Who Invented Baseball?

The controversial debate over who invented baseball has been going on for more than a century. There is actually very little documentation which directly attributes the invention of baseball to any one person. There are, however, factors which must be considered.

First, there's the vague historicity factor which credits early English sports like rounders and cricket. However, people have been playing with sticks and stones for milleniums and mere similarities between sports doesn't in any way relate them. Oh, baseball may have evolved from these earlier games, but there's no "Who invented baseball" attributable to that evolution.

Secondly, there's the general historicity factor regarding just who invented baseball. That is to say, historical evidence which demonstrates an individual who invented baseball. If they were to go on just documented evidence and ignore the traditional social witness of just who invented baseball, then the evidence speaks well for one Alexander Cartwright. Alexander Cartwright was the author of the first officially published rules of baseball in 1845 for a team called the New York Knickerbockers.

Hold it right there! Yes, I realize that documented evidence has meaning in many facets of discernment, whether it be historical, scientific or religious. But to assume that just because Cartwright's is the first documentation laying out the rules of a game very similiar to modern baseball, that he is the actual inventor is a stretch to say the least. Sure, Congress declared Cartwright as the father of baseball back in 1953, but this was some 50 years after major league baseball declared someone else, someone closer to their times. Abner Doubleday is who invented baseball, according to major league baseball.

The Mills Commission was appointed by the president of the National League, Abraham Mills, in 1905 to determine just who invented baseball. The committee's final report in 1907 stated, "the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839." It concluded by saying, "in the years to come, in the view of the hundreds of thousands of people who are devoted to baseball, and the millions who will be, Abner Doubleday's fame will rest evenly, if not quite as much, upon the fact that he was its inventor ... as upon his brilliant and distinguished career as an officer in the Federal Army."

There lies the problem and cause of the so-called myth about Abner Doubleday. He was so revered for his distinguished military services that any trivialities associated with a game of play which he devised the rules for, would go unnoticed. Afterall, baseball's popularity evolved as did the specific rules of the modern sport. But we can rest our confidence in the commission of the day, the time and Era of baseball which knew it's origins. Did it's 1905 homework and renewed the knowledge of it's founder. Forget about the missing data. Forget about the fact that the biggest piece of evidence came from a 5 yr. old boy and future murderer's heresay. Baseball knew it's father. Abner Doubleday is the man who invented baseball. This is our sport and I have this to say to all of the pundits, the agnostics, the backsliders, the nitpickers. You can't touch this Baseball legend! Who invented baseball? Abner Doubleday did in a cow pasture in Cooperstown in 1839, give or take. So there!

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