SABR 35 - The Rules of the (Sandlot) Game (Research Presentation)
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| By The SABR Office |
The Rules of the (Sandlot) Game
Gary Land
King I
Sandlot baseball developed a variety of informal rules, drawn from regular or formal baseball, which enabled players to adapt to a variety of situations. One type of rules provided for team games that involved fewer than 18 players and/or took into account the physical oddities of playing grounds, using such variations as "ghost runners" and "right field foul." A second type of game, such as work-up and 500, changed baseball from a team to an individual competition, enabling small numbers to play. These creative adaptations both resulted from and contributed to baseball's popularity through the first half of the 20th century.
GARY LAND is professor of history and chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, where he co-teaches a course in baseball literature with a Department of English colleague. He has edited Growing Up with Baseball: How We Loved and Played the Game (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska University Press, 2004) and written "God and the Diamond: The 'Born-Again' Baseball Autobiography," in Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, ed. Edward J. Reilly (Haworth Press, 2003), 239-48.
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| | Created On: 2005-07-11 |
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Page Link: http://www.sabr.org/sabr.cfm?a=cms,c,1322,17,0
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