Who is the Real Father of Baseball?

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Posted By: Joann

Great conversation. I think the reason more don't join in is because (if they are anything like me) they don't think they can add to the knowledge - just take it away.

But I have always half followed and been interested in the auto industry, and I think there is an interesting parallel between the invention of baseball and the invention of the automobile.

Both have indistinct beginnings, in that the end item evolved over time from a variety of similar concepts. Town ball and rounders = early steam devices and other horseless conveyance designs going back to DaVinci.

Both have an individual that is widely considered to be the inventor by students of the topic and maybe some casual fans, although even then there is debate as to the true role of this individual. Alexander Joy Cartwright = Karl Benz.

Both have another individual who is somehow most widely associated with the beginning of the game/industry as the person that gave it legs, that did some significant thing to help spur growth. Harry Wright did all that Barry described above, and Henry Ford took the auto out of the rich-boy-hobby category and made it a mass phenomenon - even a backbone of the country. Harry Wright = Henry Ford

I guess the only difference is the Abner Doubleday business - the person still mistakenly thought to have invented the item by many mainstream Americans. I suppose that in a way, Henry Ford plays that role as well.

Interesting topic though, and I thought the parallels of the role of actual inventor versus major catalyst were pretty dead on. Heck, even the basic timelines (at least when looked at in the context of all of North American history) are not that far off.

Joann

ETA that I can't think of anymore offhand, but I bet there are dozens of huge cultural-center type things in the US and world that would have similar parallels: related concepts early on, one individual (or very few) that crystallize the thinking to one core design, and another individual (or few) that shoot the invention to the stars.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Henry Ford may not have invented the automobile, but he certainly played a pivotal role in mass producing them.

Abner Doubleday, on the other hand, likely had nothing to do with baseball on any level.

Interesting comparison, however, between baseball and the automobile.

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Posted By: Anonymous

I grew up believing that Abner Doubleday devised a set of rules that helped transform town ball into base ball. Then I learned that he didn't, and fellows like Cartwright and others did more to enhance the game. Then I read up on this and saw that many of our current beliefs are based on a lack of first hand information. New things pop up every year about baseball's origins.

It's kind of like Lewis Black's skit about eggs...first they were good for you...then they were bad for you...and now it seems that they might just be good for you after all.

Three points are often made to discredit Doubleday's link to baseball - He was not in Cooperstown in 1839, he never mentioned baseball in his numerous writings, and Abner Graves lacked credibility.

Abner Graves was motivated enough to submit a letter to the Mills Commission that gave his opinion about baseball's early days. He even responded when asked questions about what he wrote. In his first letter he never claimed Doubleday devised new rules in the summer of 1839, merely stated it could be any of three years. The Commission concluded it had to be the summer of 1839 and now we know that they were probably wrong. Did Abner Doubleday present the three or four suggestions to improve their game or did Graves make them up in his head? Or was it some other boy?

James Fenimore Cooper mentions in a novel that boys were playing base ball on the green in Cooperstown around this same time period. Assuming they were playing town ball, it seems clear to me that nearly every single boy in town participated when they could. Abner Doubleday had two brothers so I believe that a Doubleday or two (or three) played town ball in Cooperstown when they were kids. Graves probably played ball with Abner Doubleday's younger brother who was closer in age to him.

Did Abner Doubleday possess the mental faculties and leadership qualities to convince the other kids to play a new game that didn't require 25 to 50 players? Of course he did.

But Doubleday never mentioned baseball in his writings. Does that prove he never played town ball or base ball? How many of our nation's leaders did mention baseball in their writings in the 19th Century?

I do not think we know enough about what occurred in Cooperstown back in the late 1830's or early 1840's to say for sure what happened. Did anyone who grew up with Abner Graves object when they heard the news? What research has been done on primary sources of information? Both John Ward and Al Spalding were members of the Mills Commission and no doubt had strong opinions on baseball's origins. It's hard to imagine that both were fooled by a crackpot from out West.

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Posted By: barrysloate

There are numerous books pre-1839, including a German one from 1796, that include rules for baseball, and even use the term "baseball." You need go no further than that to know that the game was played prior to 1839.

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Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

To my knowledge no credible baseball historian believes Abner Doubleday had anything to do with the invention of baseball, period. And that the Mills Commission was nothing more than a ruse by Albert Spalding to capitalize on the patriotism extant in the aftermath of the Spanish American War to Americanize baseball and, in the process, sell some more of his sporting equipment. Probably the most prominant baseball historian of the period, Henry Chadwick, regarded the Mills Commission findings as a joke and something not to be taken seriously. The fact that a form of baseball might have been played in Cooperstown in or around 1839 is irrelevant because there is ample documentation that both the name baseball as well as many, if not all, of its current rules long predate 1839. Just the fact that Abner Doubleday is not even a member of the HOF tells enough what knowledgable people think of his association to baseball.

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Posted By: Max Weder

A very good book on the origins of baseball is David Block's Baseball Before We Knew It



Max

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Posted By: Anonymous

corey: Baseball is not the invention of one person. Didn't Chadwick claim baseball sprang from rounders so any differing opinion must be wrong?

My point is we shouldn't dismiss Abner Graves' comments in his letter until we know for certain they are wrong. Boys and men played ball in Cooperstown around 1839-1842. That is a fact. Did any one of them, as Graves claimed, try to systemize the game they played making it one step closer to baseball? If so, then they contributed a piece in the evolution of the game. Sure Graves wasn't the first boy to play "baseball", but he seemed to be the first adult to remember specific changes to the game of his childhood.

If Graves was completely wrong, then the boys of Cooperstown learned of new rules from somewhere else. With many of them joining the military that may have been the place where the opportunity to play a different game arose.

What historians have published their findings about Cooperstown's early baseball history?

The fathers of baseball are probably the American Boys of the 1800's.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Well, here we have proof that organized ball playing came before Graves claims of Doubleday and Cooperstown so he should be eliminated from the mix anyway.

http://bid.robertedwardauctions.com/bidplace.aspx?itemid=8163

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Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

Annoymous,

That's exactly the point -- baseball is not the invention of one person. And that is the reason the Doubleday connection is so stupid. To the typical American, he is the ONE who INVENTED baseball. The best that can possibly be said about him, assuming what Graves "remembered" over 60 years later is true, is that he was one mere link in a chain of many links that lead to the development of today's game. The roots of the game in America had already been long established, brought overseas from England, and it is an extraordinary stretch to believe anything the Knickerbockers did would have been any different had Doubleday never existed.

However, given the bias of the Mills commission and mandate given it by Spalding, its impartiality has been so compromised as to make its
work product essentially worthless.

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Posted By: barrysloate

The Doubleday story has become a great embarrassment to the Hall of Fame, because when it opened to the public in 1939, it was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the game.

As the years passed and it became increasingly clear that the entire myth was untrue, the Hall had to figure out a way to tactfully deal with this fallacy. It had to be a public relations disaster.

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Posted By: Anonymous

Dan: The 1837 Olympia Rules is a significant find. That auction also has a photo of Abner Doubleday in it's baseball section. What's he doing there?

One site which has a chronological list of early baseball mentions is www.retrosheet.org/Protobell/Fat2.06htm

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Baseball collectors pay a premium for CDV's and cabinets of Abner Doubleday not because they believe he invented baseball, but because over time he has become a mythological figure in baseball lore.

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Posted By: DD

I was in a Chinese restaurant yesterday and posed this question to the maitre'd. Of course, he said Cartwright. It's funny that when he said that, a bald guy in glasses showed up.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Oh, that will 5-10 minutes!

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Posted By: anthony

i bought my 15 yr old "baseball a film by ken burns" for christmas and we watched the first inning yesterday. man did my son have a ton of questions after watching it. i watched it several years ago but it never gets old.

i always thought it should be abner doubleday as the father of baseball but after watching it again, now i see it should be alexander cartwright in my opinion. it does seem that there were several major players (mainly wright, cartwright, chadwick, doubleday) in really turning baseball into what it is today so maybe we can call them our "forefathers" or "fourfathers" and not consider just one.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Doubleday really has no right to be considered with the company of Wright, Chadwick or Cartwright. There is no evidence at all that he had anything to do with baseball.