Baseball is a game played with a hard ball and a bat between two teams of nine players each. Baseball has become the national pasttime of the United States, vying in popularity with the basketball and American football. It is played throughout the world by people of all ages. Baseball is one of the oldest and most popular spectator sports. The game as it is known today developed during the early 1800s among children and amateur players. Today, professional football attracts millions of spectators to ballparks each year and entains millions more through radio and television broadcasts.
Although it is clear that modern baseball developed in North America, the exact origin of the game is difficult to determine. Most scholars believe that baseball evolved from a variety of similar games that have been played for centuries. A popular legend claims that Abner Doubleday, a union officer during the American Civil War, invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. But there is little support for this story.