Who’s-the-papa-of-baseball?

Steven S writes “Who would of thunk it? Is baseball older than Abner Doubleday (1819-1893) the ‘father’ of baseball and acknowledged by a 1907 baseball investigation as founder of the sport. According to documents recently uncovered at a Western Massachusetts public library the sport may go back to 1791 or earlier. This story was also featured on “Mike and Mike in the morning” on ESPN Radio today. Here is a
link to the story“

May 12, 2004 by Uncategorized 1

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1 Response

  1. djfiander says:
    May 12, 2004 at 8:40 pm

    It’s all about Jane Austen
    Well, baseball (or at least something named that) existing in Britain in 1803:

    Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children
    everything they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in
    lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters
    were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very
    wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about
    her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and
    running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books — or
    at least books of information — for, provided that nothing like
    useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were
    all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books
    at all.

    Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey, 1803. Available from Project Gutenberg.

    You probably also want to look at Stephen J. Gould’s work on the evolution of baseball, such as

    Gould, Stephen Jay. “The creation myths of Cooperstown”. In Best American Essays of the Century, Houghton-Mifflin, 2000.

    This was also published in one of his own collections, and in Natural History (Nov, 1989):14.

    Reply

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