American baseball

Baseball

A baseball game at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, United States
Highest governing body	World Baseball Softball Confederation
First played	18th century England
Characteristics
Contact	No
Team members	9
Mixed gender	Yes, separate competitions
Type	team sport, bat-and-ball
Equipment	Baseball Baseball bat Baseball glove Bases
Venue	Baseball field
Presence
Country or region	Worldwide (most prominent in the Americas and East Asia)
Olympic	Demonstration Sport: 1912, 1936, 1952, 1956, 1964, 1984, and 1988 Medal Sport: 1992–2008, 2020-

Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of nine players each, who take turns batting and fielding.

The batting team attempts to score runs by hitting a ball that is thrown by the pitcher with a bat swung by the batter, then running counter-clockwise around a series of four bases: first, second, third, and home plate. A run is scored when a player advances around the bases and returns to home plate.

Players on the batting team take turns hitting against the pitcher of the fielding team, which tries to prevent runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team who reaches a base safely can later attempt to advance to subsequent bases during teammates' turns batting, such as on a hit or by other means. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team records three outs. One turn batting for both teams, beginning with the visiting team, constitutes an inning. A game is composed of nine innings, and the team with the greater number of runs at the end of the game wins. Baseball has no game clock, although almost all games end in the ninth inning.

Baseball evolved from older bat-and-ball games already being played in England by the mid-18th century. This game was brought by immigrants to North America, where the modern version developed. By the late 19th century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball is currently popular in North America and parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, particularly Japan.