Baseball: as simple game that is not simple

After having spoken about baseball in class, having seen a film and having been to a lecture on baseball ...today we went to see a baseball match! I seem to understand the game better now but I wouldn't say I know how it's played. Some of the students were able to explain the game to me  while we were watching it... in English.

Some students got balls signed by the players!

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond.

Origins of baseball

The evolution of baseball from older bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. A French manuscript from 1344 contains an illustration of clerics playing a game, possibly la soule, with similarities to baseball. Other old French games such as théque, la balle au bâton, and la balle empoisonée also appear to be related. Consensus once held that today's baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, popular in Great Britain and Ireland. The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery.

The game turns professional

In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area. By 1856, local journals were referring to baseball as the "national pastime" or "national game". A year later, sixteen area clubs formed the sport's first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players.