INDUCTION DAY
Today the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will induct six more members, for a total of 323. The annual ceremony that began in 1939 has an odd history of its own.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., is where the history of the game is preserved and honored. The Hall of Fame was built there based on a claim that Abner Doubleday invented the game in a Cooperstown cow pasture in 1839. The story is now considered a myth.
The first artifact donated to the Hall of Fame was the “Doubleday Ball.” It was given by philanthropist Stephen C. Clark, who helped fund the museum that opened in 1939. The “Doubleday Ball” was sold to Clark by Abner Graves, who said he was given the ball at age 5 after it was used by Doubleday when he created the game in Cooperstown at age 20.
The authenticity of baseball’s origin has been disputed many times. In 2004, historian John Thorn discovered a bylaw from 1791 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, that prohibited playing baseball within 80 yards of the town’s new meetinghouse. That predates Doubleday by 48 years.
Doubleday was a Civil War general and has a monument honoring him at Gettysburg. He remained with the Army until 1873 and commanded troops in California and Texas. Doubleday also helped secure the city of San Francisco’s first patent for a cable car system but never claimed to have anything to do with the invention of baseball. He died in New Jersey, in 1898 at age 73.
So who invented our national pastime? The origins are murky, but a group of men led by Alexander Joy Cartwright founded the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club in 1845. The Knickerbockers are considered the first team to use the baseball diamond, the three-strike rule and foul lines.