Baseball is a game that everyone knows and most people love watching. The premise behind it is simple. One person throws the ball and another hits it with a bat. From there, upon a successful hit, the hitter runs around bases to try and reach home base, while others catch the ball and try to stop him. However, the rules of baseball are a little more complex and they have been fine tuned for many years to give us the rules that we have today. If you love the game, you may question why some rules exist. Here, hopefully, you will gain an understanding of all of the rules for professional baseball that are used today.
The original baseball game that we know and love started as a combination of two games, Cricket and Rounders, back in the 18th century. It wasn’t until September 1845 that the formation of what we now know as baseball began. The New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club, which Andrew Joy Cartwriter, a firefighter and a bank clerk, created. He personally decided that baseball needed the diamond field of play, foul lines, and a rule of three strikes. He is also the man who deemed it dangerous to tag runners by hitting them with a baseball. In the end, he also made the gameplay faster and more challenging, but it wasn’t until 1846 when the first game actually took place and the team played against cricket players.
By 1957, the Knickerbocker rules were the standard rules of baseball and it continued to govern the sport until 1872. It meant that there were 9 innings rather than 21 runs deemed who the winner may be. Strikes were recognized as strikes and the rule of the batter being out after it was caught on the fly or after a single bounce. In 1867, batters could decide whether they wanted a high or low pitch.
At first, changes in the rules were pretty much yearly as were the things that they used. For instance, balls gained a cork center in 1910. A home run had to be over 250 feet in 1925 and even the height of the pitcher’s mound became regulated and dropped five inches in 1969.
The most recent change to hit Professional baseball is that there are no steroids allowed. Even performance enhancing drugs are banned. The end results, a clean sport that does not allow very much contact between players.
