Baseball started off as an old English sport called “rounders” as early as the 1600’s.Rounders, a lot like baseball, involved hitting a ball with a bat and advancing around bases.Although rounders resembled baseball, there were many differences between the two games.Probably the main difference would be the way you got someone out.In rounders a method called soaking or plugging, a.k.a pegging was the way they got runners out.You literally took the ball through it at the runner and if they were of the base then they were out.Forget rugby this could get ugly!

American colonists in New England called this popular game by several different names, including town ball, the Massachusetts game, and very rarely baseball.Rules for the game appeared in books from time to time.Even so, people just played by their local customs.There was not an exact distance between bases, or players on a team, or even the number of bases.It all varied from place to place. 

Americans gradually changed the game into baseball.The earliest know published reference to organized baseball appeared in the July 13,1825, edition of the Delhi (New York) Gazette.One of the key points in the development of baseball took place when players replaced the practice of soaking runners with the present practice of tagging them.Historians believe that players probably made the change in the mid-1830 or 1840’s.