Union General Abner Doubleday invented baseball, right? No. But since he was named the father of baseball by a commission lead by the fourth commissioner of the National League he must have done a lot to popularize the sport, right? Also no. In fact, he had absolutely nothing the do with the game and never mentioned it in the mountains of writings he left behind after his death. So where did the story that Doubleday invented baseball come from?
Sports equipment magnate Albert Spalding, a former major league pitcher who would be elected to the hall of fame in 1939, published the most widely read baseball periodical in the late 19th and early 20th century, and when it was suggested, by this own editor, that the game of baseball evolved from the British bat and ball sports cricket and rounders he was outraged and formed a commission to investigate the origins of baseball. Spalding said that whatever the commission found, he would support. He then appointed a commission of like-minded individuals to make sure they came to the correct conclusion.
In 1905, the Mills Commission - lead by and named after AG Mills, the fourth president of the National League - put of a nation-wide call for any and everyone to send in any information they had about the creation of baseball.
The idea was for the commission to spend two years gathering evidence about the history of baseball, but what actually happened was they received hundreds of letters from dozens and dozens of former ball players who shared their memories of the game but not actual evidence.
One of the letters came from an unreliable source, a man named Abner Graves, who loved to see his name in print and he claimed that he was with Abner Doubleday in 1839 in Cooperstown, NY when the 20 year old Doubleday invented the baseball. There is a lot of evidence that point to this story being false - particularly the fact that Doubleday was a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point in 1839, not in Cooperstown. Graves spent the last years of his life in an asylum after being found mentally incompetent to stand trial after fatally shooting his much younger second wife.
In 1907, Spalding pressured the Mills Commission to release its findings so they used the admittedly EXTREAMLY circumstantial evidence to name Union Major General Abner Doubleday the inventor of baseball. It probably helped that AG Mills and Doubleday had been close friends for the last 30 years of Doubleday's life - so much so that Mills organized Doubleday's funeral when he died about 15 years before the commission report's findings.
From the very beginning there was doubt in some circles that Doubleday actually created baseball, but the story gained traction in other circles. However, by in large, the commission report was filed away in a desk drawer and mostly forgotten until the 1930s when Cooperstown, NY resident and developer Stephen C. Clark rediscovered the story and approached Major League Baseball about establishing a Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown that would open in 1939, the supposed 100th anniversary of baseball itself.
The first commission of Major League Baseball, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, went all in promoting baseball's centennial and the opening of the museum, and he was highlighting Doubleday's role in everything when he received a received a letter from Bruce Cartwright - the grandson of Alexander Cartwright, Jr. The elder Cartwright had been a charter member of the New York Knickerbocker Club and the one who had actually come up with the diamond design of the baseball field, the player positions, and the rules of the game in 1845 - but too much money and prestige had been spent on the 1839 date to change things now. But what would happen when Cartwright took his grandfather's story to the press - well, he died just after sending Landis the letter so the commissioner didn't have to worry about it.
Cartwright did get a plaque in the museum when it opened and he is now considered the Father of Modern Baseball, but old stories die hard and the Abner Doubleday myth persists today.
The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum opened on June 12, 1939 but the first Hall of Fame class was elected in 1936 and included: Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, and Babe Ruth.
In 1920, a baseball field opened in downtown Cooperstown. The field expanded over time and got the name Doubleday Field. Seating nearly 10,000 fans, Major League Baseball played a regular season game, called the Hall of Fame game from 1940 - 2008. The Hall of Fame game was replaced with the Hall of Fame classic, an exhibition game of hall of famers and other former major league players.
Abner Doubleday may be the only Ghost of Arlington with a mascot caricature of himself. In 1996, Auburn, NY, the city where Doubleday grew up, renamed its minor league baseball team after its famous son and named the mascot Abner.
No comments:
Post a Comment