Games with Bats & Balls: Cricket, Baseball, and Softball

While the exact origin of ice hockey is unclear, the game likely evolved from the centuries’ old Northern European game of field hockey. The rules of modern ice hockey were created by Canadian James Creighton. The first game was played in Montreal, Canada 1875 at Victoria Skating Rink between two nine-player teams, and featured a flat circular piece of wood that served as a prototype for what would eventually evolve into the modern hockey puck. Today, barring penalties, each team has six players on the ice at a time, including the goalie, who guards the net.

Lord Stanley of Preston, Governor-General of Canada, inaugurated the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup—known today as the Stanley Cup—in 1892, to recognize the best team in Canada each year. The first award went to the Montreal Hockey Club in 1893. The awards were later opened to both Canadian and American league teams.

Football: American football is a descendant of rugby and soccer. While Rutgers and Princeton played what was then billed as the first college football game on November 6, 1869, the game did not come into its own until 1879 with rules instituted by Walter Camp, a player/coach at Yale University. On November 12, 1892, in a game that pitted the Allegheny Athletic Association football team against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, AAA player William (Pudge) Heffelfinger was paid $500 to participate—marking him as the first-ever professional football player.

Rugby: The origins of rugby can be traced back over 2000 years to a Roman game called harpastum (from the Greek for “seize”). Unlike soccer, in which the ball was propelled by means of the foot, in this game, it was also carried in the hands. The game made its modern debut in 1749 at a newly built school in Rugby in Warwickshire, England, which boasted “every accommodation that could be required for the exercise of young gentlemen.” The eight-acre plot on which the game evolved was known as "The Close." Between 1749 and 1823, rugby had few rules and the ball was kicked rather than carried to move it forward. Games could go on for five days and often more than 200 students participated. In 1823, player William Webb Ellis was the first to took pick up the ball and run with it. This was the beginning of the modern version of the sport as it’s played today.

Softball: In 1887, George Hancock, a reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade, invented softball as a form of indoor baseball that was first played on a cold winter day inside the warm Farragut Boat Club

Baseball: Alexander Cartwright (1820-1892) of New York invented the baseball field as we know it in 1845. Cartwright and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club​ devised the first rules and regulations that became the accepted standard for the modern game of baseball.

Cricket: The game of cricket originated in south-east England sometime in the late 16th century. By the 18th century, it had become the national sport, making inroads globally in the 19th and 20th centuries. The prototype for the modern cricket bat featuring a willow blade and a cane handle layered with strips of rubber, and then tied with twine and covered with another layer of rubber to form a grip was invented around 1853. (The longest recorded game of cricket took place in 1939 and spanned a period of nine days.)