A Wrong Story

      Baseball is my favorite sport. I love playing it and watching it, and especially rooting for my favorite team, the Yankees. But I also wonder about the history of baseball, why it was invented and how it was invented. 

    You may have heard that Abner Doubleday invented baseball. The story goes that Abner Doubleday, a soldier, invented the game of baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. This story is completely WRONG!!!!

Ancient Times

    Baseball has actually evolved from much earlier bat and ball games played by different cultures in different regions of the world. There was a game  which used a bat and ball that dates back all the way to Ancient Egypt. In fact, a ball that was used more than 2,000 years ago can be found at the British Museum in London.

     In the 1300s, games similar to baseball were played in Wallachia, now known as Romania. 

    Lapta is a traditional sport in Russia that involves teams hitting a ball with a bat, and players running around bases with fielders trying to get the runners out. Yet another game with a bat and ball was played by French Monks in the 1330s. 

Stoolball and Schlagball  

     Stoolball was also popular in the same time period. Stoolball appeared in a poem written by William Pagula. Milkmaids played stoolball by batting a ball through milking stools that were used as wickets.

     Schlagball  was played in Germany dating all the way back to the 1300s and 1400s with teams made up of 12 players. It is still played today in Kiel, Germany, which hosts Schlagball tournaments each year. 

Rounders

     Stoolball, Rounders, and Town Ball were all popular games to play in England dating back to the 18th century (the 1700s). In 1744, John Newberry created a children's book called "A Little Pretty Pocket Book." The term "baseball" is used in the book, with a brief description and illustration.

    Settlers from England brought Rounders to America. Rounders was similar to baseball because it used a ball, a bat and bases. Town Ball was an evolution of the game of Rounders that was played in America in the early 1800s. These games were all played in England, and then America, starting more than a hundred years before Abner Doubleday “invented” baseball in 1839.             

Cricket and British Baseball

     Like American baseball, cricket is a hugely popular sport played in many parts of the world today. The sport of cricket is most popular in Great Britain and areas of the world that were once under the control of the British Empire, such as India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.   

    Cricket has some similarities to baseball because they both involve a bat and ball, but the rules of the games are quite different. We know with certainty that a game called Baseball existed in the 1790s, because it appears in Northanger Abbey, a famous British novel written by Jane Austen.

Alexander Cartwright

     The "invention" of the game of baseball in 1839 by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown New York is a fake story created by Major League Baseball.

   The person most responsible for creating the game of baseball that we know today is Alexander Cartwright, who was a bookseller from New York City. In 1839, he founded a team called the Knickerbockers.

    Alexander Cartwright wrote and published the rules for baseball in 1845. The game has some similarities to Rounders and the other bat and ball games from England, but instead of throwing the ball at a player to get them out, you could tag them.

    The first known organized game of baseball using Alexander Cartwright's rules was played in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 19, 1846.  However, even before Cartwright's rules were published, the first recorded baseball game was played on June 4th, 1838 in Ontario, Canada.

The Beginnings of MLB

     In 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first all-professional baseball team. Professional means the players were paid for playing baseball. Before this many other amateur teams existed in towns all throughout the United States. Some towns wanted to get the best players in order to beat other towns, and they started paying the better players to be on their teams.

   The oldest team to keep playing with the same team from the same city is the Philadelphia Phillies, who started playing in 1883.

   The National League started in 1876 and the American League started in 1901. Major League Baseball was officially formed in 1903, when the National League and American League agreed to join together.

   Did you know that the first World Series was played in October, 1903? The Boston Americans defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates 5 games to 3.Also, the first baseball game was played on 1946 June 19.

Baseball Grows and Changes

    Baseball has continued to grow and change for more than 100 years. It is played by kids in Little League all across the country, and all across the world. Amateur teams play from high school and colleges, and minor league players dream about someday making it to the Big Leagues.

     Baseball spread in popularity because of radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s. Many baseball stars become celebrities, such as New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth and the San Francisco Giants Willie Mays. 

    For many years only white people were allowed to play in the Major Leagues. Black players had their only separate league called the Negro Leagues. In 1947, Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers became the first black player to play in the Major Leagues.

Cooperstown

    You can explore a lot more about the history of baseball at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. But one thing I hope you have learned is that Abner Doubleday did NOT invent the game of baseball in Cooperstown in 1839. That is a MYTH!

    Baseball has a much more complicated story. Baseball was not really "invented," but instead it evolved, by growing and changing over many, many years, starting in Ancient Times in Egypt, and moving through Romania, Russia, France, Germany, England, Canada and eventually to America.