Kickball (also known as soccer baseball in most of Canada and football rounders in the United Kingdom) is a team sport and league game, similar to baseball. Like baseball, it is a safe haven game in which one team tries to score by having its players return a ball from home base to the field and then circle the bases. Meanwhile, the other team tries to stop them by tagging them "out" with the ball before they can return to the home base. However, instead of hitting a small, hard ball with a bat, players kick an inflated rubber ball; this makes it more accessible to young children. As in baseball, teams alternate half-innings. The team with the most runs after a predefined number of innings wins.

Kickball is typically played among young, school-age children,[citation needed] both as a playground game and as part of physical education (PE). The lack of both specialized equipment and highly skill-based positions (like the pitcher) makes the game an accessible introduction to related sports such as baseball and softball. In recent decades, it has gained popularity among adults, and today many cities are home to one or more organized kickball leagues for adults.[1]

Kickball was likely invented around 1910 in the United States and began to spread from about the 1920s onward, mainly via PE classes in public schools. It became an especially popular recess sport on playgrounds across the country in the 1970s,[2] and is now played in various forms in countries around the world, such as Canada, England, Japan, South Korea, and South America.

Kickball, originally called "Kicking Baseball" was claimed to have been invented as early as 1910 by Dr. Emmett Dunn Angell in his noted book Play: Comprising Games for the Kindergarten, Playground, Schoolroom and College : How to Coach and Play Girls' Basket-ball, Etc (1910). His description and field illustration in this book is both the closest and earliest known precursor to the modern game of kickball. He also notes that "The game seems to afford equal enjoyment to the children and it gives a better understanding of the national game (Baseball), and at the same time affords them an exercise that is not too violent and is full of fun.".[3]

A later documented inventor claim, as early as 1917, was by Nicholas C Seuss, Supervisor of Cincinnati Park Playgrounds in Cincinnati, Ohio.[4] Seuss submitted his first documented overview of the game in The Playground Book, published in 1917. This description includes 12 rules and a field diagram, and refers to kickball as "Kick Base Ball" and "Kick Baseball".[5]

While kickball was long mostly considered a child's game in the United States and Canada, over time it has gained popularity among adults as a recreational sport. In 1998, the World Adult Kickball Association was founded, and since the late 1990s and early 2000s, many US and Canadian cities have created kickball leagues for adults, while additional governing bodies have also been formed.[12] Some US cities even have multiple such organized adult leagues.[2] Kickball is also offered as an intramural sport on many college campuses.[13][14]