George Warren Hancock (1 March 1861 – 15 April 1936), at the time a reporter for Chicago Board of Trade, invented the game of softball in 1887. The first game was played, inside the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago.^[1] The first game of softball came from a football game between Yale and Harvard. When it was announced that Yale had won, Yale alumni, in excitement, threw a boxing glove at a Harvard supporter. The Harvard supporter playfully swung at it as spectators looked on in interest.

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.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]}

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.^[8] 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.^[9]