The origins of modern baseball vary, with some believing it originated in 15th century English cricket, but most believe it began in the United States.

1839 saw the first baseball game hosted by Abner Doubleday, an officer in the United States Army, in Cooperstown, New York.

1845 saw the formation of the world's first baseball club in New York, with Alexander Cartwright setting the specifications for the official playing field and establishing the finer rules of the game.

In 1869 the world's first professional baseball team is formed in the USA.

1910 then President William Howard Taft officially approves baseball as the "national game" of the USA.

The game is divided into offensive and defensive sides.

Baseball is played on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball.

As with all ball games, offense is about scoring runs, and victory goes to the side that scores more runs.

In an inning, for example, the top half of the inning is the visiting team attacking and the home team defending.

In the second half of the inning, the home team is on the attack and the visitors are defending.

When attacking, only one player is on the field (the batter) and the other is in the batter's box waiting to come on while the others wait in the players' box.

On defence, there are nine players on the field, one to throw the ball (pitcher), one to catch the ball (catcher) and another seven scattered throughout the field to defend (fielder).

How does the offensive side score?

There are four bases on the field, which are like bunkers for the defence, in a large diamond shape, with the pitcher standing in the middle (the mound).

The batter stands at the first base (home plate) and tries to hit the ball thrown by the pitcher with his bat as far away as possible.

So far that the defence can't reach it at all, and then runs counter-clockwise to get the other three bases (first base, second base and third base) in order (runner) and return to the starting place (home plate).

If you can't hit that far or run that far, it's okay to take the next base and wait for your teammate to hit the ball successfully and continue to attack the next base until you score.

The Major League Baseball (MLB), the highest level of professional baseball in North America, was founded in 1903 by the National League and the American League.

And is a 30-team league with 29 American teams and one Canadian team (the Toronto Blue Jays).

The Toronto Blue Jays, It is one of the four major professional sports leagues in North America, along with the NBA (basketball league), NHL (ice hockey league) and NFL (football league).

The second is the Nippon Professional Baseball League.

When you think of Nippon Professional Baseball, the first thing you think of is the two leagues under the NPB - the Central League and the Pacific League.

Each of the two leagues has six teams, and like MLB, the regular season of Nippon Professional Baseball is played mainly under their respective leagues.

However, the NPB has slightly fewer regular season games than the MLB, at 144 games a season.

Twenty-four of these games are played between late May and late June each year in an inter-league exchange between teams in the Central League and the Yankee League.