Manly Man Guide

A story of the origin of baseball was once widely promoted and widely believed.  It is about Abner Doubleday having invented baseball in 1839.  No evidence for this claim was produced except for the testimony of one man many years after, and a great deal of persuasive argument.

Doubleday did leave behind many documents but they did not mention anything about baseball.  Neither did he suggest that he considered himself a personality that should be known to go down in the history of the game.  After his death, his New York Times obituary did not mention anything about baseball.  Even a 1911 encyclopedia article about Doubleday did not relate him to said sport.

It is difficult to trace with precision the exact evolution of baseball from the various bat-and-ball games.  A very similar bat-and-ball, traditional game played in Romania, called “Oina,” was mentioned for the first time in the year 1364.  This was during the rule of King Vlaicu Voda.

But it is the typical consensus that today’s baseball was developed from the older, English game, “rounders.”  This notion was argued by historical evidence and a 2005 book “Baseball Before We Know It:  A Search For the Roots of the Game” written by David Black.

In the early 18th  century, British and American documents made references to baseball and bat-and-ball. A 1744 British publication made the earliest known description.  “A Little Pretty Pocket Book” written by John Newbery, contained a wood-cut illustration of boys playing “base-ball.”

The book showed a baseball set up roughly similar to the modern baseball game.  It also contained a very similar description of the sport.  On September 11, 2008, The Surrey County Council’s History Center produced documentary evidence that the game was being played by the British before anyone else.  They have written to MLB explaining this allegation.  A diarist, William Bray, recorded a baseball game on Easter Monday 1755 in Guildford.

In a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts town bylaw, the earliest known American discussion of baseball was published.  This prohibited the playing of the game within eighty yards of the town’s new meeting house.

Jane Austen, an English novelist, made mention of children playing “base-ball” on a village green in her book named Northanger Abbey.  This book was written between 1798 and 1803, but not published until 1818.

Dr. Adam Ford’s contemporary description of a game that took place on June 4, 1838 (Militia Muster Day) in Beachville, Ontario, Canada, was the first full documentation of a baseball game in North America.  This report was related in an 1886 edition of “Sporting Life” magazine.

In 1845, New York City’s Alexander Cartwright led the codification of so-called “Knikerbocker Rules.”  This is an early list of rules, from which today’s rules have evolved.  Cartwright also initiated the replacement of the soft ball used in rounders.  He replaced it with a smaller, hard ball.

The game now recognized as the first in U.S. history to be officially recorded took place June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey.  The “New York Nine” defeated the “Knickerbockers” with a score of 23-1 in four innings. On June 3, 1953, Cartwright was officially recognized by the U.S. Congress as the inventor of the modern baseball.

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