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Posted By: runscott

Okay, here's your answer. My great-great-grandfather used to tell us about this game his great-great-grandfather played as a child. The "swatter" used what was basically a "small head" tennis racket to swat a loosely-wound ball as far as possible. My ancestor and the other kids, being rather poor, only had one of these "rackets", so when the netting busted one day, they were forced to come up with an alternative. My G-g-g-g-grandpa Abner, being quite a show-off, simply turned the racket around and started driving the ball right back at the pitcher at lightning speed, with the handle. This resulted in a few broken fingers and noses before everyone went crying home.

Most of the other kids playing that day were a bunch of pussies, so even though Abner and a few others really liked the rougher version of the game, his comrades said it was too "base", and refused to take part. When the other kids saw him and some local tuffs playing the new version of the game the following weekend, wielding axe handles as "bats" rather than the wimpy rackets formerly used, one of them yelled "Abner's playing that base ball game again!" Abner and the local tuffs beat the hell out of the other kids, destroying their racket. In a related event, they also stole the stools the other kids were using to mark their diamond, but decided to use them as weapons instead, and marked the corners with their hats.

The new game caught on and a likeness of Abner appeared in the town paper several weeks later, with the caption "Abner hits DoubleToday", along with "founder of base ball", which led to later misunderstandings.