Softball

Softball is a sport that is known throughout the United States and the world. Softball originated on Thanksgiving Day in Chicago in 1887. The game was actually said to have begun as an indoor game. Softball was started by a group of men who had gathered at a club to watch the Harvard vs. Yale football game. When the news came that Yale had defeated Harvard, 17-8, one Yale supporter, overcome with enthusiasm, picked up an old boxing glove and threw it at a nearby Harvard alumni, who promptly tried to hit it back with a stick. This gave George Hancock, a reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade, an idea. He suggested a game of indoor baseball. Naturally, Hancock's friends thought he was talking about playing a game outdoors, not indoors. Hancock, however, wasn't kidding. Using what was available, he tied together the laces of a boxing glove for a ball. Using a piece of chalk, Hancock marked off a home plate, bases and a pitcher's box inside the Farragut Boat Club gymnasium, with the two groups divided into two teams. The final score of the game was 41-40, but what was significant was that Hancock and his friends had invented a sport that would grow in popularity to where today more than 25 million people enjoy playing it in the United States and millions more internationally in more than 100 countries. Hancock set up rules and had his friends over to his house every Saturday night to play this new game. From there it spread all over Chicago.