Why Are Baseball Games Nine Innings Long?
By
Hannah Keyser
Hannah Keyser is no mere culinary arts expert, although we’ve read that she is an avid foodie, but sadly, also one of those people who doesn’t like hot dogs. How that could happen to a girl from Brooklyn, we have no idea. All is forgiven, however, for the fact that she also happens to be a deep baseball history fan and a very clear and excellent writer, one who is currently plying her knowledge and skills as such at a catchy-named site called Mental-Floss.com.
Keyser studied Ancient History at the University of Pennsylvania and is reportedly literate in hieroglyphic composition. Hannah lives in Brooklyn with two cats —Gatsby and Kilgore Trout— and one boyfriend. I am perfectly happy and in love with Norma, my wife of thirty years, but I do have to wonder. – Where was your type of female fifty years ago, Hannah, when I still had not given up hope of finding a girl who knew baseball talk beyond the old “don’t even think of trying to get to first base with me” that all the ladies seem to know really well back in the day – at least, in my experience.
In the following link to her Mental-Floss.Com column, Hannah Keyser provides us with a plausible, considered, and documentable explanation of why baseball games are scheduled, even today, as nine active fielder matches and nine inning affairs. We almost got stuck with a seven man/seven inning formula preferred by one strong faction of the famous Knickerbocker Club, but a rebellion against that format, led by Louis F. Wadsworth, got that proposition extended to “nine fielders and nine innings”.
Read Hannah Keyser’s version for a much better detailed description of what happened to dress baseball to the “nines”:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/62877/why-are-baseball-games-nine-innings-long
Regards, Bill McCurdy, The Pecan Park Eagle
Thanks again to researcher Darrell Pittman for his suggestion of this topic.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
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