Baseball History

Baseball History

Deeply embedded in the folklore of American sports is the story of baseball's supposed invention by a young West Point cadet, Abner Doubleday, in the summer of 1839 at the village of Cooperstown, New York. Because of the numerous types of baseball, or rather games similar to it, the origin of the game has been disputed for decades by sports historians all over the world. In 1839, in Cooperstown, New York, Doubleday supposedly started the great game of baseball. Doubleday, also a famous Union general in the Civil War, was said to be the inventor of baseball by Abner Graves, an elderly miner from New York. In response to the question of where baseball first originated, major league owners summoned a committee in 1907. Abner Graves stepped before the committee and gave his testimony. In Graves' account of "the first game," the Otsego Academy and Cooperstown's Green's Select School played against one another in 1839. Committeeman Albert G. Spalding, the founder of Spalding's Sporting Goods, favored Graves' declaration and convinced the other committeemen that Graves' account was true. As a result, in 1939, the committee and the State of New York named Cooperstown and Abner Doubleday as the birthplace and inventor of baseball, respectively. Today, many baseball historians still doubt the testimony of Abner Graves. Historians say the story came from the creative memory of one very old man and was spread by a superpatriotic sporting goods manufacturer, determined to prove that baseball was a wholly American invention. According to Doubleday's diary, he was not playing baseball in Cooperstown, but attending school at West Point on that day in 1839. Also, historians have found that nowhere in Doubleday's diary has he ever "claimed to have had anything to do with baseball, and may never have even seen a game." This leads many to the conclusion that Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball, but it is still a disputed and provocative issue. Sports historians have presented impressive evidence showing that American baseball, far from being an independent invention, evolved out of various ball-and-stick games that had been played in many areas of the world since the beginnings of recorded history. But in early America, precursors of baseball included informal games of English origin such as paddleball, trap ball, rounders, and town ball. The latter was a popular game in colonial New England and was played by adults and children with a bat and ball on an open field. Printed references to "base ball" in America date back to the eighteenth century. Among these accounts is one of Albigence Waldo, a surgeon with Washington's troops at Valley Forge who poetically told of soldiers batting balls and running bases in their free time. Similarly in 1834 Robin Carver's Book of Sports related that an American version of rounders called "base" or "goal ball" was rivaling cricket in popularity among Americans. Indeed, cricket played a role in the evolution of organized baseball. From this British game came umpires and innings, and early baseball writers like Henry Chadwick used cricket terminology such as "batsman," "playing for the side," and "excellent field" in describing early baseball games. Likewise, the pioneer baseball innovator Harry Wright, a cricket professional turned baseball manager, drew heavily on his cricket background in promoting baseball as a professional team sport in the United States. By the 1840s various forms of baseball vied for acceptance, including the popular Massachusetts and New York versions of the game. The Massachusetts game utilized an irregular four-sided field of play, with the four bases located at fixed, asymmetrical distances from each other and the "striker's," or batter's position away from the home base. "Scouts," or fielders, put men out by fielding a batted ball on the fly or on the first bounce, or by hitting a runner with a thrown ball. But this lively version of the game was overshadowed in the late 1840s by the "New York game," a popular version of which was devised by the members of the New York Knickerbocker Club. Organized in 1845 by a band of aspiring gentlemen and baseball enthusiasts, the Knickerbocker version was devised by one of their members, Alexander J. Cartwright. Cartwright prescribed a diamond-shaped infield with bases at ninety feet apart, a standard which has stood the test of time. The pitching distance was set at forty-five feet from the home base, and a pitcher was required to "pitch" a ball in a stiff-armed, underhanded fashion. The three-strikes-are-out rule was adopted, and a batter could also be put out by a fielder catching a batted ball in the air, or on the first bounce, or by throwing a fielded ball to the first baseman before the runner arrived. Other innovations included the nine-man team and three outs ending a team's batting in their half of an inning. Thus Cartwright's version of baseball became the basis of the game as presently played. Over the years, other innovations were added, including the nine-inning standard for games, changes in the pitching distance, and so on. On June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey, the first organized baseball game was played by the New York Nine and the New York Knickerbockers. The Knickerbockers were defeated by the Nine by a score of twenty-three to one. Mostly a Northern and Midwestern phenomenon, baseball fever ran highest in the New York City area, where in the 1850s, games were being played "on every available green plot within a ten-mile circuit of the city." Spearheading the baseball boom were formally organized clubs with officers, clubhouses and playing grounds. Among the many clubs, the Knickerbockers sought to rule the game by posing as arbiters of play, rules, and decorum. Since no leagues or playing schedules existed, formal games in the 1850s were arranged by correspondence between club secretaries. By the end of the 1850s, victories and the prospect of gate receipts were becoming more important factors. As more clubs embraced these goals, greater emphasis was placed on obtaining good players at whatever affronts to amateur standards. The popularity of amateur baseball clubs that played between 1845 - 1865, led to the introduction of the first professional baseball club, the Cincinnati Red Stockings.