Although baseball has been a pastime in the United States for over two hundred years, some of the first baseball teams were not the same that baseball fans see today on their television. The sport was generally identified as America's "national pastime" as early as the middle of the nineteenth century and the first official game was played in Hoboken, New Jersey between the New York Baseball Club and the Knickerbockers. The New York Baseball Club won the game. Teams of the past operated far before things like stadiums, nose-bleed seats and printed field padding surrounded the players.