Oral history can trace some version of baseball at least to 17th century England, if not earlier. Interestingly, however, the first documented reference to it on record is a prohibition of it being played. Apparently some kids playing baseball knocked out a window or two of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts meeting house, so a 1791 law forbade the sport within 80 yards of the building. Organized baseball began in the middle of the 1800s, around New York, and its rules were codified by a member of the New York Knickerbockers club. Popular as it was in the East, it took a little while longer for baseball fever to reach the West Coast.

On this day, February 22, in 1860, one of the earliest organized baseball games on record in the West, and the first one in San Francisco, took place between the San Francisco Eagles and the San Francisco Red Rovers.

Baseball was the great equalizing sport amongst Americans. The same year as the San Francisco game, two organized black teams played each other in New York, and nobody batted an eyelash. Baseball was popular in the military as well, with soldiers and officers putting aside rank and creed to play alongside each other.