Evolution of Baseball
The National League was founded in the year 1876. That is when organized baseball began.
Practices to limit unrestrained competition for players and stabilize the market emerged.
The success of company sponsored teams led to the transformation of businessmen attitudes towards baseball and was a source of company pride (Lomax).
Henry Chadwick is a pioneer of what we know today as baseball. He influenced the changes in the game, introduced the modern box score, statistics, and wrote instructional manuals. He made baseball popular during those early days of establishment. He wrote a book on baseball in 1868. He promoted the game as a journalist.
Alexander Cartwright is yet another person often referred to as the “father of baseball”. He had a huge role in the development of the game. His contributions came into the limelight when the hall of fame was formed. He was born in 1820 and died in 1892. He was one of the founders of the Knickerbocker Baseball Club. That was in the year 1845 on September 23rd. he drafted a set of 20 rules which were aimed at making the game different from other ball-and-bat games. This was in New Jersey.
Other early teams were Red Sockings and Cincinnati.
Evolution of American Football
American Football was founded in the year 1879.
It was derived from rugby, which was largely an English game.
Among the founders was Walter Camp of New Haven, Connecticut. He was born in 1859 and attended Yale from the year 1876 to 1882. He was a multitalented man; having studied business and medicine and going on to be an athletic director, an author, among other responsibilities. He was a football coach at Yale.
Camp played football at Yale. He also helped in the evolution of some of the rules of the game; which had been derived from Rugby. His rules form some of the rules known today as rules of American Football. Some of the rules were: a team is made of 11 and not 15, forward pass rule, and the line of scrimmage.
Amos Alonzo Stagg is was born in 1862 in West Orange, N.J. in the US. He died in 1965. He was an American Football coach. He had the longest coaching career spanning 71 years. He was named the college coach of the year in 1943 at the age of 81. He remained active in American Football Coaching till the age of 98.
Amos participated in Walter Camp’s All-American football team as a baseball pitcher in Yale. He was the Maroons’ coach for 41 years in Chicago. That was from 1892 to 1932. They won so many championships in that time. In that time, Princeton was also a very good team and a formidable opponent.
Evolution of Ice Hockey
Ice Hockey is believed to have been founded in Canada around 1850.
Montreal was at the centre of the game’s development. The first game was hosted at Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal. The game lasted 60 minutes.
The first rules of the game were drafted at McGill University in Montreal.
McGill University Hockey Club is the first Hockey Club founded in 1877.
James George Aylwin Creighton was a Canadian journalist, lawyer, engineer, and athlete who is credited with the organization of the pioneer ice hockey game in 1875 in Montreal. He was born in 1850 and died in 1930.
Many consider him the “father of ice hockey”. He moved to Montreal from Halifax.
In Montreal, he was a skating judge of the game at Victoria Skating Rink. He was involved in the organization of informal hockey sessions there.
Philip Dansken Ross is yet another Canadian newspaper publisher, journalist, sportsman, and founder of ice hockey. He was born in 1858 in Montreal Canada. He attended McGill University.
He played for the Ottawa Hockey Club where he met Stanley’s sons. Lord Stanley was Canada’s Governor-General. P.D. Ross was made trustee of Lord Stanley’s ice hockey championship in 1892. Today, the championship is known as Stanley Cup.
Evolution of Basketball
Basketball was invented in 1891.
James Naismith, an American-Canadian sports innovator and coach, is credited with inventing the game of basketball.
Naismith was a physical education instructor. He was born in Ontario in 1861.
The first basketball game was played in 1892, January 20th. It was played at the YMCA Gymnasium. It involved 9 players.
Women also played the sport. The size of the court was half the present day NBA courts.
James Naismith came up with rules of the game and published them in December 1891. They were 5 base ideas, and 13 rules. Frank Maham was one of the first 18 players of the game. He was Naismith’s student.
The game was 9 versus 9; A total of 18 players.
The NBA was founded later in 1946. It was called the Basketball Association of America, the BAA. The name was changed to the NBA in 1949.
Luther Halsey Gulick was another influential person in the foundation of basketball. Luther Halsey Gulick Jr. was an American pioneer in physical education.
He started off as the physical director of the Jackson, Michigan YMCA and later became the head of the Young Men's Christian Education Springfield Training School's gymnasium department.
Together with Naismith, he worked towards the spread of the sport. He chaired the Basketball Committee of the Amateur Athletic Union from 1895 to 1905.
The contributions of Gulick and Naismith made the game what it is today.
Works Cited
African American Museum of Iowa. "It's More Than Just a Game: African American Sports in Iowa." n.d. African American Museum of Iowa. 21 September 2013 <http://www.blackiowa.org/exhibits/virtual-tour/african-american-sports-in-iowa/>.
Gems, Gerald, Linda Borish and Getrud Pfister. Sports in American History- From Colonization to Globalization. Sheridan Books, 2008.
Lewis, Guy M. "America's First Intercollegiate Sport: The Regattas from 1852 to 1875." Research Quartely. American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation 38.4 (1967): 637-648.
Loftus, Dr Donna. "The Rise of the Victorian Middle Class ." 17 February 2011. BBC. 21 September 2013 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/middle_classes_01.shtml>.
Lomax, Michael E. Black Basebal Entrepreneurs, 1860-1901: Operating by Any Means Necessary. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003.
Rader, Benjamin G. American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports, 6/E. Lincoln, 2009.
"Sports in Early America." (n.d.).
Winter, Thomas. Luther Halsey Gulick: recreation, physical education and the YMCA. 2004. 21 September 2013 <<http://infed.org/mobi/luther-halsey-gulick-recreation-physical-education-and-the-ymca/>.
