Major League Baseball History

Major League Baseball’s huge popularity is a result of the stars and teams that provide the stories that pass each generation. From 1903, when the first World Series was played, the stories began to unfold from the lows of the “Shoeless” Joe Jackson scandal in the 1919 World Series and the steroids controversy of the 1990s until the present day to the highs of Babe Ruth’s called shot and Hank Aaron’s breaking of Babe Ruth’s home run record. Baseball’s popularity stems from the nationalism and isolationist ideals of the day. Americans loved baseball for many reasons, but one cannot forget that baseball is a sport that started in America and thus contributed to the prevailing ideal that American ideas and culture are superior to European and other cultures. Baseball was loved because it was fun to play, fun to watch, and because it was born in America. In fact, other sports developed in America for much the same reason. We still continue to love baseball, basketball, and football partially because the public perception of these sports is that they were born in America. Our interest in sports is very different than any other part of the world, where soccer plays an extremely important role in the cultures of most of the rest of the world. Whereas, here in America, we tend to fall in love with these American born sports before anything that was born out of a different culture. Of course, if you ask most basketball, baseball, or football fans why they adore their favorite sport so much they will rarely respond with such an answer because they are simply a result of the commercialization of these sports and are responding to the cultural norms that dictate a love for these sports as acceptable. This is not to say that their love is fake, but rather to say that if from another culture whose most popular sport is soccer, they would likely have fallen in love with soccer instead of the American sports the dominate American culture today. So, our love of baseball is indeed rooted in our love of American culture. The history of Major League Baseball is a major success story both culturally and economically because of the public perception of baseball as an American sport that demonstrated the ingenuity of our people in creating a sport that is so well loved from coast to coast.

There is a cloud of doubt over who threw the fastest pitch in MLB history partially because of the legendary status one can achieve by throwing so hard, and also because radar guns did not exist in the early days of the MLB. But, Mark Wohlers has been noted as throwing a 107 mph fastball in 2004. But there are some that claim that Nolan Ryan deserves credit for the fastest pitch and still others claim it was Steven Louis Dalkowski. But, a reasonable guess would estimate the fastest pitch at around 107mph and maybe a unit or two faster than that.