On this day in history, March 7, 1857, baseball adopts nine players, nine innings as standard of competition

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The national pastime took the familiar format that baseball fans know today, with nine players per team and nine innings per game, on this day in history, March 7, 1857. 

The adoption of uniform rules marked the culmination of a national convention of baseball players held over several preceding weeks between 16 different amateur organizations on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The convention also secured 90 feet as the distance between bases; in earlier iterations of the game, distances were marked off by pacing with steps. 

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The same standards of baseball remain in place today, 166 years later. 

"The appearance of permanence, while everything in America seems to change every 20 years, is part of baseball's special appeal," John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball, told Fox News Digital. 

Lithographic print (by Frank O Small) shows American baseball player King Kelly (born Michael Joseph Kelly, 1857-1894) (foreground, in black) as he steals second base during a game in Boston, late 1880s or early 1890s.  (Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)

Thorn calls a trio of recently discovered documents from the meetings the "Magna Carta of Baseball, the Great Charter of Our Game."

In the landmark sports film "Field of Dreams," Terrence Mann, played by James Earl Jones, rhapsodized to Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball." 

"The appearance of permanence … is part of baseball's special appeal." — MLB historian John Thorn

"America has rolled by like an army of