). In 1932,
with the other leagues disbanded, some Northern teams competed in
the previously regional Negro Southern League.
Two black men, Welday and Moses Fleet Walker, who were
brothers, played major league baseball for Toledo, Ohio, in the
American Association in 1884; but this initial acceptance of
integrated teams in professional baseball was short-lived. A
handful of all-black teams played in early organized baseball,
beginning in 1885 with the Cuban Giants, formed that year on Long
Island, N.Y.; the team played exhibition games and, in 1889-91,
represented three successive cities in three leagues. In the
early 20th century new black teams were formed to play exhibition
games against white teams or in short-lived black leagues.
In 1920 Andrew Foster, owner of the Chicago American
Giants, convinced the owners of seven other Northeastern and
Midwestern teams to join him in forming the Negro National
League. In most years the Negro National League consisted of
eight teams. After the Eastern Colored League was formed in 1923,
Negro World Series were held (1924-27; 1942-49); East-West
All-Star games were played from 1933 into the 1950s. Initially
the leagues were centred in cities such as Chicago, New York
City, Detroit, St. Louis, and Kansas City, which had large and
growing black populations as a result of the 20th-century
northward black migration. The leagues struggled for survival
during the Great Depression, though prosperity returned in the
1940s. Financial pressures dictated that different teams would
often make up the leagues from year to year, and that some teams
changed leagues over the years.
The Negro leagues played short seasons, compared with those of
white major league teams. Some black players competed in
Caribbean winter leagues during the off-season. The short season
allowed teams time to barnstorm that is, play exhibition games on
tour. Thus the Kansas City Monarchs, for example, both
barnstormed and belonged to the Negro National League in the
1920s. During 1931-36 the Monarchs, without a league affiliation,
barnstormed from city to city, equipped with an innovative
portable park-lighting system (introduced five years before the
first white major league night game). In 1934 they crossed the
United States in a series of exhibition games with the Homestead
Grays. In 1937 the Monarchs joined the Negro American League.
The popular success of the Harlem Globetrotters in basketball
inspired some Negro league teams, notably the Indianapolis
Clowns, to provide comedy and other entertainment along with
their baseball games. Some of these teams were criticized,
however, for presenting demeaning images of blacks; the Zulu
Cannibal Giants, for example, wore grass skirts and face paint
and played baseball barefoot.
The most noted Negro league teams included the Homestead Grays,
based in Pittsburgh, Pa., and Washington, D.C., who won nine
pennants during 1937-45 and included the great hitters Josh
Gibson (catcher), James Cool Papa Bell (outfield), and Buck
Leonard (first base). In the mid-1930s the Pittsburgh Crawfords
included five future Baseball Hall of Fame members: Gibson; Bell;
manager Oscar Charleston; clutch-hitting third baseman William
Julius Judy Johnson; and the great fastball pitcher Satchel
Paige. After the Crawfords won the 1936 pennant, the team's stars
were hired away to play on Rafael Trujillo's Dominican Republic
team, beginning the Crawfords' decline. The Kansas City Monarchs
won four full-season Negro National League championships and
seven Negro American League championships. Among the most famous
black teams were the all-star units formed annually by Paige to
compete in exhibition games with white major league all-stars.
The beginning of the decline of the Negro leagues was in 1945,
when the Monarchs' rookie shortstop Jackie Robinson was signed by
the Brooklyn Dodgers organization. Among the other black players
who first integrated the major leagues, few were, like Paige,
long-established stars. Most were younger men such as pitcher Don
Newcombe and outfielder Larry Doby (Newark Eagles), catcher Roy
Campanella (Baltimore Elite Giants), and outfielders Minnie
Minoso (New York Cubans), Willie Mays (Birmingham Black Barons),
and Hank Aaron (Indianapolis Clowns)who went on to spend most of
their careers as major league stars.
Copyright 2002 Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc
Casey at the Bat
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the
Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair.
The rest cling to that hope which springs eternal in the human
breast;
They thought, "If only Casey could but get a whack at that--
We'd put up even money now, with Casey at the bat."
But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a hoodoo, while the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey getting to the bat.
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn - hugging third.
Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It pounded on the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.
There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile lit Casey's face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt;
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance flashed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.
And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped--
"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one!" the umpire said.
>From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled
roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore;
"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted some one in the stand;
And it's likely they'd had killed him had not Casey raised his
hand.
With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the dun sphere flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said "Strike two!"
"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered "Fraud!"
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles
strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.
The sneer has fled from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in
hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville-- great Casey has struck out.
— Ernest L. Thayer
Disclaimer
To the best
of our knowledge these are all from either the public domain or free to
use, and a link either has been or will soon be placed on our link page
whenever possible to credit the sources of the photos and tips.
If for some
reason we have inadvertantly placed a photo or image or article that is
not freely
available we will be glad to remove it upon request.
We hope you enjoy these photos and tips.