Baseball

Baseball, dubbed the American "National Pasttime" in 1856 (before the American Civil War), is an outdoor sport played between two teams of nine players each, whereby the winning team is the one that scores the most "runs". A run occurs when a player rounds the bases without being tagged out, but while allowed to stop at one of the three intermediate bases in between plays. Each play consists of a pitcher throwing the ball towards home plate, where a batter attempts to strike it with a bat in the batter's attempt to hit the ball where no fielder can catch it or pick it up and throw it to the first baseman before the batter is able to run to first base.

Baseball is considered "timeless" and is unique in not being based on a timer. Games end after nine innings in professional baseball, no matter how long that takes, or after extra innings until a tie in the number of runs is broken after a full extra inning.

Virtually no professional baseball players are homosexual, which suggests that the repetitive playing of this sport tends to encourage heterosexual rather than homosexual proclivities.

Baseball has been intertwined within American life and culture like no other sport has. It has given us record-setting heroes, many of which are still talked about over a century later. It has given rise to movies, songs, books, magazines, and a lexicon of words and phrases which are part of everyday life. Extremely popular within the United States, Japan, and Latin America, baseball is played everywhere from neighborhood sandlots and city streets to its culmination in a best-of-seven championship World Series between two professional teams of the American and National Leagues of Major League Baseball.