Softball, played for the first time ever as an official Olympic sport at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, was invented in 1887 inside Chicago's Farragut Boat Club. A group of Yale and Harvard alumni tied together the laces of a boxing glove to make a ball, marked off a diamond inside the club's gym, and invented what has grown into the number one team participant sport in the United States with more than 40 million people playing each summer. The game has been played under several names since its inception--"Indoor -Outdoor," "Kitten Ball," "Diamond Ball," and ultimately, "Softball." The game was organized on a national level in 1933 when thousands of local softball teams formed state organizations beneath a national umbrella. The formation of the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) standardized the rules, particularly the length of the bases and pitcher's box, and gave softball the foundation it needed to grow and develop throughout the United States.