The History of Baseball

As the legend goes, in 1839 Cooperstown New York, future Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball, yet as the game began to take hold as America’s national pastime, critics of the Doubleday story continued to point to similar games of European origin. To end the debate—hopefully once and for all—former major league player and sporting goods magnate A.J. Spalding established a special commission to root out baseball’s true etymology. Basing their evidence on the shaky claims of mining engineer Abner Graves, who wrote in a letter that he had seen a man named Abner Doubleday create a diagram of a baseball field and then set up the first baseball game in Cooperstown during the summer of 1839.

Flimsy Testimonial

Basing their decision on Graves’ flimsy testimonial, the legend of baseball’s origins was further cemented in the 1930s when Cooperstown businessmen shook hands with major league officials to establish the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in their small village on the southernmost banks of Otsego Lake. Yet the real history of baseball is considerably more complicated than the legend of Abner Doubleday, in light of a nagging number of similar games that date back as early as 15th century England.

Age-Old Game

Of baseball’s closest antecedents, rounders began as a children’s game dating back to the Tudor Period in Great Britain, while cricket originated in southeastern England before earning its place as the leading sport in Britain during the 18th century. Arriving into the New World with the earliest British colonists, by the time of the American Revolution, adaptations of both games had exploded onto schoolyards and college campuses across the thirteen colonies, rising even further in popularity during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.

Refinements

The first evolution of the game we know today began in September of 1845, when a group of men in New York City formed the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club, before codifying a new set of rules that called for a diamond-shaped infield, an outfield with foul lines and the three-strike rule, at the same time abolishing the sketchy practice of tagging runners by throwing balls at them. Playing the first official game of baseball in 1846—against a cricket team—the faster-paced rule changes quickly cemented the game into American culture and tradition.

More than Entertainment

Over the course of a nation’s passion for the game, baseball has oftentimes surpassed its value as mere entertainment by offering Americans a sense of solace during difficult times, such as President George W. Bush’s first pitch during Game 3 of the World Series, just seven numbed weeks after 911, making the history of baseball, as American as apple pie.