History of baseball
Historical development in the USA
It's unclear when people started playing baseball . The traditions of ancient Egypt show that games with bats and balls took place before the birth of Christ. In the 14th century, stool ball was played, a game from which cricket later developed. In the 18th century there was the variation Goal Ball . In England a game called base ball was first recorded in 1744. The first known record of a baseball-like set of rules can be found in the book Games for Exercise and Recuperation of the Body and Mind by the German sports educator Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths , published in 1796 .
Evidence that English baseball was played in the United States has been around since the late 18th century. The widespread thesis that it developed from the English game Rounders has now been refuted. Rather, Rounders is a regional form of baseball that is widespread in Devon; the term "rounders" was first used in 1828 - long after "baseball". The often heard legend that the game was invented in 1839 by Abner Doubleday , a later hero of the Civil War , in Cooperstown , a small town in northern New York , has long been known to be untenable. Other sources even suggest that baseball originated in Canada in 1838 .
The first documentable club founded in 1845 were the New York Knickerbockers. They also created the first written rules, which Alexander Cartwright was instrumental in drafting. However, these do not yet include all the rules of the game according to which the game was played at the time, but only provide binding decisions for a number of frequent cases of doubt. Baseball was initially concentrated in the Northeast and the Midwest, soon followed by the West Coast; in the southern states and the Rocky Mountains, much of the interest has only emerged in the last few decades.
Differences from today's baseball
In 1876 the pitcher had to throw from below (as is still the case today in softball ), the distance was only 15 meters. The batter (batsman) could determine in advance whether he wanted to be thrown a high or a low ball. The pitcher has been allowed to throw from above since 1884, and the strike zone has existed since 1887 and the batter is no longer allowed to choose what kind of ball he wants. In 1889, the number of balls required for a walk was reduced from nine to four. In 1893 the pitching distance was increased to the current distance of 18.43 meters. Leather gloves have been used for catching since 1880. These have changed a lot in size, appearance and comfort over time. As a rule, only one or two replacement balls were available before 1900, which meant that the hardness and shape of a ball changed in the course of a game. After a fatal accident caused by a bursting ball, this changed abruptly: since then, balls that fall into the stands are no longer reclaimed and are immediately replaced if they are slightly damaged. A normal major league baseball game today uses around 60 balls. Between 1900 and 1920 one speaks of the “ Deadball Era ” with usually lower scores compared to today, between 1920 and 1940 of the “Golden Age” with usually higher scores compared to today. These changes were mainly due to improvements in game strategy.
First professional teams
Alexander J. Cartwright developed the first rules in 1846, which are still valid today. On June 19, 1846, the first game under these rules was played in Hoboken ( New Jersey ). There the New York Nine and the New York Knickerbockers met. The first professional team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings (later the Cincinnati Reds ) with an initial annual budget of $ 11,000 . They were founded on June 1, 1869. The Red Stockings roamed the United States and competed against local teams. They won all games.
In New York, the National League was formed in 1876 by clubs from Cincinnati, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Hartford, Louisville, New York, and Philadelphia. Today the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago Cubs are the only clubs from that time still represented in the NL. In the first years of professional operation there were a number of other, short-lived leagues. In 1901 the American League was founded, initially as a competition. As the pay in the newly formed league was better, many stars of the National League switched to the American League.
Both leagues are still considered the major leagues today . The greatest heroes of the Major Leagues are honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame , which is located in Cooperstown because of the Doubleday legend mentioned above .
The two leagues have been cooperating since 1903 and hold the World Series as the final every year . Increasingly, immigrants from Europe or their descendants of the first generation made up the core of the most successful teams. Quite a few of the top players were of German descent, for example Ludwig "Lou" Gehrig and probably the most famous player of all time, Babe Ruth .
racial segregation
Since the founding of the first professional leagues , baseball has been racially segregated , in line with the reaction against the liberal principles of the Civil War. Parallel to the leagues of the whites, there were also professional “ Negro Leagues ” of equal skill level, but much worse paid and plagued by frequent bankruptcies, start-ups and reorganizations .
In 1947, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers Branch Rickey dared to break the color barrier . He brought the black Jackie Robinson into his team. Rickey's choice fell on Robinson because he was an excellent player with high discipline and strength of character. Robinson had to endure severe racist behavior from opponents, spectators and even fellow players in his first years , but was ultimately able to establish himself. In his honor, his player number 42 is no longer given to other players in any baseball team today.
The managers of the competing teams quickly realized that there was a rich pool of talented players in the Negro Leagues . In addition, the black players also gave them access to fans from the black population. In the mid-1950s, all teams were integrated and the Negro Leagues stopped playing. After a high point in the late 1970s, however, the number of black players fell again, as basketball is now more popular among blacks . At the same time, however, the number of players from Latin America rose sharply.
Independence of the professional players
In contrast to branches of the free economy, professional baseball in the USA was exempt from antitrust law ( Anti Trust Laws ), since in addition to sporting competition, all clubs also had common interests in the survival of an individual club and the professional leagues as a whole. This meant that collusion between club owners was not considered illegal. As a consequence, professional players were practically owned by the club. They could be sold to other clubs or exchanged against their will by the club management. In addition, the reserve clause allowed club owners to exercise their ownership rights over the player for one year even beyond the contract term.
With the support of union leader Marvin Miller , however, the player Andy Messersmith succeeded in 1973 to fight for the right to free team choice in court. He was therefore considered a free agent and could now decide for himself which club to hire. The business relationship between clubs and players immediately changed from one extreme of modern serfdom to the extreme of the free "talent market". Player salaries skyrocketed as club owners now attracted players with attractive contracts thanks to higher income from TV rights, tickets and merchandising . Repeated attempts by club owners to regain control of the situation resulted in strikes by the players, which led to the 1981 season being cut and the 1994 season canceled. In all disputes, the club owners failed because of their own disagreement, as self-imposed salary limits were repeatedly broken by individual clubs. To date (as of 2004), for example, the club owners have not been able to enforce a salary cap that is supposed to prohibit teams from spending over a certain total amount on player salaries.
Saving Modern Baseball
Due to the constant threat of strikes or strikes that were actually carried out until the mid-1990s, audience interest waned. Disappointed with the greed of club owners and players, fans turned their backs on baseball. The status of baseball threatened to slip behind basketball and American football . But the player Cal Ripken Jr. . drew the full interest of the US sports world and the media when it broke the 56-year-old record of 2,130 games played in a row in 1995. This sensational performance fueled the enthusiasm of the fans and outshone the image of baseball of greedy players and club managers. Ripken continued to play until he paused for a day after playing 2632 games in a row (that's 16 seasons).
The popularity of modern baseball increased further when two players competed in 1998 for the legendary record of 61 home runs in one season, set in 1961 by Roger Maris . Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa fought an exciting duel that kept fans and media in suspense until McGwire hit his 62nd home run. At the end of the season he had improved the record to 70 home runs, Sosa reached 66.
Historical development in Germany
First baseball game in Germany
The first known baseball game on German soil took place at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin . At that time, the largest and up to now not even close to reaching record crowd of more than 100,000 spectators followed a demonstration game between two US teams in the Berlin Olympic Stadium .
Development in Germany 1949–1968
Aided by the presence of US troops in Germany, a German baseball community developed in the 1950s, which annually played off the German champions in a Bundesliga, which in 1951 was an unofficial German championship. The first club founded in Germany was the Frankfurt Juniors in 1949.
1968-1982
Between 1968 and 1982 baseball was no longer played in a nationally organized form. German championships were not played during this period. The first and still existing association of modern times are the Mannheim Tornados, which were founded in 1975 as an independent association.
1982-2010
Baseball spanned a wallflower existence until 1982, but after that the sport developed rapidly in Germany. However, within Europe Germany still lags far behind the two leading nations, the Netherlands and Italy .
In parallel to the Bundesliga, the German American Baseball League (GABL) existed in the 1980s , a league dominated by US-Americans based in Germany. This league reached its peak in 1991, when the commercial broadcaster Tele 5 tried with intensive sponsorship to establish baseball on television. This attempt failed after just one season because it coincided with the first Iraq war and resulted in the collapse of the GABL. The GABL players then joined the leagues of the German Baseball Association.
In 1989 the German national team rose from the European A-pool with a last place at the European Championships in Paris and missed direct re-promotion in 1990. This could only be achieved at the B-European championship in 1992 in the local Ladenburg .
At the European Championships in Stockholm in 1993 , in Haarlem (Netherlands) in 1995 , 1997 and 1999, the German team was able to avoid relegation, but never make the announced leap into the European elite.
After a very good European Championship in 2001 in Bonn , Cologne and Solingen , in which the German team was able to achieve a respectable seventh place, followed in 2003 in the Netherlands the renewed relegation and the resulting dismissal of the national coach van Gullick.
The new national coach Frady led the team at the B-Pool-EM 2004 in Fürth and Regensburg after a demonstration of young baseball from Germany confidently to the tournament victory and thus back to the A-Pool.
In 2005, Germany achieved a good fourth place at the European Championships in Prague , the undefeated tournament winners were the Netherlands. In 2007 it was also able to achieve fourth place in Spain and even third place in 2010 in its own country.
literature
- David Block: Baseball before we knew it. A search for the roots of the game. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln et al. a. 2005, ISBN 0-8032-1339-5 .
- Karl Vocelka : On Some New Trends in Baseball History. In: Mitteilungen des Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 112 (2004) pp. 468–481.
Remarks
- ^ Marc Montgomery: today's anniversary of where baseball began. Radio Canada International, June 4, 2014, accessed June 29, 2014 .
- ^ David Block: Baseball before we knew it. A search for the roots of the game. Lincoln 2005