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Who Invented Baseball: New York Knickerbockers And Alexander Cartwright
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Published: November 14, 2006
Who invented baseball? Was it Abner Doubleday? What about Alexander Cartwright? Didn't the ancient Egyptians have something to do with it? Perhaps it was little green men from Mars?
Other than the final offering, all of the above theories seem to have a place in the long-standing controversy swirling around who invented baseball.
Let's set the record straight. For centuries people have long been playing localized stick-and-ball games that all resemble modern baseball to varying degrees; such evidence dates all the way back to ancient Egypt. Thus, pinpointing a direct moment of evolution when baseball was born becomes a thorny task.
No consensus exists, but it seems unlikely that America would invent a game like baseball without knowledge of some earlier link. American patriots beware; in all likelihood, the game of baseball was a direct descendent of an English leisure activity. That's right: the Great American Pastime trickled down from the Great American Colonists.
The English game of rounders, dating back to the early 17th century, bears rules remarkably mirroring that of baseball. In fact, early literary mention of the game at one point refers to it as base-ball.
Town ball, the local version of the same colonial game, was a sport played primarily in Boston and other parts of New England during the early 19th century. Also owning rules resembling contemporary baseball, town ball is considered to be the American bridge between what was played in England and what would become known as baseball.
But who made that connection? Forget the colonial games; who invented baseball?
Abner Doubleday was perfectly fit to invent America's favorite pastime. Hailing from a small, rural town untouched by European influence, Doubleday was a West Point graduate whose grandfather was a Revolutionary War veteran. Doubleday was himself a Civil War hero.
Grounds for Doubleday inventing the game came from the Mills Commission in 1907. Led by ex-pitcher and sporting goods magnate A.G. Spalding, the Mills Commission set out to investigate the historical origins of the game. The deciding document that swayed history toward Doubleday proved to be a testimony written by Abner Graves – a boyhood friend of Doubleday's. None of Doubleday's written diaries or records ever corroborated this claim. A 1953 Congressional report agreed with this startling lack of primary evidence; it found the findings of the Mills Commission to be riddled with holes and inconsistencies with the overall conclusion.
If Doubleday did not invent baseball, then who did?
Alexander Joy Cartwright, an accounting clerk from New York City, is now firmly believed to be the one most responsible for finalizing this bridge and founding the game of baseball. Using similar games as a stepping stone to a game he envisioned, Cartwright enlisted the help of his friend Dr. Daniel L. Adams. In 1845 the two agreed upon baseball's first set of rules and organized their own team in the city.
The first recorded American baseball game happened in 1846 at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, N.J., where Cartwright's New York Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club. Despite his team's loss, Cartwright had already paved the way for the sport of baseball to thrive.
Still, the game's origins are so shrouded with legend that it is extremely difficult to eradicate the fiction and mythology behind the sport’s genesis. Give Cartwright his due, but perhaps the most reasonable conclusion in a discussion about who invented baseball is to believe the game was a blending together of many existing elements forming what we now know as baseball.
So the next time someone asks who invented baseball, just quietly say it was those little green men from Mars.
Sources:
Origins of Baseball. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 12 November 2006. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 13 November 2006. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_baseba ll.>
Post, Paul. Did Abner Doubleday invent baseball? The Saratogian. 03 April 2005. 12 November 2006.
<http://www.saratogian.com/site/news.cfm?news id=14276042&BRD=1169&PAG=461&dept_id=1 />Rounders. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 9 November 2006. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 13 November 2006. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounders.>
The History of Baseball – Alexander Cartwright. New York Times. 2006. About.com.. 12 November 2006. <http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/b lbaseball.htm.>
Town Ball: The Rules of the Massachusetts Game. Baseball Almanac. 2006. 13 November 2006. <http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ruletown.shtml .>
Williams, Lindsey. "Who Invented Baseball?." EzineArticles 01 September 2006. 12 November 2006 <http://ezinearticles.com/?Who-invented-basebal l?&id=287822>.
Other than the final offering, all of the above theories seem to have a place in the long-standing controversy swirling around who invented baseball.
Related Articles
Let's set the record straight. For centuries people have long been playing localized stick-and-ball games that all resemble modern baseball to varying degrees; such evidence dates all the way back to ancient Egypt. Thus, pinpointing a direct moment of evolution when baseball was born becomes a thorny task.
No consensus exists, but it seems unlikely that America would invent a game like baseball without knowledge of some earlier link. American patriots beware; in all likelihood, the game of baseball was a direct descendent of an English leisure activity. That's right: the Great American Pastime trickled down from the Great American Colonists.
The English game of rounders, dating back to the early 17th century, bears rules remarkably mirroring that of baseball. In fact, early literary mention of the game at one point refers to it as base-ball.
Town ball, the local version of the same colonial game, was a sport played primarily in Boston and other parts of New England during the early 19th century. Also owning rules resembling contemporary baseball, town ball is considered to be the American bridge between what was played in England and what would become known as baseball.
But who made that connection? Forget the colonial games; who invented baseball?
Abner Doubleday was perfectly fit to invent America's favorite pastime. Hailing from a small, rural town untouched by European influence, Doubleday was a West Point graduate whose grandfather was a Revolutionary War veteran. Doubleday was himself a Civil War hero.
Grounds for Doubleday inventing the game came from the Mills Commission in 1907. Led by ex-pitcher and sporting goods magnate A.G. Spalding, the Mills Commission set out to investigate the historical origins of the game. The deciding document that swayed history toward Doubleday proved to be a testimony written by Abner Graves – a boyhood friend of Doubleday's. None of Doubleday's written diaries or records ever corroborated this claim. A 1953 Congressional report agreed with this startling lack of primary evidence; it found the findings of the Mills Commission to be riddled with holes and inconsistencies with the overall conclusion.
If Doubleday did not invent baseball, then who did?
Alexander Joy Cartwright, an accounting clerk from New York City, is now firmly believed to be the one most responsible for finalizing this bridge and founding the game of baseball. Using similar games as a stepping stone to a game he envisioned, Cartwright enlisted the help of his friend Dr. Daniel L. Adams. In 1845 the two agreed upon baseball's first set of rules and organized their own team in the city.
The first recorded American baseball game happened in 1846 at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, N.J., where Cartwright's New York Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club. Despite his team's loss, Cartwright had already paved the way for the sport of baseball to thrive.
Still, the game's origins are so shrouded with legend that it is extremely difficult to eradicate the fiction and mythology behind the sport’s genesis. Give Cartwright his due, but perhaps the most reasonable conclusion in a discussion about who invented baseball is to believe the game was a blending together of many existing elements forming what we now know as baseball.
So the next time someone asks who invented baseball, just quietly say it was those little green men from Mars.
Sources:
Origins of Baseball. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 12 November 2006. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 13 November 2006. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_baseba ll.>
Post, Paul. Did Abner Doubleday invent baseball? The Saratogian. 03 April 2005. 12 November 2006.
<http://www.saratogian.com/site/news.cfm?news id=14276042&BRD=1169&PAG=461&dept_id=1 />Rounders. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 9 November 2006. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 13 November 2006. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounders.>
The History of Baseball – Alexander Cartwright. New York Times. 2006. About.com.. 12 November 2006. <http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/b lbaseball.htm.>
Town Ball: The Rules of the Massachusetts Game. Baseball Almanac. 2006. 13 November 2006. <http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ruletown.shtml .>
Williams, Lindsey. "Who Invented Baseball?." EzineArticles 01 September 2006. 12 November 2006 <http://ezinearticles.com/?Who-invented-basebal l?&id=287822>.
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