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Burns refutes the myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown and traces its roots instead to the earliest days of the nation — there are records of a game called "Base" played at Valley Forge.
Jun 30, 2022 · Baseball historians long ago debunked the popular myth about Abner Doubleday inventing the game of baseball. Yet the Doubleday legacy lives on in places like Cooperstown, New York, where...
Jan 13, 2016 · So what about Abner Doubleday’s “invention” of baseball? No serious historian of baseball believes Doubleday established the rules of baseball, but the myth of Doubleday still persists to some degree. In 1905 Abraham G. Mills was appointed by Albert G. Spalding to head a commission to determine when and where baseball began.
Mar 1, 2011 · John Thorn, baseball’s preeminent historian, examines the creation story of the game and finds it all to be a gigantic lie, not only the Doubleday legend, so long recognized with a wink and a nudge.
- Overview
- Who Was Abner Doubleday?
- What Are Baseball's Real Origins?
- HISTORY Vault: America the Story of Us
A Civil War hero named Abner Doubleday is often credited with developing the game in 1839, but the real history is older—and more complicated.
You may have heard that a young man named Abner Doubleday invented the game known as baseball in Cooperstown, New York, during the summer of 1839. Doubleday then went on to become a Civil War hero, while baseball became America’s beloved national pastime.
Not only is that story untrue, but it’s also not even in the ballpark. Baseball's real origins date back way further, to at least the 18th century.
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Doubleday, who was born to a prominent family in upstate New York in 1819, was still at West Point in 1839, and he never claimed to have anything to do with baseball. Instead, he served as a Union major general in the American Civil War and later became a lawyer and writer.
In 1907, 16 years after Doubleday's death, a special commission created by the sporting goods magnate and former major league player A.J. Spalding was set up to determine baseball's origins—namely if it was invented in the United States or derived from games in the United Kingdom. The commission used flimsy evidence—the claims of one man, mining engineer Abner Graves, who said he went to school with Doubleday—to come up with the origin story, which managed to stick.
As it turns out, the real history of baseball is a little more complicated than the Doubleday legend. References to games resembling baseball in the United States date back to the 18th century. Its most direct ancestors appear to be two English games: rounders (a children’s game brought to New England by the earliest colonists) and cricket.
By the time of the American Revolution, variations of such games were being played on schoolyards and college campuses across the country. They became even more popular in newly industrialized cities where men sought work in the mid-19th century.
In September 1845, a group of New York City men founded the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. One of them—volunteer firefighter and bank clerk Alexander Joy Cartwright—would codify a new set of rules that would form the basis for modern baseball, calling for a diamond-shaped infield, foul lines and the three-strike rule. He also abolished the dangerous practice of tagging runners by throwing balls at them.
Cartwright’s changes made the burgeoning pastime faster-paced and more challenging while clearly differentiating it from older games like cricket. In 1846, the Knickerbockers played the first official game of baseball against a team of cricket players, beginning a new, uniquely American tradition.
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Jul 1, 2020 · Contrary to a once-widely promoted theory that Abner Doubleday invented baseball (presumably in 1839), there is no evidence that he did other than the testimony of one man decades after the fact. Doubleday, in fact, never claimed that he did.
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You may have heard the charming tale of how war hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York. Unfortunately, that’s a bit of a myth. The true story of who invented baseball is a little more convoluted and a tad less romantic.
