The term diamond sports refers to recreational variants of baseball, a bat-and-ball sport. The major sport most related to baseball is the Olympic discipline of softball, with the two sports being administered internationally alongside Baseball5 by the World Baseball Softball Confederation.

Bat-and-ball games are field games played by two opposing teams. Action starts when the defending team throws a ball at a dedicated player of the attacking team, who tries to hit it with a bat and run between various safe areas in the field to score runs (points). The defending team can use the ball in various ways against the attacking team's players to force them off the field when they are not in safe zones, and thus prevent them from further scoring. The best known modern bat-and-ball games are cricket and baseball, with common roots in the 18th-century games played in England.