Professional baseball

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Professional baseball

Baseball
Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport of nine players each. The goal of baseball is to score run by hitting a thrown Baseball with a baseball bat and touching a series of four markers called base arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond. Players on one team take turns hitting against...
is a team sport which is played by several professional leagues throughout the world. In these leagues, and associated farm teams, players are selected for their talents and are paid to play for a specific team or club system.

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Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball is the highest level of play in American professional baseball. Specifically, Major League Baseball refers to the organization that operates the National League and the American League, by means of a joint organizational structure that has developed gradually between them since 1903 ....
in North America consists of the National League

National League

The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, or simply the National League , is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball, and the world's oldest existent professional team sports league....
(founded in 1876) and the American League

American League

The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, or simply the American League , is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada....
(1901).

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Encyclopedia

Modern professional leagues

North America

Major League Baseball

National League

American League

The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, or simply the American League , is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada....
(1901). Historically, teams in one league never played teams in the other until the World Series

World Series

The World Series is the championship series of Major League Baseball, the culmination of the sport's playoff each October. Since the Series takes place in mid-autumn, sportswriters many years ago dubbed the event the Fall Classic, a usage reflected in the logo for the 2008 World Series; it is also sometimes known as the October Clas...
, in which the champions of the two leagues played against each other; this changed in 1997 with the advent of interleague play

Interleague play

Interleague play is the term used to describe regular season Major League Baseball games played between teams in different leagues, introduced in ....
.

In addition to the major leagues, many North American cities and towns feature minor league

Minor league baseball

Minor league baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in North America that compete at levels below that of Major League Baseball....
teams. An organization officially styled Minor League Baseball

Minor league baseball

Minor league baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in North America that compete at levels below that of Major League Baseball....
, formerly the National Association of Professional Baseball, oversees nearly all minor league baseball in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
and Canada

Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
. The minor leagues are divided into classes AAA, AA, High A, Low A, Short-Season A, Advanced Rookie, and Rookie. These minor-league divisions are affiliated with major league teams, and serve to develop young players and rehabilitate injured major-leaguers. The Mexican League is a Minor League Baseball member league that operates without affiliations to little league teams which is similar to the many independent minor leagues in North America such as the Northern League

Northern League

Northern League may refer to:In baseball & cricket:* Northern League , an independent baseball in the United States and Canada* Northern League , the name of the five 'northern' baseball leagues...
, Golden League

Golden League

Golden League may refer to:*Golden Baseball League*?F Golden League ...
, Atlantic league

Atlantic League of Professional Baseball

The Atlantic League of Professional Baseball is a professional, Independent league baseball baseball organization located in the Northeastern United States and Mid-Atlantic States United States, especially the greater metropolitan areas of Baltimore, Maryland, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C....
, Frontier League

Frontier League

The Frontier League, based in Troy, Illinois, is a professional, Independent league baseball baseball organization located in the Midwestern United States and Western Pennsylvania....
as well as many others.

Japan

Japan has had professional baseball since the 1930s. Currently, it consists of two leagues, the Central League

Central League

The or is one of Japan's two major professional baseball leagues, the winner of which plays the Japan Series against the winner of the other league, the Pacific League....
and the Pacific League

Pacific League

The or is one of Japan's two major professional baseball leagues, the other being the Central League. It was founded as the Taiheiyo Baseball Union in 1949 with seven teams, the name changing to its current form in 1980....
, each with six teams.

Rest of the world

Professional leagues also exist in Puerto Rico, Philippines [Baseball Philippines], Venezuela

Venezuelan Professional Baseball League

The Venezuelan Professional Baseball League or Liga Venezolana de B?isbol Profesional is the highest level baseball league in Venezuela.The league houses eight teams in one single division which play 63 games from October to December in the elimination round....
, Korea

Korean Baseball Organization

The Korea Baseball Organization of South Korea is the country's professional baseball league. KBO was originally founded with six teams in 1982 and currently has eight teams....
, Taiwan

Chinese Professional Baseball League

The Chinese Professional Baseball League , or CPBL, is the top-tier professional baseball league in Taiwan. The league was established in 1989, and eventually absorbed the competing Taiwan Major League in 2003....
, Australia, the Dominican Republic

Professional baseball in the Dominican Republic

The Dominican Winter Baseball League is a winter baseball league consisting of six baseball teams spread across the Dominican Republic; it is the top domestic baseball league in that country....
, the Netherlands

Honkbal Hoofdklasse

Honkbal Hoofdklasse, Dutch language for Major League Baseball, is the highest level of professional baseball in the Baseball in the Netherlands....
, China

China Baseball League

The China Baseball League or Chinese Baseball League or CBL is a fledgling professional baseball league under the administration of Chinese Baseball Association, founded in 2002....
, Italy

Serie A1 (baseball)

Serie A1 is the highest level of professional baseball in Italy and is overseen by Italian Federation of Baseball and Softball. It is an 8 team league that plays a 42 game schedule from April to August....
(from 1948), Israel

Israel baseball league

The Israel Baseball League was a professional six-team baseball league in Israel. The first game was played on June 24, 2007. The 2008 season was cancelled due to financial difficulties....
(from 2007), Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages ? particularly Spanish language and Portuguese language, and variably French language ? are primarily spoken....
, and elsewhere in Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
.

Historic leagues

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African-American players were barred from playing the major leagues

Baseball color line

The baseball color line, sometimes called the "Gentlemen's agreement", was the policy, unwritten for nearly its entire duration, which racial segregation African American players and Latin players of African descent from organized baseball in the United States before 1947....
, though several did manage to play by claiming to be Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is a country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba , the island of Isla de la Juventud, and several adjacent small islands....
ns or Indians

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii....
. As a result, a number of parallel Negro Leagues

Negro league baseball

The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams predominantly made up of African Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the #Significant Negro leagues that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues"....
were formed. However, after Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first African-American Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Although not the first African-American professional baseball player in United States history, Robinson's 1947 Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers ended approximately 60 years of baseball Racial_segregation#United_States_...
began playing with the major-league Brooklyn Dodgers

Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers are a Major League Baseball team based in Los Angeles, USA. The team is in the Western Division of the National League. Established in 1883, the team originated in Brooklyn, New York, where it was known by a number of names before becoming the Brooklyn Dodgers circa 1911....
in 1947, the Negro Leagues gradually faded. The process of integration did not go entirely smoothly; there were some ugly incidents, including pitchers who would try to throw directly at an African-American player's head. Now, however, baseball is fully integrated, and there is little to no racial tension between teammates.

Between 1943 and 1954, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was a women's professional baseball league founded by Philip K. Wrigley which existed from 1943 to 1954....
fielded teams in several Midwestern towns.