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 How Does That Work?
Who Really Invented Baseball?
 Major League Baseball celebrated the 100th anniversary of the World Series in 2003. The 2003 season also marked the 100th anniversary of the event that started the great debate over who invented baseball. In this story, we try to find out who invented baseball. There are two competing stories, and they involve two men who were born within a year of each other and died within a year of each other. In fact, both men had died by the time the great debate began. It was either bank clerk Alexander Cartwright or Civil War veteran Abner Doubleday, whose great-great-grand-nephew is the co-owner of the New York Mets.
How the Debate Began
The debate began when baseball writer/historian Henry Chadwick, who wrote baseballs first rule book in 1858, declared in Albert Spaldings Baseball Guide of 1903 that baseball had been derived from an English game called rounders.
Al Spalding was a former major league pitcher and manager for the Chicago Cubs (originally known as the Chicago White Stockings). Since he didnt want to accept that the game he loved could have come from the British, he commissioned a panel in 1904 to
determine the games origins. The panel, which included two U.S. senators and was chaired by a former National League president who probably never heard of Alexander Cartwright, also didnt want to accept the possibility that baseball might have British roots. Their choice as the inventor of baseball was a Civil War general named Abner
Doubleday. Doubleday, by the way, has the distinction of being the soldier who fired the first shot in defense for the Union during the Civil War, at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
The only evidence that the panel had in support of Doubleday was a letter they received from an elderly man who claimed that he was a boyhood friend of Doubledays. In his letter, he claimed that he saw Doubleday invent baseball in Cooperstown in 1839 when he organized two teams in a game which included bases and a ball. Most of the other research for this panel was done by an employee of the publishing company that Spalding owned.
There was plenty of evidence to suggest that Doubleday did not invent baseball, though. For example, Doubleday kept diaries and was a skilled public speaker, but there was never any mention of baseball in his writings or his speeches. You would think that a person who invents a new sport would mention it somewhere along the way.
Alexander Cartwright, on the other hand, established many of baseballs basic rules. He established that the distance between bases is to be 90 feet, that the game is to be played by nine-person teams for nine innings and that each team gets three outs per inning. In addition to adding the position of shortstop, he eliminated the rule that allowed the defense to get a runner out by throwing the ball at him! He also divided the field into fair and foul territory. Many believe that September of 1845 is when Cartwright invented the game at age 25, and his Knickerbocker baseball club played its first game the
following year in Hoboken, New Jersey.
To further complicate matters, there were claims that there was another Abner Doubleday. The game that the original Doubledays childhood friend had claimed to see him invent was actually a form of the British-based rounders game mentioned earlier, called town ball. Years later, a baseball with the cover nearly completely torn off was found in this mans attic; it became known as the Doubleday baseball, and it sits in the Hall of Fame.
Which Man Is in the Hall of Fame?
Where can you find most of this information about Cartwrights contributions to the rules?
On his Hall of Fame plaque, which also lists him as the Father of Modern Baseball. Cartwrights plaque doesnt claim that he invented the game, but he is in the Hall of Fame, while Doubleday is not.
So Who Did Invent Baseball Alexander Cartwright or Abner Doubleday?
You have to decide for yourself. Even though the evidence favors Cartwright over Doubleday, no one knows for sure because there wasnt enough proof at the time more than 150 years ago. Plus, there were accounts of baseball being played as early as the 1820s and 1830s in the Northeast, although those games may or may not have resembled todays game.
Personally, I believe that Al Spalding whose company, named Spalding, manufactures sports equipment established his panel for one purpose only to manufacture an American origin for baseball.
This story is part of the Invention Mysteries series by Author Paul
Niemann. For more information, please visit www.InventionMysteries.com.
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