The first night game in Major League Baseball history is played in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the Cincinnati Reds beating the Philadelphia Phillies 2–1 at Crosley Field.

A night game, also called a nighter, is a sporting event that takes place, completely or partially, after the local sunset. Depending on the sport, this can be done either with floodlights or with the usual low-light conditions. The term "night game" is typically used only in reference to sports traditionally held outdoors. Although indoor sporting events often take place after local sunset, these events are artificially lighted regardless of the time of day they take place.

Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league in North America composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and is considered the premier professional baseball league in the world. Each team plays 162 games per season, with Opening Day held during the last week of March. Six teams in each league then advance to a four-round postseason tournament in October, culminating in the World Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions first played in 1903. MLB is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan.

Cincinnati is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line with Kentucky. The third-most populous city in Ohio with a population of 309,317 at the 2020 census, Cincinnati serves as the economic and cultural hub of the tri-state Cincinnati metropolitan area, Ohio's most populous metropolitan area and the nation's 30th-largest at over 2.3 million residents.

The Cincinnati Reds are an American professional baseball team based in Cincinnati. The Reds compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central Division. They were a charter member of the American Association in 1881 before joining the NL in 1890.