Softball Research Paper

Shelbi Smith

D. Griffin

ENG 102-01

Research Paper

From The First Pitch

Everything in this world has a history behind it, whether it is family, religion, businesses, or even sports. It is crazy how one little thing can turn into something big and be carried on for years. Who would think football game, a boxing glove, and a boat club could start up a new sport called softball (“SportsKnowHow.com...”)? Softball is played all around the world, approximate over forty million Americans play at least one softball game a year (“History of Softball.”). Softball has multiple leagues that people can play in; they have leagues for small children all the way up to leagues for people who are over the age of sixty-five. Softball has changed over the years from when it was first originated, to its first real game of the sport and even to how it is played today.

On Thanksgiving Day 1887, a man of the name George Hancock was with a group of Yale and Harvard alumni, who all gathered together at the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago to watch the Yale vs. Harvard football game. They all waited eagerly for the telegrams from the Polo Grounds in New York for updates on the game. Soon after the game was over, one of the men who rooted for Yale jokingly threw a boxing glove at the Harvard grads and one of the Harvard fans defended the boxing glove what seemed to be a broom stick. Which when this happened, it just started a game of indoor baseball. George Hancock got the boxing glove and folded it together with laces to make a soft ball out of it. He then chalked out a small baseball diamond in the boat club. After everything was set up, the game started and they played for an hour and the game ended up being forty to forty-one. Once the game was over, he decided that this game had to stay around because people enjoyed playing it and it was fun. When he came down to that conclusion, he wrote downs rules for the game, and created an over-sized soft ball that was about...