The game what we know today developed during the early 1800s among children and amateur players. Today professional baseball draws a large number of spectators to ballparks each year and entertains more by means of radio and television broadcasts. It is clear that modern baseball developed in North America, but the exact origin of the game is hard to determine. Most scholars believe that baseball evolved from various similar games which 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 few people are supportive of this story. There is evidence that people played games involving a stick and a ball from the early days of civilization. Ancient cultures in Persia, Egypt, and Greece played stick-and-ball games for recreation and as part of certain ceremonies. Games of this type had spread throughout Europe by the middle ages and became popular in various kinds of forms. Europeans brought stick and ball games to the American colonies as early as the 1600s. Till the late 1700s, however, they were widely recognized as children’s games. Many kinds of stick and ball games had become popular in North America by the early 1800s. Most of these games originated in England. Many people in northeastern cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia played cricket which is considered as a traditional game of English aristocrats. But an English game called rounders, which was finally played in rural and urban communities throughout North America, most closely resembled modern baseball.