Ryan James Howard (born November 19, 1979, in St. Louis, Missouri) is a baseball player who plays first base for the Philadelphia Phillies. Howard is six feet, four inches tall and 245 pounds. He bats and throws left-handed.

One of the game's most feared sluggers, Howard was the National League MVP. On June 27, 2007, Howard became the fastest player to reach 100 home runs in Major League Baseball history.

First base, or 1B, is the first of four stations on a baseball diamond which must be touched in succession by a baserunner in order to score a run for that player's team. A first baseman is the player on the team playing defense who fields the area nearest first base, and is responsible for the majority of plays made at that base. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the first baseman is assigned the number 3.

Also called 1b, first base, first sacker or cornerman, the first baseman is ideally a tall player with good flexibility and quick reflexes. Flexibility is needed because the first baseman receives throws from the other infielders, the catcher and the pitcher after they have fielded ground balls. In order for the runner to be called out, the first baseman must be able to stretch towards the throw and catch it before the runner reaches first base. First base is often referred to as "the other hot corner" — the "hot corner" being third base — and therefore, like the third baseman, he must have quick reflexes to field the hardest hit balls down the foul line, mainly by left-handed pull hitters and good right-handed hitters that possess the ability to hit to the opposite field. Such prominent examples of first-baseman include, Tony Perez, Lou Gehrig,Don Mattingly, and Albert Pujols.

The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League Baseball team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The Phillies are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League. From to the present, the Phillies have played their home games at Citizens Bank Park in the South Philadelphia section of the city.

The Phillies have won one World Series championship (against Kansas City in ) and five National League pennants in their history, but the franchise has also experienced long periods of struggle. The age of the team combined with its history of adversity has earned them the distinction of having lost the most games of any team in the history of Major League Baseball. The Phillies are also known as a league leader in environmental protection.

Major League Baseball (MLB) is the highest level of play in North American professional baseball. It is composed of 30 teams. More specifically, Major League Baseball refers to the organization that operates the National League and the American League, by means of a joint organizational structure that has existed between them since 1903. Each season consists of 162 games, which generally begins on the first Sunday in April and ends on the first Sunday in October, with the playoffs played in October and sometimes in early November. The same rules and regulations are played between the two leagues with one exception: the American League operates under the Designated Hitter Rule, while the National League does not. Utilization of the DH Rule in Interleague play, the All-Star and World Series games are determined by the home team's league rules. In 2000, two leagues were officially disbanded as separate legal entities with all rights and functions consolidated in the commissioner's office. MLB effectively operates as a single league and as such it constitutes one of the major professional sports leagues of North America.

MLB is controlled by the Major League Baseball Constitution that has undergone several incarnations since 1876 with the most recent revisions being made in 2005. Under the direction of Commissioner of Baseball (currently Bud Selig), Major League Baseball hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, and television contracts. As is the case for most North American sports leagues, the "closed shop" aspect of MLB effectively prevents the yearly promotion and relegation of teams into and out of the Major League by virtue of their performance. Private enterprises is mostly funded by Major league Baseball, but also partially funded directly by public taxes. Major League Baseball maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of minor league baseball. This is due in large part to a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, which held that baseball is not interstate commerce and therefore not subject to federal antitrust law. This ruling has been weakened only slightly in subsequent years.

The production/multimedia wing of MLB is New York-based MLB Advanced Media, which oversees MLB.com and all 30 of the individual teams' websites. Its charter states that MLB Advanced Media holds editorial independence from the League itself, but it is indeed under the same ownership group and revenue-sharing plan. MLB Productions is a similarly-structured wing of the league, focusing on video and traditional broadcast media.