Wayback Wednesday: 1st official basketball game played Jan. 20, 1892

Jan. 20, 1892 is the day the sports world would be changed forever.

On this day, the first official basketball game was played in a YMCA with two peach baskets for nets, thanks to creator Dr. James Naismith, the Canadian head of the physical education department at the International Young Men's Christian Training School in Springfield, Mass.

"I showed them two peach baskets I'd nailed up at each end of the gym, and I told them the idea was to throw the ball into the opposing team’s peach basket," Naismith said in a Jan. 31, 1939 interview.

"The boys began tackling, kicking, and punching in the clinches. They ended up in a free-for-all in the middle of the gym floor."

Sounds like nothing much has changed.

Naismith then changed a rule in hopes of quelling the violence.

"The most important one was that there should be no running with the ball," he explained. "That stopped tackling and slugging. We tried out the game with those rules, and we didn't have one casualty."

Without Naismith, we would never get to watch our favorite players ball out of control: