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Show Origins of Baseball While baseball as we knew It is a sport of comparatively recent development, devel-opment, a game in which a tossed ball was batted with a rude club has been traced Dack to the 14th century In Europe. The present American game was probably an outgrowth oi "town ball," played in New England from about 1830, In which the runs were made around posts set in the ground, instead of bases. The first code of baseball rules was formulated by the nickerbocker club of New York in 1845, the first match game was played the following year, and the first gate-money series of games took place at Hoboken in 1858. The development of the game was checked by the Civil War, but was revived re-vived In 186b, when a convention was held at which representatives of 30 clubs were present. A Rockford, 111., team first employ- ' ea regularly salaried players, but the Cincinatti Red Stockings, organized In 1868, is considered the first professional pro-fessional club. It made a tour in 1869, winning 69 games without meeting meet-ing a single defeat. In 1870 it won 29 straight games, being defeated in the 30th by the Atlantics of Brooklyn. Gamblers navlng gotten control of the feline, a convention was held in Louisville in 1876, at which strict rules to overcome bribery, betting by players play-ers and other abuses were adopted, and the National League was formed. There are now more than 20 professional profes-sional leagues, of which the National and the American originally the Western, Wes-tern, formed by Ban Johnson in 1893) are the two big leagues." The most significant event in the recent baseball history was the appointment ap-pointment of Judge Kenesuw Mountain Moun-tain Landis as "baseball czar" in 192J. |