Noun

1. A sport common in North America, the Caribbean, and Japan, in which the object is to strike a ball so that one of a nine-person team can run counter-clockwise among four bases, resulting in the scoring of a run. The team with the most runs after termination of play, usually nine innings, wins.
   • 1797-1798, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

     It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books.

2. The ball used to play the sport of baseball.
3. A variant of poker in which cards with baseball-related values have special significance.