baseball

baseball

1. a team game with nine players on each side, played on a field with four bases connected to form a diamond. The object is to score runs by batting the ball and running round the bases

2. the hard rawhide-covered ball used in this game
www.majorleaguebaseball.com
www.baseball-links.com

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

baseball

[′bās‚bȯl]

(plasma physics)

A machine used in controlled fusion research to confine a plasma; consists of a linear magnetic bottle sealed by magnetic mirrors at both ends, and has current-carrying structures, which resemble the seams of a baseball in shape, to stabilize the plasma.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

baseball

traditional American sport and pastime. [Am. Sports: EB, I: 850]

See: America

Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Baseball

 

a sport using a ball and a bat that is reminiscent of the Russian game lapta. It appeared in the USA during the early 1800’s. The first official match was played in 1820 in New York. In 1845 the first professional club was formed.

Baseball is popular in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Japan. The game is played by two teams of nine members on an area in the shape of a diamond with 90 ft (27.4 m) sides and “bases” (“homes”) at each corner. The players of the offensive team stand in turn at a base. By means of a bat they return a ball that is thrown to them, and while it is in flight they run from one base to another. The players of the defensive team attempt to catch the ball and “tag” the running opponent with it. When this has been done three times, the teams change places. The team having the greatest number of points (the largest number of runs around all the bases to their “home”) after nine such sessions is the winner. Also widespread in the USA, Japan, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and elsewhere is softball, a simpler version of baseball that can be played indoors and on small fields; also popular are such varieties of baseball as cricket in England, pesäpallo in Finland, and o’ma in Rumania.

S. V. GLIAZER

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.