Part 1 of Essay
Baseball seems always to have lived more in myth that in history. Children in England and the United States had been playing variants of the game for years such as rounders, one o’ cat, and base. In 1845, some young men in Manhattan organized themselves into the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club and wrote down the rules ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... of Professional Base Ball Clubs. Although distinctions between players and their clubs (now really small businesses) had been hardening for years, the National League formalized the division, which has continued until today. Baseball soon outdistanced other spectator sports in popularity and contributed to the sports boom of the 1880s and 1890s. Late nineteenth-century baseball resembled the Gilded Age business world. Owners moved the clubs frequently, while rival leagues sprung up and competed for play ....