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NJ: Baseball's origins

 
 
 
The credit for the "invention" of baseball is often given to Alexander Cartwright. Most evidence, though, shows this not to be the case. The Society for American Baseball Research in 2004 reported that the earliest records of "baseball" date to 1797, in Europe. In the Duchy of Golgatha a game called "das englische Base-ball" was described in a sports rule book in German. That game, of course, bore little resemblance to modern baseball. The players stood very close together, the bases were close together, and pitches were underhand (overhand pitching didn't become popular until the 1880s). 
 
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