Baseball began as a children’s  game in England with various variants including one o’cats, rounders, and base. The game became popular in the colonies and was played by children and adults informally until a man named Alexander J. Cartwright was selected to head a committee to form a formal base ball club. On September 23, 1845, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club was organized, and on September 29 the team adopted the 20 rules that Cartwright suggested to standardize the game. The rules they used have evolved into what we now know as Baseball.
 

Baseball has been America's most popular sport for so long mainly because it has successfully straddled some of the nation's most important cultural divisions. Though it was born among the respectable working class and sporting middle class, the game's cultural ancestors lay in the boisterous street culture of saloon-based volunteer fire companies, militias, theater partisans, street gangs, and political factions.The beginning of the fight for league dominancy began with multiple leagues and eventually they either folded or merged with other leagues. The only two leagues to survive this fight for dominancy were the National League and the American League.  The two leagues had quite different policies. The National League tried to appeal to the middle-class audiences by requiring its teams to charge fifty cents, ban the sale of alcohol, and refuse to play on Sundays. The rival American Association appealed to immigrant and working class audiences by charging a quarter, selling alcohol, and playing Sunday ball.