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Baseball is a sport played between two teams usually of nine players each. It is a bat-and-ball game in which a pitcher throws (pitches) a hard, fist-sized, leather-covered ball toward a batter on the opposing team. more...

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The batter attempts to hit the baseball with a tapered cylindrical bat, made of wood (as required in professional baseball) or a variety of other materials (as allowed in many nonprofessional games). A team scores runs only when batting, by advancing its players — primarily via hits — counterclockwise past a series of four markers called bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or "diamond." The game, played without time restriction, is structured around nine segments called innings. In each inning, both teams are given the opportunity to bat and score runs; a team's half-inning ends when three outs are recorded against that team.

In the United States, professional Major League Baseball teams are divided into the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Four teams make the playoffs in each league: the three division leaders, plus one "wild card" team with the best record among the remaining teams in the league. In the American League, there is a designated hitter who bats for the pitcher, which enables the pitcher to focus on pitching. In the National League, the pitcher is required to bat. If an American League team is playing a National League team at the National League team's field, than both pitchers must bat. If the game takes place at the American League team's field, than both teams may use a designated hitter.

Each Major League team has a so-called "farm system" of minor league teams at the (R) (lowest), (A), (AA) and (AAA) (highest) levels. These teams allow development of younger players against opponents with similar levels of skill, and are also used to gradually rehabilitate Major League players after an injury.

Baseball on both the professional and amateur levels is popular in North America, Central America, parts of South America, parts of the Caribbean, and East Asia. The modern version of the game developed in North America beginning in the eighteenth century. The consensus of historians is that it evolved from bat-and-ball games, such as rounders, brought to the continent by British and Irish immigrants. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball to differentiate it from similar sports such as softball.

History of baseball

Origins of baseball

The distinct evolution of baseball from among the various bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. While there has been general agreement that modern baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, the 2006 book Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, argues against that notion. The earliest known mention of the sport is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of boys playing "base-ball," showing a set-up roughly similar to the modern game, and a rhymed description of the sport. The earliest known American reference to the game was published in a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, statute that prohibited the playing of baseball within 80 yards of the town's new meeting house. The English novelist Jane Austen made a reference to children playing "base-ball" on a village green in her book Northanger Abbey, which was written between 1798 and 1803 (though not published until 1818).

Read more at Wikipedia.org