Baseball
National championship
- National League champions
Events
- 2 February — the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (NL) is founded at the Grand Central Hotel in New York City. It is the first pro sports league, North American style: closed and territorial. Major League Baseball recognises this event as the beginning of "all-time history".
- The venerable Mutuals and Athletics, holding the New York and Philadelphia franchises, are competitive failures on field and off. They cancel their final western trips and suffer expulsion, the last formerly amateur clubs in the majors.
Read more about this topic: 1876 In Sports
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“How, in one short century, has this ersatz sport so strangled the consciousness of the country in the grip of its flabby tentacles that the mention of women’s baseball gets no reaction other than blank amazement?”
—Darlene Mehrer, As quoted in Women in Baseball. Ch. 6, by Gai Ingham Berlage (1994)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)