Changes

In Medieval England, during the Anglo and Norman periods, there appears to have been a game played in a type of field or clearing in the woods. This may have involved some type of ball game and some have suggested the word for this game, craic, which may have developed into the term cricket. <ref>For more on this early development, see: Williams, J. (1999) Cricket and England: a cultural and social history of the inter-war years. Sport in the global society. London ; Portland, OR, F. Cass.</ref> The game may have been played by children but almost no records exist of how this game was played. Another game developed in France in the Medieval period, which may have had similarities to craic, was La soule. This was a type of ball game using a leather or wooden ball that would involve people forming teams in a field and the ball would be hit or kicked around. Scoring a goal was likely the objective and, similar to many other games of the day, the game seemed violent and injury was common.<ref>For more on La soule, see: Baker, W.J. (1988) Sports in the Western world. Sport and society. Rev. ed., Illini books ed. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, pg. 46.</ref>

Recently it has emerged that the closest and oldest ancestor to baseball is a game called rounders. <ref>For more on rounders, see: Block, D. (2006) Baseball before we knew it: a search for the roots of the game. Lincoln, NE, Bison Books.</ref> This is a game that involves using a round bat that would hit a leather ball. The game also has four bases that a runner would go around. The field was square rather than diamond shaped and the ball smaller than a baseball today. Bats were also flat although the ends were round. Very likely in the 18th century immigrants from England or Ireland, where the game was also played, brought this game to the United States. By 1791 in the United States, the term baseball had been used to describe the game in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. <ref>For more on the emerging game of baseball in the 18th century, see: Light, J.F. (2005) The cultural encyclopedia of baseball. 2nd ed. Jefferson, N.C, McFarland & Co.</ref> Earlier references to the term baseball exist in Great Britain in the 1740s, but the game seemed different, as it involved triangle-shaped configuration for bases and the bases were posts rather than relatively low or flat objects.

A key development was the Knickerbocker Rules, developed in 1845 in New York. Some of the rules are still utilized from these rules today, such as the rule that the baseball must be pitched and not thrown. However, many rules, such as the number of outs (21) and hitting the ball out of the filed is a foul are not. <ref>For more on the Knickerbocker Rules, see: </ref> Nevertheless, the standardization attempt now began to harmonize baseball rules across different areas, leading to the eventual merger of the game.