1839.1
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Graves Letters of 1905 Say that Doubleday Invented Base Ball
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| Location | Western New YorkWestern New York |
| City/State/Country: | [[{{{Country}}}]] |
| Modern Address | |
| Game | Town BallTown Ball |
| Immediacy of Report | |
| Age of Players | |
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| Text | Abner Doubleday, who was to become a Civil War notable, is much later (1905) said to have "invented" baseball at Cooperstown, New York, according to the findings of the Mills Commission (1905-1907), a group of baseball magnates appointed by the American and National League Presidents to investigate the origins of baseball. The Commission bases its findings almost entirely on letters received from Abner Graves, a resident of Cooperstown in his childhood. The Commission's findings are soon discredited by historians who proclaim the "Doubleday Invention" to be entirely a myth. The Doubleday game, according to Graves' offerings, retained the plugging of runners, eleven players per team, and flat bats that were four inches wide. Graves sees the main improvement of the Doubleday game that it limited the size of teams, while town ball permitted "twenty to fifty boys in the field." Graves believed that Abner Doubleday was 16 or 17 years old when he saw him lay out his improved game [in fact, Doubleday was 20 in 1839, and at West Point]. Graves himself declined to fix a year to the Doubleday plan, suggesting that it might have occurred in 1839, 1840, or 1841. In choosing 1839, the Commission rested its story on the memory of a boy who was then 5 years old. Letters from Abner Graves to the Mills Commission, April 3, 1905 and November 17, 1905. To read them, go here. |
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1839. Graves Letters of 1905 Say that Doubleday Invented Base Ball"
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