RNL01AIN5X_INA6_1-20_F 5/31/01 10:39 AM Page FC1

Baseball
f rom
Soaking to Satchel
by Judith Irving • illustrated by Dan Brown
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Photo Credits: Title page, p. 11, Brown Brothers; p. 3, Stock Montage; p. 4 (t), Bettmann/Corbis;
p. 4 (b), Bettmann/Corbis; p. 5, Corbis; p. 6, Nik Wheeler/Corbis; p. 7 (inset), David Young-
Wolff/PhotoEdit; p. 7, Arthur Gurmankin/Visuals Unlimited; p. 12, Wil Waldron/Associated Press;
p. 13, Steven Tackiff/Associated Press; p. 14, Bill Kostroun/Associated Press; p. 15, AFP/Corbis;
p. 16, Nicolas Reynard/Gamma

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Baseball
f rom
Soaking to Satchel

by Judith Irving
illustrated by Dan Brown

Orlando Boston Dallas Chicago San Diego

Visit The Learning Site!
www.harcourtschool.com
RNL01AIN5X_INA6_1-20_F 05/18/2001 1:41 PM Page 2

It’s the bottom of the ninth, and your baseball team

is down by one run. You’re up first. Before you leave the
bench, Coach Woods, whispering in your ear, says, “Get
on base and the others will move you along to home plate.
Yours will be the run we need to tie the score.”
Then you do it. You get on first base and wait for the
next batter to move you along. The second batter strikes
out. Then the third batter comes up. He hits a ground ball
and is tagged out at first. You move on to second base. You
wonder whether you will get to cross home plate. Maybe,
but there are already two outs. Suddenly, home plate looks
very, very far away.

Dugout
Batter’s Box
Home Plate

Coach’s Box

Pitcher’s Mound
First Base Third Base

Infield

Foul Line
Second Base

Outfield
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Baseball Begins
If you think about when baseball first began, that seems
far away, too. Baseball was first played in the United States
in the mid-1800s. However, a game very much like it was
played long before that. That game was called rounders,
and it was played in England as early as the 1600s. As in
baseball, a rounders player had to hit a ball with a bat and
then move around the bases.
That much was the same as baseball today, but one big
difference was the way fielders put out base runners. They
did not try to tag them. Instead, they threw the ball at the
runners. If the ball hit the runner, he was out. This was
called soaking or plugging the runner.

3
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How did we get from rounders

to baseball? History tells us that
American colonists played
rounders in the 1700s. They
called it by different names,
though. Sometimes it was called
“town ball,” and sometimes it was
“the Massachusetts game.” At times it
was even called “base ball.” As the
game spread across the country, the rules
often changed. One change might be in the number of
players on each side or in the dis-
tance between bases. Other rules
changed as well.
Little by little, though,
the game became what we
now call baseball. Players
stopped trying to “soak”
runners and instead began to
tag them, as they do today.

4
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Even though we have always known about rounders,

not everyone was convinced that rounders was the origin
of baseball. For a long time, people were sure that Abner
Doubleday (1819–1893) invented the game. A man named
Abner Graves grew up with
Abner Doubleday, and after
Doubleday died, Graves
wrote a letter in which he
said that he had been there
the day Doubleday invented
baseball in Cooperstown,
New York, in 1839.
These days, though, many
historians do not believe
that story. They point
out that the game
Graves described in
his letter was really
rounders. It
even included
soaking the
runners!

5
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The idea that Doubleday invented baseball may be

an error. Even so, Cooperstown is important in baseball
history because it is the home of a fascinating place that
honors the history of baseball—the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Baseball Hall of Fame

In the beginning a baseball game was almost a matter
of chance. A group of players might meet in a field or park
and pull together a couple of teams to play a game. Anyone
might be in the lineup. Of course, that kind of pick-up
game still goes on today, but now baseball is much more
organized.

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There are baseball teams at all levels, and some of them

are in leagues, or groups. There are Little League teams for
boys and girls of school age. There are adult players who
may have regular jobs but play baseball after work, too.
The company the players work for may even sponsor
the teams. Then there are different levels of professional
leagues, all the way up to the major leagues. Players in a
professional league get paid for playing. In fact, some are
paid huge amounts of money.
The best players are the highest paid. There are good
reasons for this. A pitching ace can help a team win a
championship. A batter who hits a lot
of home runs can make the differ-
ence between losing and winning
games. It is these exciting players
who someday will be elected to
the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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By the 1930s baseball was very much as we know it

today. The idea of a hall of fame came from a man who
lived in Cooperstown. Stephen C. Clarke’s idea was to put
together an exhibit of baseball history. It started out small,
but it soon grew to be a whole museum dedicated to base-
ball.
The Hall of Fame opened on June 12, 1939. The idea
behind it was both to record the history of baseball and to
honor its greatest players. Twenty-five men were in the
group first elected to the Hall of Fame. Eleven of them
were still living, and all of them attended the opening.
The Hall of Fame has grown even more since then as
each year more names are added to the list of great players.
Every player added to the list has his name and picture on
a plaque that now hangs in the Hall of Fame Gallery, or
exhibit hall.
In one part of the gallery, visitors can also see some of
the treasures from present and past years. There might be
the bat a player used to break a home run record, or the
ball used by a pitcher to throw a perfect game. In a perfect
game, the pitcher does not give up even one hit or walk.
Then there are the caps, gloves, and even whole uniforms
worn by the best players on their best days. All of it is real;
there are no artificial, or made-up, artifacts.

8
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An exhibit of equipment—bats, baseballs, gloves, catch-

ers’ masks—shows how these pieces of equipment have
changed over the years. Even uniforms have changed, as
have the ballparks themselves. Perhaps the most important
thing that has changed, though, is who plays the game.

It’s Everybody’s Game

At first, only boys and men played baseball. When the
first professional leagues were formed, only white men
could play in them. African American men formed their
own leagues. Though they did not get the attention that
the other leagues did, the Negro Leagues had many great
players. Beginning in 1947, things changed when Jackie
Robinson became the first African American to play in the
major leagues.
In 1991 the Hall of Fame began to honor the stars of
the Negro leagues. The first to be honored was pitcher
Satchel Paige, whose real name was LeRoy Robert Paige.
He got his nickname when he earned money carrying
satchels, or bags, at a railroad station in Mobile, Alabama.
Paige began playing professional baseball in the Negro
Leagues in 1924. In exhibition games, he got to pitch
against white major-league players. New York Yankee star
Joe DiMaggio thought Satchel Paige was one of the great-
est pitchers he had ever faced.

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A TIMELINE OF
BASEBALL FIRSTS
1845
Paige finally came to
1846 First
baseball team, the major leagues in 1948.
Hoboken, He was much older than
New Jersey 1867 First
pitcher to
the other players were,
1869 First throw a curve but he still helped the
all-professional ball, “Candy”
team, Cincinnati Cummings
Cleveland Indians win the
Red Stockings pennant and then the
1875 First World Series that year.
1876 Formation
catcher’s Many stories are told
mask worn
of the National about Satchel Paige. One
League
of the best may be about
the time he was getting
1885 First chest ready to pitch an inning.
protector worn
1887 First Instead of worrying about
use of the
three-strike rule 1889 First use the other team’s getting
of four-ball hits, Paige pulled in all his
walk
outfielders and had them
sit behind him. It was his
1901 Formation
of the American way of saying that no one
League 1903 First was going to hit a ball off
World Series
his pitches. No one did,
1921 First because he struck out the
Commissioner next three men!
of Baseball
1933 First
All-Star Game
1935

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One story is probably

true. When pitchers are not
playing, they wait in a sec-
tion of the ballpark called
the bullpen. When Paige
played for the St. Louis
Browns in 1951, he had his
very own rocking chair in
the bullpen.
Roberto Clemente was
the first Latino to enter
the Hall of Fame. He was
elected only months after
word came from the control
tower in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, that it had lost contact
with Clemente’s plane. The
plane crashed while he was
on a mercy mission to help
Nicaraguan earthquake vic-
tims. In 1970 major-league
baseball had begun present-
ing an award to honor pro-
fessional baseball players
who helped others. In 1973
that award was renamed the
Roberto Clemente Award.

12
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The Women of Baseball

There’s a special exhibit in the Hall of Fame called
Women in Baseball. It tells the story of a league that made
its own history, called the All American Girls Baseball
League. During World War II, many ball players served in
the armed forces. So many men had left baseball that it
seemed the season might be cancelled. The President of
the United States was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he
thought it was important to keep the game going. The peo-
ple on the home front had to have something to cheer for
during those dark days.

Women had played softball for years. Now the best

players were asked to form a league that would play base-
ball, using men’s baseball rules. The first season was in
1943, and by 1946 eight teams were playing 110 games a
season.

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The last game of the All American Girls Professional

Baseball League was played in 1954. In 1988 a plaque with
the names of 550 women of the league was placed in the
Hall of Fame.

Baseball Worldwide
Even those people who don’t follow baseball all season
know about the World Series. These important games are
held every fall. They alternate between the ballparks of the
two teams that are the National and American League
champions. The first team to win four games is the world
champion.

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There are some people, though, who would question

the title of world champion because, so far at least, the
entire baseball world does not take part in the World
Series.
We know that baseball began in the eastern part of the
United States in the 1800s. The game of rounders probably
crossed the ocean from England even earlier than that.
Since then, baseball has crossed many oceans, so that
today it is played all over the world. You’ll find baseball
very far away from Cooperstown, in such countries as
Japan, Italy, and South Africa. Closer to home, baseball is a
major professional sport in Canada and Latin America.

15
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Many players cross the oceans, too. Baseball players

from the United States might play a second season in
Japan, and Japanese and Korean players come to the
United States to play. Scouts look for players in countries
such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Venezuela.
There are two major-league teams in Canada.
Sometimes baseball is called the American “national
pastime,” which means it is so popular that Americans
spend a great deal of time playing and watching it. One
thing is certain, baseball is not just a national sport any-
more. This favorite game that officially began in the
United States has become an international sport.

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Think and Respond

1 Suppose you wanted to tell someone what you
learned about the history of baseball in this book.
How would the subtitles help you?
2 Why do you think baseball dropped the idea of
“soaking” runners?
3 What is the main idea of this book?
4 How do you think the author feels about the sport
of baseball?
5 What similarities can you find between Baseball:
From Soaking to Satchel and another selection
you’ve read? What differences do you find
between the two pieces?
6 Do you think teams from other countries should be
included in the World Series? Explain your
answer.

Design an Award Think about a baseball

player you admire. Then create an award you
believe that player deserves. Design and draw
a plaque that describes the player’s actions that
earned that award.

School-Home Connection Ask someone in

your family to tell you about a baseball game he
or she has never forgotten and why. Then share with
that person something about baseball history that you
learned from this book.