Today in History—April 22: When the National League First “Played Ball”

Written by

Tracy Grant

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

Most baseball fans fall into one of two camps: National League or American League.

It defines who you root for in the World Series. Before 2022 it probably defined how you felt about the dreaded “designated hitter rule.” (See what I did there? I indicated which camp I’m in.*)

And thanks to this game played 150 years ago, we know where baseball leagues began.

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On April 22, 1876, the first National League baseball game was played between teams you probably don’t recognize: The Boston Red Caps (also called the Red Stockings and referred to in the newspaper the next day as the “Bostons”) beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 6–5. The game was played in Philadelphia, in front of 3,000 fans.

Earlier in the year the National League had been formed from the remnants of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), which had such a weak infrastructure that gambling, drunkenness, and corruption were rampant. The new league, cofounded by Illinois businessman and Chicago team owner William Hulbert and featuring some holdover teams from the NAPBBP, included:

Fun Fact

In 1876 a batter needed nine balls to be walked.

Thus the National League was born. And in some ways—even in its earliest days—it resembled the leagues we know today, requiring owners to invest and imposing disciplinary rules for misbehavior. Yet the league would still face growing pains and competition from other upstart groupings of teams through the first two decades of its existence. Only the American League, formed in 1900, would endure.

By 1903 the National League champion was playing the American League champion in a contest that was initially called the World’s Championship Games—better known today as the World Series. The rest, as they say, truly is history.

* The designated hitter rule was an American League-only convention starting in 1973 that allowed teams to choose (designate) a hitter to bat for the pitcher. It was a source of controversy among baseball fans—with purists believing that pitchers should be forced to bat—until the so-called DH rule was adopted by the National League temporarily for the COVID-19 season of 2020 and then officially with the 2022 season.

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