In North America, professional Major League Baseball teams are divided into the National League (NL) and American League (AL). Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Every year, the champion of Major League Baseball is determined by playoffs culminating in the World Series. Four teams make the playoffs from each league: the three regular season division winners, plus one wild card team. The wild card is the team with the best record among the non–division winners in the league. In the National League, the pitcher is required to bat, per the traditional rules. In the American League, there is a tenth player, a designated hitter, who bats for the pitcher. Each major league team has a "farm system" of minor league teams at various levels. These teams allow younger players to develop as players gain on-field experience against opponents with similar levels of skill.The distinct evolution of baseball from among the various bat-and-ball games is difficultto trace with precision. While there has been general agreement that modern baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, the 2006 book Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, argues against that notion.[1] Several references to "baseball" and "bat-and-ball" have been found in English and American documents of the early eighteenth century.[2] The earliest known description is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of boys playing "base-ball," showing a set-up roughly similar to the modern game, and a rhymed description of the sport. The earliest known unambiguous American discussion of "baseball" was published in a 1791 Pittsfield,Massachusetts, statute that prohibited the playing of the game within 80 yards of the town's new meeting house.[3] The English novelist Jane Austen made a reference to children playing "base-ball" on a village green in her book Northanger Abbey, which was written between 1798 and 1803 (though not published until 1818).The first full documentation of a baseball game in North America is Dr. Adam Ford's
contemporary description of a game that took place in 1838 on June 4 (Militia Muster Day)in Beachville, Ontario, Canada; this report was related in an 1886 edition of Sporting Life magazine in a letter by former St. Marys, Ontario, resident Dr. Matthew Harris. In1845, Alexander Cartwright of New York City led the codification of an early list ofrules (the so-called Knickerbocker Rules), from which today's have evolved. He had also initiated the replacement of the soft ball used in rounders with a smaller hard ball.[4]While there are reports of Cartwright's club, the New York Knickerbockers, playing games
in 1845, the game now recognized as the first in U.S. history to be officially recorded took place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey, with the "New York Nine" defeating the Knickerbockers, 23–1, in four innings.
