THANKSGIVING 2014

First played in a boat house!
Game of softball born 
on Thanksgiving Day!

The first game of what would become the sport of softball
was played 127 years ago on Thanksgiving Day, 1887.

Wesley College Wolverine softball 2014

Photo of turkey by Don McCullough

This 1887 Thanksgiving Day "softball" game actually was a hastily configured baseball contest, which pitted Yale versus Harvard alumni inside Chicago's Farragut Boat Club. 

After 1889, the game was played 
indoors and outdoors with a ball the 
size of a small medicine ball with a 
bat two inches thick. By the 1930's, 
rules standardized the game to 
appear more like what's  played 
today.

The first softball was a tied boxing glove with a broom handle for a bat. There were no gloves, but alumnus George Hancock did write down that day's rules for posterity.

In 1889 the game moved outdoors. Minneapolis fireman Lewis Rober marked up the first field and set seven innings as the game's official contest. By this time, the ball had become a small medicine ball with a bat two inches thick.

The games – known variously as cabbage ball, mush ball, kitten ball, pumpkin ball, diamond ball, etc. --began to draw as many as 3,000 fans. 

In 1926, the Denver YMCA dubbed the sport “softball” for the first time. The name caught on.

The first travel team formed in 1931. It was a squad entirely of men, 75 years-of-age and older, taking the field in business suits, who called themselves Kids and Kubs.

First photo of a softball team, Chicago, 1897

 Newspaper reporter Leo Fischer and sporting goods salesman Michael Pauley brought the game to the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, where 55 teams participated before 350,000 fans who watched different games of men's and women's slow and fastpitch. Softball had arrived. The ASA – Amateur Softball Association – was founded that fall.
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