Picture yourself walking down a graveled path with your young children. It is human nature to be happy. Maybe you will skip or maybe even sing. To change the pace of things, you create something. For instance, a young child will toddle out to the road and inevitably reach down and pick up a small rock and toss it. It soon becomes a game to them. After some time it may become a personal challenge or even a contest with another sibling. See how far you can throw a rock. Try using a flat rock and see how many skips you can get before it sinks into the water. Now try making it more of a challenge by hitting the rock with a stick. A batted rock can travel farther and faster than a thrown rock ...view middle of the document...
" The French played a game called "poison ball." Settlers from these countries passed these games on when they traveled to the Americas. During this time the English was playing a game that they called cricket. They used "wickets" which were the bases that were used in cricket. They drove these stakes into the ground and used them for the bases in rounders. Their new game was a mishmash of rounders and crickets. (5) Years later, a substantial question came up. Was rounders like cricket, or Was it an invention of America? In 1905 the disagreement activated."Henry Chadwick, called the father of baseball, its first writer and the inventor of the box score, claimed that American baseball was positively descended from the British game of rounders, which became "town ball" in this country, then baseball. He was an eyewitness to the evolution, having seen rounders played as a boy in England, and rounders, town ball and baseball in this country." (7) Although Henry Chadwick was present in the making of this history, many do not believed him and his theory about the game of rounders. A. G. Spalding, one of the people who did not believe Henry Chadwick, wrote what he believed."A. G. Spalding, founder of the famous sporting goods house, a fine pitcher himself, and publisher of the "Baseball Guide," claimed that such a theory was nonsense and that baseball was purely and American invention. A committee was appointed to investigate the matter. The findings of the committee " that baseball had been invented in 1839 by Abner Doubleday, a distinguished Civil War General, in Cooperstown, New York " were based wholly upon evidence submitted in a letter written by a man who stated that he had observed the actual invention when he was a schoolboy in Cooperstown." (8) To this day, many of us believe Spalding and his theory, but another portion of us believe Chadwick and his theory. Even though more evidence supports Chadwick, the committee still favors the Doubleday theory. (9) After the argument had almost been completely cut out of the picture, "Town Ball" and "the New York game" were the two new names that the sport would be called. "Town Ball" was played East of New York and was played more like rounders, and "the New York Game" was played in New York and played more like cricket. In 1842, the men saw how much fun the little boys were having and wanted to try it out. They had so much fun playing this game. They knew that the game had some charisma and had the potential of becoming a immense sport. (...
