Volume 17 , Issue 32

Walking With Sadie

Woof! Woof! Will here this little black Sadie Pug sits down in southeast Texas with the highs in the upper 80's. It's a bit more humid than southwest Colorado, though.

Do you know the origin of Baseball? Did you know that the references to games resembling baseball in the United States date back to the 18th century. Its most direct ancestors appear to be two English games: rounders (a children's game brought to New England by the earliest colonists) and cricket.

By the time of the American Revolution, variations of such games were being played on schoolyards and college campuses across the country. They became even more popular in newly industrialized cities where men sought work in the mid-19th century.

In September 1845, a group of New York City men founded the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. One of them - volunteer firefighter and bank clerk Alexander Joy Cartwright - would codify a new set of rules that would form the basis for modern baseball, calling for a diamond-shaped infield, foul lines and the three-strike rule. He also abolished the dangerous practice of tagging runners by throwing balls at them.

In 1903, the British sportswriter Henry Chadwick published an article speculating that baseball derived from a British game called rounders, which Chadwick had played as a boy in England.

Good Night! Good Luck! Woof! Woof!
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