Story Of Baseball
In a single baseball season, as many as 35 or 40 million spectators pay admission to sit in ball parks, where they watch professional or amateur players battle for team honors. Many millions of additional fans follow the games by radio and television. And another 10 million adults and boys participate in organized amateur baseball programs that are not in any way connected with public or private schools.
When one thinks about the enormous popularity of baseball, a pertinent question often comes to mind:
Where did this great national game begin?
Actually the origins of baseball are somewhat hazy. Except for box scores, very little about baseball was recorded before 1900. A great many people insist that baseball is a purely American game invented in 1839 by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York. Others argue that baseball evolved from the British games of rounders and cricket. The controversy was at its hottest during the early 1900s.
One of the earliest champions of the rounders theory was Henry Chadwick. Born in England in 1824, Chadwick moved to the United States when he was just thirteen years old. Six years later he began a remarkable writing career, covering baseball games for the biggest newspapers and magazines of his day. He also wrote books about baseball for boys and girls, originated the baseball scoring system, compiled the first rule book, and made many other suggestions.
Because he was such an authority, many people referred to Chadwick as the "Father of Baseball." But Chadwick, of all people, refused to agree that baseball originated in America. "The similarity of baseball and rounders is fully identified," he said. "And rounders was played in England two centuries before its appearance in America."
The rounders theory is supported by two books. The first one, The Boy's Own Book, was published in London in 1829. In it appeared the rules for rounders. The second book, The Boy's and Girl's Book of Sports, was published in America in 1835. The author of the second book obviously copied the first book when describing the rules of the game. But he didn't call it rounders. Instead the game was identified as Base or Goal Ball.
Albert Goodwill Spalding, one of professional baseball's founding fathers, refused to go along with the rounders theory. In fact he called it sheer nonsense. And he formed a committee of baseball notables to settle "once and for all" the matter of baseball's origins. Abraham G. Mills, former president of the National League, was chairman. The group labored for three years before reaching, in 1907, a twofold decision. Baseball had its origin, they announced, in the United States. The first scheme for playing baseball was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown in 1839.
Who was this Abner Doubleday? And on what had the Mills Commission based its findings?
Doubleday, dead at the time the report was issued, was a well-known Union Army general. He was also a friend of Mills. His name had been brought to the attention of the Commission by Abner Graves, a mining engineer who lived in Denver, Colorado. In a letter to the Commission, Graves said he had gone to school with Doubleday at Cooperstown. And he recalled seeing Doubleday organize a game called "Base Ball, for there were four bases in it . . ." Graves gave the year as 1839. And he implied that Doubleday had been disturbed by the fact that a ball game he and others were playing was badly organized and permitted too many players to compete. Doubleday, according to Graves, cut down the number of players and suggested the game be played between competing teams.
Although the Mills Commission seized on the letter as "evidence," most historians now reject it. They point out that Graves was more than 80 years old when he wrote the letter. He very likely would not have been able to recall accurately what had gone on so many years earlier. It was also noted that Doubleday could not have been in Coopers-town in 1839, for his military records show he was at West Point. In addition, Doubleday wrote several books and left a mountain of papers to his heirs. Nowhere did he mention baseball.
It now seems more likely that baseball evolved gradually into the game we know today. American boys and girls of the early 1800s were surely just as inventive as today's young players. Starting with the game of rounders or Base ball, they no doubt changed the official rules to suit the conditions under which the game was played. Thus there developed such games as one old cat and two old cat (using one and two bases). Then came town ball, with four bases and a batter's box between home base and first base.
All of these were variations on the same principle. A ball was tossed to a batter. The batter hit the ball and ran to a base, or bases. The equipment and the methods of scoring and putting out runners or batters varied. One big difference between town ball and the other games was that the players were young men instead of children. In addition to whacking the ball with a bat, these older players took great delight in "soaking" or "stinging" base runners with the thrown ball. Town ball with its many variations reached the height of its popularity in the early 1800s. It proved to be an excellent source of recreation in a world where automobiles, radios, and television sets were not even dreamed of. There was plenty of space in which to play, and equipment was cheap. Best of all, any red-blooded male could compete. Soon the town-ball players began to form clubs. And the formation of the clubs represented the first step toward the game of professional baseball as we know it today. The game of baseball has now become beyond question the leading feature of the outdoor sports of the United States.
