Baseball is a sport played with a bat and ball. It is between two teams, each of which has nine players. The winner of the game is the team that has scored more runs at the end of nine innings. Runs are scored by hitting a thrown ball with the bat and then running to touch as many bases as possible before the ball can be caught and thrown back. The bases are arranged in a 90-foot square called a baseball diamond.

The batting team takes turns facing the pitcher of the opposing team who stands in the middle of the diamond on the pitcher’s mound. The pitcher is backed by the other eight players on his team who are arrayed in such a way as to retrieve the ball quickly after it is hit. Their goal is to stop players from getting on base (or advancing once they have gotten there).

The goal of the batter is to advance all the way around the diamond and eventually come back to home plate, scoring a run. He can do this on his own (by hitting a home run) or by scoring on subsequent batters’ hits. One side wins when they have scored more runs than the other at the end of nine innings.

One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning; nine innings make up a baseball game. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team gets three outs on the batting team.

Baseball is related to more than a few other games that involve bats and balls. An early version of baseball, called rounders, was being played in England over 250 years ago. As the English and Irish immigrants came to America, they brought the game with them.

By the late 1800’s, the game of baseball as we know it, had become the national pastime.

Baseball has also become a world sport, being played amateurs and professionals alike in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East and Southeast Asia. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball as compared to the game of softball which uses a larger ball and is played by teams with more players.

In North America, professional Major League Baseball is played by teams that are divided into the National League (NL) and the American League (AL).

Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Every year, the champion of Major League Baseball is determined by playoffs that climax in the World Series.

Each league produces four teams that make the playoffs. These teams are made up of the three regular season division winners, plus one team (the “wild card team”) that has the best record of the non-Divsion leaders.

Each league plays by a slightly different set of rules. 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, and who does not take the field when the opposing team bats.

Each major league team has a “farm system” of minor league teams at various levels. These teams allow younger players to develop as they gain on-field experience against opponents with similar levels of skill.