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CHAPTER 1
BASEBALL
BOYS AND GIRLS — NOT TO MENTION MEN AND WOMEN — have been hitting balls with sticks for millennia, either for fun or as part of a religious ritual. Images on ancient temple walls show the Egyptians playing a stick-and-ball game called seker-hemat as early as 2400 BC. It's worth remembering this as we consider the long-fought intellectual battles over the beginnings of baseball, which on New World shores is deemed to be a uniquely American creation.
In reality, one of the earliest known references to "base-ball" appears in a 1744 English publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. Yes, thirty-two years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a British poem titled "Base-Ball" featured the lines: "The Ball once struck off / Away flies the Boy / To the next destin'd post / And then Home with Joy." An accompanying engraving shows three youths engaged in what appears to be "stoolball," a similar game from southern England that dates to at least the eleventh century and is thought to have been created by milkmaids who used overturned stools as wickets, the precursors to bases. The British developed lots of stick-and-ball games over the centuries, including cricket and rounders.
So why do so many people continue to believe that a Union general named Abner Doubleday invented baseball? It's a convoluted story, one to which Doubleday himself never made claim. The West Point graduate and Civil War hero was declared baseball's prime mover by the Mills Commission, a group of "experts" convened by the sporting goods magnate Albert Spalding in 1905 to establish the game's American provenance. Even at the time, the notion of Doubleday as the sport's creator was absurd. A pair of letters — written by another Abner, surnamed Graves — supported the Doubleday creation myth, which went like this: One day around 1840 Doubleday sketched a diamond in the dirt of a Cooperstown, New York, street, marked player positions, coined the term "baseball," and established all the rules. Never mind that Graves was six years old in 1840, spent time in an insane asylum, and never produced conclusive evidence to support his claim. Americans love a patriotic legend. Thus Cooperstown was ensconced as baseball's birthplace, home to Doubleday Field and the National Baseball Hall of Fame (into which, tellingly, the man himself has not been inducted).
The true origins of the "American" game, then: The United States has always been a country of immigrants, and many of them brought their own recreations here. We now know that forms of baseball were played on farms in New England in the 1700s. By the 1800s, as cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston prospered, a professional class emerged that had the opportunity for leisure. Those citizens formed social clubs that often centered on their old-country games.
Not surprisingly, the unwritten rules for these games differed from club to club and region to region, which made playing one another difficult. (Anyone who thinks the Red Sox–Yankees rivalry is fierce never tried to get New Yorkers to play the "Massachusetts game.") People also gambled on this erstwhile kids' game, which made it decidedly interesting for adults and hastened the need for uniformity. In 1845 Alexander Cartwright, a founder of New York's Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, put on paper the rules his club followed. Whether these are the first rules of baseball or simply the earliest recorded is hard to say. Then again, whether baseball is an all-American game or some kind of international hybrid is beside the point. Today there are more than 120 national governing bodies in the International Baseball Federation. All of them, more or less, play a game that hews to the Knickerbocker rules.
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EVOLUTION OF THE BASEBALL GLOVE
The need for hand protection when fielding a very hard flying or bouncing ball may seem self-evident to players and fans today, but it was not so obvious to the pioneers of America's first true national game.
BARE HANDS 1840s–'70S
Early on, baseball was played barehanded. The implementation of glove use was slow, because no one had invented gloves for the purpose of playing baseball, and it was thought that tough guys didn't need them.
For the first seventy-five years of the modern game's history, most players left their gloves in the field at their position when their side came in to bat. For many reasons — not least because opposing players could trip on the left-behind equipment — Major League Baseball banned the practice in 1954.
FINGERLESS GLOVE 1870s
Cincinnati Red Stockings catcher Doug Allison was likely the first professional to use a glove, in 1870, as protection for an injured hand. It started no trend, however. When St. Louis Brown Stockings first baseman Charles Waitt donned a fingerless leather pair (to maintain dexterity) in 1875, he was mocked. Gloves began to catch on only when the highly regarded Chicago White Stockings first baseman (and future sporting goods magnate) Albert Spalding copied Waitt two years later. By the end of the nineteenth century, all pros wore them.
PADDED GLOVE WITH FINGERS 1880s
In 1883 the New Hampshire glove maker Draper and Maynard developed the first padded glove, which had full fingers. It took nearly seventy more years for players and manufacturers alike to abandon the idea that baseball gloves should resemble hands.
FIRST BASEMAN'S GLOVE 1910s
Although most baseball players (like most people) are right-handed, many first basemen are left-handed, because they can throw to other fielders without having to make a full turn and it is easier for them to field to their right, where most fair balls will be hit.
BILL DOAK MODEL 1920s
Bill Doak, a St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, is generally credited as the father of the modern baseball glove. In 1919 he suggested to sporting-goods maker Rawlings that flexible braided webbing be created between the thumb and first finger, elongating the natural catching "pocket."
WILSON A2000 1950s
The Wilson A2000, which debuted in 1957, was the first glove to feature a hinge (of sorts) through the palm, which allowed it to close easily around the ball. Just as crucial as the technological innovation was the success of this model; its wide adoption finally liberated manufacturers and players from the idea that the basic glove should be modeled to look like a padded hand.
Most baseball gloves are made of cowhide, but the skins of pigs, deer, elk, buffalo, and even kangaroo are sometimes used. And while most mitts are brown or black, many colors have come into and gone out of fashion, including green, red, and blue. Major League Baseball forbids the use of white and gray gloves, or any other color deemed to be distracting by an umpire.
Modern Glove Varieties
Major League Baseball players are technically not obligated to wear a glove when playing the field, but all do. Here are the five basic types of specialized gloves.
1. INFIELDER'S GLOVE Features a shallow pocket to allow for quick retrieval of fielded balls.
2. OUTFIELDER'S GLOVE Longer than an infielder's glove, with deep pockets that make it easier to catch and hold on to balls while running or diving.
3. CATCHER'S MITT Least flexible glove, owing to the extra padding necessary to protect the hand from 100-mph pitches.
4. FIRST BASEMAN'S MITT Lacks individual finger slots and is typically longer and wider than other infielders' gloves, making it easier to scoop low throws.
5. PITCHER'S GLOVE Typically features tight webbing that helps conceal from batters the grip that determines the type of pitch about to be thrown.
CHAPTER 2
BASKETBALL
MOST SPORTS BEGIN AS A CASUAL MARRIAGE OF TOO MUCH time on some kids' hands and an available implement or two. These games are played flexibly, motivated only by the twin goals of fun and distraction, making the answer to "How do you play?" almost always a function of where, when, and by whom the question is asked (if an adult, a response that omits the dangerous parts; if a child, some version of "Leave now before you get hurt!"). The rules of any of these protosports tend to evolve organically — through years or even centuries — until they are finally codified by people who have been playing a particular version of the game for most of their lives.
That is the origin story for 99 percent of organized sports in the world, especially the most familiar ones. But there is a notable exception: basketball, today one of the most popular international sports, was pretty much created in a couple of weeks, born whole from the mind of a single man.
In December 1891 the director of physical education at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, charged one of his employees, a thirty-year-old Canadian named James Naismith, with the task of coming up with an indoor "athletic distraction" that was "not too rough" to occupy students through the fast-descending New England winter. Naismith pondered existing game options but appropriated from virtually none of them. Instead, after thinking it over for a few days, he typed up a set of instructions on two sheets of paper that he affixed to a wall at the Y. The title at the top of the first page read "Basket Ball."
Naismith considered wrestling and gymnastics to be superior forms of physical education to his invention, but his game offered less hazardous contact than the former and more of a workout than the latter. His game, the object of which was to throw a ball into one of two peach baskets nailed to an elevated track 10 feet above the hardwood gym floor, was an instant hit, in spite of one obvious nuisance: after each point was scored, the balls (generally of the soccer variety) had to be retrieved from the baskets, either by ladder or by someone on the track above. That inefficiency was soon rectified; a hole was cut in the basket bottoms so the balls could be knocked out with a stick. (Eventually the whole bottom went.)
Springfield could not contain the game. YMCAs were spreading across the United States and taking basketball with them. Colleges and high schools also embraced the sport — for men and women — not least because it was weatherproof. Within a decade, basketball was one word and being played everywhere. By 1904 the Summer Olympics in St. Louis featured it as a demonstration sport.
Soon after his breakthrough, Naismith moved to Denver, where he earned a degree in medicine. But he couldn't escape the reach of what he had wrought. In 1898 the good doctor relocated to Lawrence, Kansas, to be the chapel director and physical education instructor at the local university. His reputation having preceded him, he was asked to start a school team, which he ran through 1907. The Kansas
STYLE POINTS
BASKETBALL UNIFORMS OVER TIME
Fashion in every sport has evolved, but this garb may have changed the most.
1890s In the early days of basketball, men's uniforms featured everything from trouser-style pants with belts to tracksuits. (Women mostly wore dresses or long skirts with slippers.) The first hoops-specific uniforms debuted in Spalding's 1901 catalog: pants of varying lengths and shirts of differing styles were offered.
1910s Shorts grew more popular because they allowed for increased mobility. Uniforms also began to represent the organization behind the players, from colleges to professional clubs. This coincided with Converse Rubber Shoe Company's 1917 release of the Chuck Taylor, a shoe named after the company's All Star, who traveled the United States teaching the game to children. His footwear featured high tops and rubber soles that offered better support and traction.
1920s–'30s By the 1920s, wool shorts and sleeveless jerseys were ubiquitous. Women more often wore knee pads, but otherwise their uniforms started to match what men were wearing. The invention of nylon in the 1930s offered a much better and lighter alternative to wool.
1940s–'50s As the quality and pace of play increased, wool was scrapped altogether for varying combinations of cotton, polyester, and nylon. Custom numbering and lettering became the norm, and the elastic waistband replaced the belt.
1960s Imitating American fashion in the 1960s, basketball uniforms became tighter and more colorful. In conjunction with the rise of less conservative clothing, sleeveless women's basketball jerseys began to appear as well.
1970s–'80s Following broader fashion trends, striped tube socks became a popular staple of NBA uniforms in the 1970s. Shorts were exceptionally snug, with an inseam as small as 3 inches — or roughly that of men's underwear. They stayed that way through most of the 1980s, until Michael Jordan requested that his Chicago Bulls get longer shorts so he wouldn't have to tug on them so hard when he bent over to rest his hands on his sweaty knees.
1990s Shorts continued to get longer and baggier in the 1990s, in sync with the absorption of hip-hop culture into American sports. In college basketball, the University of Michigan's star-studded 1991 recruiting class (aka the Fab Five) popularized the look. Meanwhile in the NBA, players followed Jordan's lead, and by the end of the decade, the baggy look was the only look.
2000–2010s Since the turn of the twenty-first century, basketball uniforms have been tailored to focus as much on function as on fashion. Shorts and jerseys have remained baggy for maximum maneuverability, while shoes have become lighter even as they offer better floor grip and stronger ankle and arch support.
CHAPTER 3
BOXING
IT'S PROBABLY SAFE TO SAY THAT HUMANS HAVE ENGAGED in hand-to-hand combat since they walked upright; some of the earliest cave paintings depict primitive versions of fisticuffs. The first reference to pugilism in recorded history can be found on a Sumerian wall relief that dates to the third millennium BC. The earliest depictions of fistfighting with hand coverings — gloves, more or less — are in frescoes painted in Crete circa 1500 BC.
But boxing as organized sport rather than self-protective strategy or anger-fueled mayhem developed later. "Organized" is a relative concept, however. If it includes one-off battles between fighters backed by bosses, chiefs, or other grandees looking for entertainment and financial gain from successful bets, then, yes, organized fighting occurred in many early civilizations. But boxing was thought to be enough of a skill, not to mention a measure of manhood, to earn a spot in the ancient Olympics in the seventh century BC. Similarly, fighting for prizes — typically freedom — by slaves, servants, and criminals was a popular spectator sport in ancient Rome. Held on estates or in marketplaces and amphitheaters, these contests were often fought to the death; leather thongs wrapped around boxers' knuckles were sometimes studded with metal. The sport was so deadly that it was abolished in AD 393.
Although men doubtless continued to punch each other for fun and bragging rights, the sport as such didn't formally resurface until the late seventeenth century, in Great Britain. The first account of a boxing match there appeared in 1681, detailing a bout between a nobleman's butler and butcher. Soon enough, prizefights were regular newspaper fodder, and "boxing" the term of choice, most likely because fighters competed in a square. By 1719 England had its first bare-knuckle champion, James Figg. What it did not have was written rules for this increasingly popular sport (not to mention weight divisions, round limits, or a referee).
Such basic codification emerged a couple of decades down the road, established by someone who had intimate knowledge of what he was legislating. As a young man, Jack Broughton was a ferryman working at the Port of London. But in the 1730s he also fought, and fought well, earning a reputation to match his impressive physique: he was 6 feet tall and a muscular 195 pounds at a time when the average man was several inches shorter and many pounds lighter. Trading on his status, and with help from backers, Broughton opened a fighting venue of his own in 1743, after his retirement. There, he staged boxing matches for the paying public, for which he drew up seven rules, the primary purpose of which was to protect contestants. Broughton's set remained definitive for almost a hundred years, until the publication of the London Prize Ring Rules in 1838, which expanded on it. In the next three decades, those rules were updated a couple more times, the last version at the behest of John Sholto Douglas. If the name doesn't ring a bell, maybe that's because he was better known as the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, an avid sportsman who sponsored the publication of a revised set of boxing rules compiled by his associate John Chambers.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "On the Origins of Sports"
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Copyright © 2016 Gary Belsky and Neil Fine.
Excerpted by permission of Workman Publishing.
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