Early History and Rise of the Major Leagues
The first baseball club was founded on September 23, 1845, as a social club for the upper middle classes of New York City, and was strictly amateur until it disbanded. The club members, which included its president Doc Adams and Alexander Cartwright, formulated the Knickerbocker Rules, which in large part dealt with organizational matters but which also laid out rules for playing the game. Among the rules introduced then, and which characterize modern baseball are: nine-man teams; nine-inning games; bases 90 feet apart; elimination of the bound rule. One of the significant rules prohibited soaking or plugging the runner; under older rules, a fielder could put a runner out by hitting the runner with the thrown ball, similarly to the common schoolyard game of kickball. The Knickerbocker Rules required fielders to tag or force the runner, as is done today, and avoided a lot of the arguments and fistfights that resulted from the earlier practice. Writing the rules didn't help the Knickerbockers in the first known competitive game between two clubs under the new rules, played at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 19, 1846. The self-styled "New York Nine" humbled the Knickerbockers by a score of 23 to 1. Nevertheless, the Knickerbocker Rules were rapidly adopted by teams in the New York area and their version of baseball became known as the "New York Game". After this the game started to be played for money and professional leagues started popping up. These leagues split into to two and they agreed to play a World Series which would be the champions of each league playing a game against each other. There were also other smaller clubs that sold players to the bigger clubs and these became known as "minor" league teams and eventually formed in to the minor league system we have today.
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