Baseball Reading Comprehension Passage

Lesson Snapshot

• Title: Baseball
• Genre: Nonfiction (informational passage)
• Subject: Physical Education / Social Studies (Sports history) / Reading (Informational Text)
• Primary Topic: How baseball works and how it spread
• Estimated Guided Reading Level (A–Z): S

What This Lesson Teaches Best
• Clear explanation of how a baseball game works (bases in a diamond, two teams, innings, outs, extra innings).
• How shared written rules helped organize the modern game (clubs writing rules; later standards like nine innings and a 90-foot base path).
• A brief timeline of key turning points using dates and evidence (1845 rules, 1869 first all-professional team, 1903 World Series, 1872 introduction in Japan).
• How baseball changed as it grew (teams traveling, paid players, big leagues forming, some leagues using timing rules).
• How baseball spread beyond its early American home (popularity across parts of the Americas and East Asia).

Learning Goals
• Identify key parts of a baseball game described in the passage (bases, teams, innings, outs, extra innings).
• Explain how keeping shared rules helped baseball become more organized.
• Describe the “safer idea” included in the 1845 rules.
• Describe what it meant for baseball to turn “professional,” using details from the text.
• Retell the passage’s key dates in order and explain what happened at each date.
• Describe how the passage shows baseball spreading to new places and continuing to change.

Key Vocabulary From the Text
• inning — part of the game when teams take turns playing.
• outs — times when a player is put out.
• standards — agreed-upon rules that many people follow.
• professional — paid to play as a job.
• leagues — organized groups of teams that play each other.