Baseball
Baseball is a team sport played with a baseball and a bat. Each game features two teams of nine (sometimes ten) players each.
The objective of the game is to score more runs than the opposing team. A run is scored when a player from the offensive team successfully advances around all the bases in order—square cushions (30 × 30 cm) attached to the ground at the corners of a square with sides measuring 90 feet (27.4 meters)—and returns to home plate.
Each game is divided into periods called “innings,” during which each team plays once on offense and once on defense. When three players from the offensive team are put out, the teams switch roles (thus, each inning consists of six outs—three for each team). A standard game consists of nine innings.
If the score is tied at the end of the final inning, extra innings are played. A baseball game cannot end in a draw; additional innings continue until a winner is determined.
Interesting Fact
Toward the end of World War II, the United States developed the T13 Beano grenade, which was designed to match the shape, weight, and size of a standard baseball. Since almost all American soldiers had played baseball as children, it was assumed they could throw this grenade accurately without special training. The T13 was used during the Normandy operation, but its actual combat effectiveness remains unclear.
Olympic Games
Baseball made its (unofficial) Olympic debut in 1904 at the third modern Olympic Games. Overall, competitions were held at 12 Olympic Games, the last being in Beijing. Seventeen different national teams participated, with Cuba, Italy, and Japan taking part in all official tournaments. Baseball was more often included in the Olympic program as a demonstration sport than most other sports. However, at the 1992 Barcelona Games, medals were awarded in baseball for the first time.
At an IOC session in July 2005, baseball and softball were removed from the Olympic program, effective from the 2012 London Games. In 2016, baseball was reinstated, together with softball, as an Olympic discipline.
Russia
Baseball first appeared in Russia in the early 20th century. The country already had a traditional game similar in nature—lapta—which had been known in Russia since ancient times and shares similarities with baseball rules. In 1919, exhibition matches were held in several cities of Soviet Russia, but the sport did not develop further at that time.
In the early 1930s, immigrants from North America reintroduced baseball to the USSR. In 1932, the Council on Physical Culture and Sports decided to promote baseball, and in 1936 a manual on baseball rules was published. However, in July of that same year, the game was banned, and those associated with it were subjected to repression.
Baseball experienced a revival in the USSR in the second half of the 1980s. On August 13, 1987, the Baseball, Softball and Lapta Federation of the USSR was established, and a year later it joined the International Baseball Federation (IBAF).
