The Baseball Notables Project

Profile manager: David Randall [send private message]

THE BASEBALL NOTABLES PROJECT

This sub-project is part of the larger Sports Notables Project. Please visit the main project page for details on the goals and objectives of this project.

Objectives

The main objectives of this project are to...

1) Create profiles for the world's most notable baseball players and other baseball figures.

2) Write a fun and accurate biography for each profile.

3) Source each profile as thoroughly as possible.

4) Connect each profile to the Big Tree.

Please see the COMPLETED PROFILE CHECKLIST for guidelines on what The Notables Project considers to be an essentially completed profile.

Membership

If you'd like to join us on this project, please post a comment here on this page or in G2G using the project tag Notables, send a private message to the Notables Project, or simply hop in and start contributing as you see fit!

About Baseball

The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. The first recorded game of "Bass-Ball" took place just five years later in 1749, in Surrey, England, and featured the Prince of Wales as a player.

The first officially recorded baseball game in North America took place 4 Jun 1838, in Beachville, Ontario, Canada, while the first officially recorded baseball game in the United States took place eight years later on 19 Jun 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey. In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area, and by 1856, local journals were referring to baseball as the "national pastime."

In 1876, the National League (NL) was founded, and in 1893, its first successful counterpart, the American League (AL), was formed. The two leagues cemented their cooperation in 1903, establishing Major League Baseball (MLB), the oldest major professional sports league in the world. In 1920, the first significant Negro league, the Negro National League, was founded. It would operate until 1931. Today, MLB comprises 30 teams, divided equally between the National League and the American League, with 29 in the United States and one in Canada.

Professional baseball leagues can now also be found in countries around the World. Latin America is dominated by four major leagues, including the Dominican Professional Baseball League (1955), Mexican Pacific League, Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League, and Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (1946). The most successful European professional leagues include the Dutch league and the Italian league (1948). In Asia, South Korea (1982), Taiwan (1990) and China (2003) all have professional leagues. Women's baseball is also played on an organized amateur basis in numerous countries.

In the United States, the World Series, which pits the two major league champions against each other, was inaugurated in the fall of 1893. Internationally, the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) organizes a number of competitions between clubs from different countries, including the World Baseball Classic. Baseball has also appeared as an Olympic sport, off and on since 1904.

Some Top Baseball Notables

Name	Born	Died	Position	Nation	Photo	Status
Ty Cobb	1886	1961	Baseball Player	USA		Connected
Joe McCarthy	1887	1978	Baseball Manager	USA		Connected
Babe Ruth	1895	1948	Baseball Player	USA		Connected
Jackie Robinson	1919	1972	Baseball Player	USA		Connected
Doris Sams	1927	1912	Baseball Player	USA		Connected
Vin Scully	1927	2022	Baseball Announcer	USA		Connected

Active Baseball Mini-Projects

WikiTree Baseball Category

Baseball Legends Challenge (Jul 2023)

The First World Series - 1903

If you'd like to initiate a mini-project, please drop us a note and we can get you started.