Like apple pie, baseball's origins date back to England and were brought across the Atlantic Ocean - and "Americanized" -- by early settlers.

Baseball is believed to be a spinoff of an English game known as "rounders" that was played in various forms in early American towns and cities along the Eastern seaboard. Baseball became an organized sport in 1842 after Alexander Cartwright, a Manhattan bookseller and volunteer fireman, formed The Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, named after his fire engine company, according to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's "History of Baseball" at www.rpi.edu.

Cartwright developed game rules similar to those used today, which allowed for consistency and made the game more interesting for adults to play. Clubs quickly formed throughout the area and the first recorded game was played in 1846 when the Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club at a field in Hoboken, N.J. The first organized baseball league, the National Association of Base Ball Players, was formed in 1858. By the 1860s, it was being called "the national pastime."

Cartwright left New York in 1849 to mine for gold in California. The man who became known as the father of baseball introduced the game in his travels across the United States. Cartwright soon settled his family in Hawaii where he created leagues that became the models for those in the continental United States. In 1953, the U.S. Congress officially credited him with inventing the modern game of baseball.

The modern American tradition of having the U.S. president throw the ceremonial opening day pitch began on April 19, 1909, when famed Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson was sidelined to allow President William Howard Taft to throw the starting pitch, according to www.baseball-almanac.com.

Baseball's musical heritage, of course, dates back more than 100 years ago, when "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was first copyrighted. It has been ranked in survey polls as one of the "Top 10" songs of the 20th century and is second only to "Happy Birthday" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the most easily recognized songs in America.