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Baseball is a competitive and recreational team sport played in North America, South America, the Carribean, Australia and East Asia. Baseball is one of the oldest and most popular spectator sports originating in the early 1800s. The sport is most popular in the United States of America with a rich history, large fan and player base and considered by most to the national sport of the country.

The Game of Baseball

Baseball is a bat and ball game played by two teams of nine players each on a diamond shaped field. Teams take turns to bat and field with each team trying to score more runs than the other. A player scores a run when he/she circles all bases around the diamond without being called out. A baseball game is divided into nine periods of play, called innings. After three outs, half of the inning is over and the teams switch sides. The team scoring the most runs by the end of the ninth inning or later wins the game.

Major League Baseball

In North America, the term Major League Baseball generally refers to the top-level caliber of baseball play. Leagues in other parts of the world, notably Japan and Latin America, may have equivalent levels of play (and increasingly draw from the same talent pools), but are typically not included when the term is used.

More specifically, "Major League Baseball" (MLB) refers to the two top leagues, the National League and the American League, and the joint organizational structure which has existed between them since 1901. MLB has a Commissioner, maintains joint umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing and television contracts for the two major leagues. This structure and the major league ownership of minor league baseball is possible because of a 1922 court decision in which baseball was ruled a local affair and not interstate commerce subject to antitrust law, an exemption which does not apply to other sports.

The Major League Baseball season runs from early April through late September. Players and teams prepare for the season in February and March in spring training. There are 30 teams in the two leagues, 14 in the American League (AL) and 16 in the National League (NL), and each league is split into three divisions: East, Central, and West. Games are mostly played against teams within the same league, and those are usually weighted towards teams in the same division. Games were played exclusively within each league (excepting the World Series) until interleague play was introduced in 1997.

The season is 162 games long. Until 1961, the season was 154 games long. In early July, around the midpoint in the season, there is a three day "All-Star break" during which the Major League Baseball All-Star Game takes place, an exhibition game featuring the best players from each league playing one another.

In October, at the end of the regular season, the postseason begins for the eight teams that make the playoffs. Until 1969, when there were no divisions, the team finishing with the best record in each league won the league's pennant and faced the other league's pennant winner in the fall classic, the World Series.