[molenick]

It is a long story best recounted elsewhere, but essentially it was from a letter the commission received from Abner Graves who was five in 1839 and who claimed to have seen Doubleday (who was in West Point at the time) modify town ball to what is now recognizable as baseball. I believe the commission added to Graves' claim some things that were not the letter (such as setting the distance between the bases). I believe Graves also sent them an old baseball purported to be from the game.

Graves was 71 when he wrote the letter which some claim may have led to "inaccurate memories" but as I get closer to that age, I would not like to think that I will all of a sudden lose my memory when I get there. But he was recollecting events from many years in his past. Apparently he made other false claims, such as being a member of the Pony Express in 1852 (it was started in 1860). And he was committed to a psychiatric hospital after shooting his wife.

I recommend David Block's Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, John Thorn's Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game and Peter Morris's But Didn't We Have Fun?: An informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870 for further reading on this and other related topics.