when was the first ever baseball game played
Baseball The evolution of baseball from older bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. Consensus once held that today's baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, popular among children in Great Britain and Ireland.[42][43] Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game (2005), by American baseball historian David Block, suggests that the game originated in England; recently uncovered historical evidence supports this position. Block argues that rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of each other, and that the game's most direct antecedents are the English games of stoolball and "tut-ball".[44] The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery.[45] Block discovered that the first recorded game of "Bass-Ball" took place in 1749 in Surrey, and featured the Prince of Wales as a player.[46] This early form of the game was apparently brought to Canada by English immigrants.[47]
Origins of baseball The earliest known published[a] rules of baseball in the United States were written in 1845 for a New York City "base ball" club called the Knickerbockers.[28] The purported organizer of the club, Alexander Cartwright, is one person commonly known as "the father of baseball". The rules themselves were written by the two-man Committee on By-Laws, Vice-President William R. Wheaton and Secretary William H. Tucker. One important rule, the 13th, outlawed "soaking" or "plugging", putting a runner out by hitting him with a thrown ball, introducing instead the concept of the tag; this reflected the use of a farther-traveling and potentially injurious hard ball.[b] Another significant rule, the 15th, specified three outs to an inning for the first time instead of "one out, all out" or "all out, all out." The 10th rule prescribed foul lines and foul balls and the 18th forbade runners advancing on a foul, unlike the "Massachusetts game" in which all batted balls were in play. The Knickerbockers also enlarged the diamond well beyond that of town ball, possibly to modern size depending on how "paces" is interpreted.[c]