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A Brief History of Sports
DIR By: The Referee
Date: July 19, 2020, 3:51 pm
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A Brief History of Sports-
By Mary Bellis
The documented history of sports goes back at least 3,000 years.
In the beginning, sports often involved the preparation for war
or training as a hunter, which explains why so many early games
involved the throwing of spears, stakes, and rocks, and sparring
one-on-one with opponents.
With the first Olympic Games in 776 BC—which included events
such as foot and chariot races, wrestling, jumping, and discus
and javelin throwing—the Ancient Greeks introduced formal sports
to the world. The following by no means exhaustive list takes a
look at the beginnings and evolution of some of today's most
popular sporting pastimes.
1. Baseball: Alexander Cartwright (1820-1892) of New York
invented the baseball field as we know it in 1845. Cartwright
and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball
Club​ devised the first rules and regulations that became
the accepted standard for the modern game of baseball.
2. Basketball: The first formal rules for basketball were
devised in 1892. Initially, players dribbled a soccer ball up
and down a court of unspecified dimensions. Points were earned
by landing the ball in a peach basket. Iron hoops and a
hammock-style basket were introduced in 1893. Another decade
passed, however, before the innovation of open-ended nets put an
end to the practice of manually retrieving the ball from the
basket each time a goal was scored. The first shoes specifically
designed for the game, Converse All Stars, were introduced in
1917 and were soon made famous by legendary player Chuck Taylor
who became an early brand ambassador in the 1920s.
3: Football: American football is a descendant of rugby and
soccer. While Rutgers and Princeton played what was then billed
as the first college football game on November 6, 1869, the game
did not come into its own until 1879 with rules instituted by
Walter Camp, a player/coach at Yale University. On November 12,
1892, in a game that pitted the Allegheny Athletic Association
football team against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, AAA player
William (Pudge) Heffelfinger was paid $500 to
participate—marking him as the first-ever professional football
player.
4. Golf: The game of Golf is descended from a game that
originated in the Kingdom of Fife on the eastern coast of
Scotland in during the 15th century. While there were similar
games in other parts of Europe at the time that involved
swatting a rock with a stick around a predetermined course, the
game as we know it—including the innovation introduction of the
golf hole—was invented in Scotland.
During the mid-15th century, the games of golf and soccer
suffered something of a setback. As Scotland prepared to defend
its borders against English invasion, the rising popularity of
the games was thought to be responsible for men neglecting more
useful pursuits such as archery and swordsmanship. Golf and
soccer were officially banned in Scotland in 1457. The
prohibition was lifted in 1502 with the signing of the Treaty of
Glasgow.
In the 16th century, King Charles I popularized the golf in
England and Mary Queen of Scots, who was French, introduced the
game to her homeland. (In fact, it’s possible that term “caddie”
is derived from the name given to the French cadets who attended
Mary when she played).
The first reference to golf at Scotland's most famous golf
course, St Andrews, was in 1552. The clergy allowed public
access to the links the following year.
The golf course at Leith (near Edinburgh) was the first to
publish a set of rules for the game, and in 1682, was also the
site of the first international golf match during which a team
pairing the Duke of York and George Patterson playing for
Scotland beat two English noblemen.
In 1754, the St Andrews Society of Golfers was formed. Its
annual competition relied on the rules established at Leith.
Stroke play was introduced in 1759.
The first 18-hole course (now standard) was constructed in 1764.
In 1895, St Andrews inaugurated the first women's golf club in
the world.
5. Hockey: While the exact origin of ice hockey is unclear, the
game likely evolved from the centuries’ old Northern European
game of field hockey. The rules of modern ice hockey were
created by Canadian James Creighton. The first game was played
in Montreal, Canada 1875 at Victoria Skating Rink between two
nine-player teams, and featured a flat circular piece of wood
that served as a prototype for what would eventually evolve into
the modern hockey puck. Today, barring penalties, each team has
six players on the ice at a time, including the goalie, who
guards the net.
Lord Stanley of Preston, Governor-General of Canada, inaugurated
the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup—known today as the Stanley
Cup—in 1892, to recognize the best team in Canada each year. The
first award went to the Montreal Hockey Club in 1893. The awards
were later opened to both Canadian and American league teams.
6. Tennis: While there’s evidence to suggest that ancient
Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians played some version of a game that
resembled tennis, court tennis as we know it is descended from a
game enjoyed by 11th-century French monks called paume (meaning
"palm"). Paume was played on a court and the ball was struck
with the hand (hence the name). Paume evolved into jeu de paume
("game of the palm") in which racquets were used. By 1500,
racquets constructed of wooden frames and gut strings were in
play, as were balls made of cork and leather. When popular game
spread to England, it was played exclusively indoors, but rather
than volley the ball back and forth, players attempted to hit a
ball into a netted opening in the roof of the court. In 1873,
Englishman Major Walter Wingfield invented a game called
Sphairistikè (Greek for "playing ball") from which modern
outdoor tennis evolved.
7. Soccer: According to the Federation Internationale de
Football Association (FIFA), more than 240 million people around
the world play soccer on a regular basis. The history of the
game can be traced back more than 2,000 years to ancient China,
where it all began with a bunch of players kicking an
animal-hide ball around. While Greece, Rome, and areas of
Central America claim to been seminal to the development of the
game, soccer as we know it—or football as it’s called in most
places other than the United States—came to the fore in England
during the mid-19th Century, and it’s the English who can claim
credit for codifying the first uniform rules for the sport—which
made tripping opponents and touching the ball with the hands are
forbidden. (The penalty kick was introduced in 1891.)
8. Boxing: The earliest evidence of boxing can be traced back to
Egypt circa 3000 BC. Boxing as a sport was introduced to the
ancient Olympic Games in the 7th century BC, at which time,
boxers’ hands and forearms were bound with soft leather thongs
for protection. Romans later traded in leather thongs for
metal-studded gloves called cestus.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, boxing died out and did not
make a comeback until the 17th century. The English officially
organized amateur boxing in 1880, designating five weight
classes: Bantam, not exceeding 54 kilos (119 pounds); Feather,
not exceeding 57 kilos (126 pounds); Light, not exceeding 63.5
kilos (140 pounds); Middle, not exceeding 73 kilos (161 pounds);
and Heavy, any weight.
When boxing made its Olympic debut at the 1904 Games in St.
Louis, the USA was the only country entered, and as a result,
took home all the medals. Since its initial admittance in the
Olympic program, the sport has been included at all of the
subsequent Games, with the exception of the 1912 Stockholm
Games, since boxing was outlawed there. But Sweden wasn't the
only place where fisticuffs were illegal. For a good deal the
19th century, boxing was not considered a legitimate sport in
America. Bare-knuckle boxing was outlawed as a criminal activity
and boxing matches were regularly raided by the police.
Bellis, Mary. "A Brief History of Sports." ThoughtCo, Feb. 11,
2020, thoughtco.com/history-of-sports-1992447.
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