A cache in the Geocaching Olympics series.
Baseball is a sport played between two teams on a diamond-shaped field.
While there are world championships for both men and women in both sports, at the Olympic level, baseball has been a men's-only sport, and between both sports, there are differences in the number of players on each team, the size of the field, and in some difference in rules.
Baseball also differs from softball in that baseball is longer in duration, lasting for nine innings, as opposed to seven in softball.
The earliest record of the game of "baseball" being played was in Surrey, England, in 1749. The sport made it to the United States by the 1770s, and the first organised professional league—the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players—was founded in 1875. Baseball is considered "America's past-time".
In baseball, two teams of nine players aim to score the most runs by striking a ball and running round a sequence of bases to reach the home plate.
The teams rotate between batting and fielding, with each session called an inning, and switch when the fielding team gets three opposition players out.
The pitcher throws the ball from a mound toward the catcher which the batter attempts to hit and get around the bases to the home plate.
Baseball featured several times on the Olympic programme as a demonstration sport before being included as a medal event at the Olympic Games Barcelona 1992.
Cuba won the gold medal on the sport’s competitive debut and three times in total before it was removed from the programme following the Olympic Games Beijing 2008.
Baseball returned at Tokyo 2020, where it was combined with softball, to make the baseball softball event; Japan won the medal for both baseball and softball.
