Chitika

Thursday, April 5, 2012

The roots of the current sport of Baseball

By Bruce Lewis


Here we shall find out more about some of the initial background of our beloved game of Baseball. The present time sport of baseball is quite analogous to an ancient activity described as Stoolball and is assumed to have got its origins from the eleventh century.

Stoolball is believed to be an activity where someone throws a ball at a target and the other participant guards this goal. Actully what the goal was is not certain, it might have been a tree stump, given that in old Sussex dialect the meaning linked with the word stool means stump.

There are a couple of stories about the game of stoolball; initially it was played by milkmaids while they waited for their husbands to come back home after their working day in the fields. They would place their milking stool and turn it the wrong way up and that had been the target. Then one participant would toss a ball toward the stool as the other player would guard it, when the thrower might hit a stool leg the defensive player was out, if the defensive player hit the ball and it's caught they might also be out.

A different story is that it was an activity played by church folk after attending a church service. They might grab a church stool and invert it and use it as the goal and then a person would protect the goal, initially with their bare hands and later on with a paddle very similar to a heavy Ping Pong paddle. It really differed by area according to what was available to use.

An extra for runner for the modern game of baseball can be a few of the people games of Great Britain that progressed into the modern day games of cricket and Rounders. These essentially were games that a single player threw a ball at a goal and another participant guards that target by batting a ball away from the target. Occasionally they could try and score points by running to bases while other players try to put the runner out by some technique.

In another article we shall explore further the way the present day sport of baseball developed over a period. So be sure to return again.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment