George Hancock

Who is George Hancock?

George Hancock, at the time a reporter for Chicago Board of Trade, invented the game of softball in 1887. The first game was played indoors, inside the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago. Someone found a boxing glove and threw it and someone else hit it with a stick. George Hancock shouted, "Let's play ball", and tied the boxing glove into the shape of a ball. The men chalked a diamond shape onto the floor and broke a broom handle to serve as a bat. This is credited as the first softball game which was played on Thanksgiving Day November 24, 1887 after a Harvard-Yale football game that had been followed by telegraph.

Hancock's original game of indoor baseball quickly caught on in popularity, becoming international with the formation of a league in Toronto. That year, 1887, was also the premiere publication of the Indoor Baseball Guide. This was the first nationally distributed publication on the new game and it lasted a decade. In the spring of 1888, Hancock's game moved outdoors. It was played on a small diamond and called indoor-outdoor. Due to the sport's mass appeal, Hancock published his first set of indoor-outdoor rules in 1889.