Bitcoin Betting on Baseball

Games with ball and bat have been around since the time before Christ. Baseball something since the middle of the 18th century. The origins of the game lie in England, but baseball soon developed into an “American” sport.

Baseball is a team sport, whose rules resemble games like cricket and the German Brennball. In baseball, a player of one team hits the ball as far as possible and then tries to circle the playing field base by base. If the opposing team catches the ball while it is on Base, it is safe. If he is running straight to the next base at this moment, he is ‘Out’.

The version of the rules by which baseball is played until today was designed in 1846 by the American A. J. Cartwright. Only 30 years later, they started playing baseball in China and Japan.

Today, besides the USA, baseball is a popular popular sport in East Asian and South American countries. Baseball still has a much lower significance in Europe and the African and Arab countries.

Worldwide about 210 million people actively play baseball. About half of them play softball. While in Germany men play baseball and women softball, this strict separation does not exist in other countries. In the 1950s, women played in the American Negro Leagues. And softball is just as popular in the USA as a leisure sport among men as it is among women. In 2007, the first Women’s World Baseball Championship finally took place.

Baseball has also been an Olympic discipline since 1992. But already in 2012, at the Olympic Games in London it was no longer on the program. The interest of the spectators was too low.

World baseball championships (men) have been held since 1938. Cuba is the undisputed leader of these world championships with 25 gold medals. Followed by the USA with 4 and Venezuela with 3 world championship titles.

Despite these World Cup results, the USA are still the No. 1 baseball country, and the American major leagues are still the world’s most important league. In the USA, too, interest has shifted from baseball to basketball and American football. But those who dream of a professional career in baseball still dream of the USA. A dream that came true in 2007 for the nineteen-year-old player of an amateur club near Johannesburg / South Africa. And with Max Kepler-Rozycki now for the first time also for a German baseball player fulfilled.

Baseball Distribution

Baseball is considered a “primeval American” game, but it is in fact widespread all over the world. History and spread vary from country to country, and professional baseball leagues can be found not only in the USA but also in Southeast Asia and South America. In Germany there are about ten times as many active players as in Austria. There have been professional baseball leagues in the Netherlands since 1922, while the first game on German soil took place in 1936 between two teams from the USA. In Italy, the second major baseball nation in Europe after the Netherlands, there have been professional leagues since 1948.

Very early baseball became famous and popular in Japan. Introduced by Horace Wilson in 1872, baseball soon became a national sport in Japan, alongside sumo. Japan won the last World Championship medal in China in 2007.

About the same time as in Japan, baseball also came to China. In 1873, the Chinese government sent 30 young men to study in the USA. On their return, they brought baseball with them to their home country. However, China regularly lagged behind Japan and the Philippines at the ‘Far East Games’ held since 1913, where mainly students competed.

Baseball also has a long tradition in countries like Mexico and Cuba. After Mexico baseball came from the USA in the 1870s, after southern Mexico in the 1890s also from Cuba.

In Cuban baseball there were professional, semi-professional and amateur clubs until the revolution in the 1950s. Since the revolution, all players in Cuba have had amateur status. As a result, many former professional players emigrated to the USA and Canada immediately after the revolution. However, outstanding players in Cuba are still financially supported and promoted.

The first World Baseball Championship was a game that took place between Great Britain and the United States in 1938, and was later named a World Championship game. The winner was the United Kingdom. The following year, Cuba, Nicaragua and the USA took part in the World Cup. And gold went to Cuba, ahead of Nicaragua and the USA. Since then, the number of participants in world championships has risen to twenty. And despite revolution and emigration, Cuba is still the undisputed world leader. So far, the Cubans have won the baseball world championship 25 times. Followed by the USA with only four gold medals, the first in 1973. The current world champion, and the first European country to win a baseball world championship since that first game in 1938, has been the Netherlands since 2011.

These World Cup results do nothing to change the reputation of the USA as the ‘country of baseball’. The American Major League is still the most important league in baseball and the goal and dream of all good baseball players around the world.

Baseball History

Egyptian traditions tell of games with rackets and balls that were played well before the birth of Christ. In the 14th century. after Christ there was a game, from which the today’s Cricket, a game very similar to the baseball, developed later. There was also a theory that baseball originated from ‘Rounders, also an English game – but this theory is refuted. Especially since Rounders was first mentioned in 1828, but a game called ‘base ball’ has been known in England since 1744. For the end of the 18th century there is also evidence that baseball was played in the USA. The first known records of the rules can be found in the book of a German sports pedagogue published in 1796.

In 1846, the American Alexander J. Cartwright designed a version of the rules which – with slight modifications – are still valid today in baseball. In the same year, the first game according to these rules was played in Hoboken, New Jersey. At that time, the ‘New York Nine’ played against the ‘New York Knickerbockers’, the first baseball club to be founded and documented. As the first professional baseball team the ‘Cincinnati Red Stockings’ were founded in 1869. They first competed against local teams throughout the USA, defeating them all. In 1876 the National League was founded by clubs from various American cities. 1901 followed, at first as competition, the ‘American League’. Since 1903, however, the National League and the American League have been cooperating and staging the final of the ‘World Series’ every year.

The first big baseball game on German soil took place in 1936 at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. But while baseball was only gradually developing in Germany, German immigrants and their descendants soon found themselves among the best players in all the big teams in the USA. One of them was the baseball legend George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth. He was also one of the five players who were the first to be inducted into the ‘Baseball Hall of Fame’ in 1936.

Nowhere in the world is baseball as popular as in the USA. But even there the interest in the sport broke down, out of disappointment of the spectators about the greed of the clubs as well as the players. Baseball owes the reconciliation between fans and sport to the sporting ambition of three players. In 1995 Cal Ripken Jr. broke the 56 year old record of 2130 consecutive games. When he finally took a day off after 16 seasons, Ripken jr. had played 2632 games in a row. In 1998, players Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa tried to break the 1961 record of 61 home runs in one season. At the end of the season, Sosa had 66 home runs and McGwire set a new record with 70 home runs in one season. And regained the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Baseball Rules

Baseball is a team sport in which two teams of nine players compete against each other. A game consists of nine innings. Each inning is divided into two half innings, so that each team is the attacking team (offense) and the defending team (defense) in each inning.

In the first half inning, the team playing away is always the offense. The game begins when the pitcher of the defense throws a ball to the catcher of his team. Between pitcher and catcher stands the battery of the offense on the homeplate. If he hits the ball with his bat, he is allowed to run. If he makes it to one of the three ‘base’ points on the pitch before the defense has the ball, he is safe there. As soon as the next player of his team has hit the ball into the field, he may continue to run. If the defense catches the ball while it is running from one base to another, it is out. If three players of the attacking team (offense) are out, the right to attack changes to the other team.

The pitcher of the defense must follow certain rules when throwing. A valid ball must be thrown into the so-called ‘strike zone’, i.e. it must not reach the home plate below the knee or above the batsman’s chest. If the pitcher with the ball does not hit the strike zone four times in a row, the batsman of the other team gets a ‘base on balls’. This allows him to advance to the first base without hitting the ball.

If the batsman on his part lets a ball fly unhindered through the strike zone, or if he passes the ball or hits the ball sideways, he gets a strike (mistake) from the referee. After three strikes, the batsman gets an out from the referee.

If the ball is in the air, the batsman becomes a runner and may run to first base, which he must touch before continuing to the next base.

Spread across the field, the players are the defenders. If one of them touches the runner with the ball in his hand while he is not on a base, the runner gets a tag out. If the defense manages that the ball is on a base before the runner, there is a ground out for the runner. If the ball is caught in the air by a defense player while the batsman/runner of the offense is on his way to a base, it is called a ‘fly out’. Other Offense runners who are on the field must then return to the Base from which they started that stroke of their team member. In addition it is complicated for the runners that a base can only be doubled if there was at least one empty base between them.

If a batsman succeeds in hitting the ball in such a way that, as a runner, he can circumnavigate the entire infield and run to the home base before the defenders come into possession of the ball, this is a home run.

In baseball, only the offense team can score points. There are no points for a good shot, but it is the prerequisite to reach a base safely. Points are awarded for each completed round over the bases back to the home base. The winner is the team that has the most points after nine innings. There is no draw in baseball. If there is a tie, additional extra innings are played.