Jerry Summers
A baseball fan of any age has grown up with the established and often undisputed fact that Union soldier, Abner Doubleday (AD), created the game of baseball and that the game has been immortalized by establishing the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY where it was allegedly created.
A 381 page treatise “How Baseball Happened” (2021- Godine Publishers) presents a history of how the game evolved from “rounders” and “cricket” up to the 1870s with its birthplace being alleged to be the borough of Brooklyn that was once an independent city, or Hoboken, New Jersey, or New York City, et al.
Additional language of the subtitles “Outrageous Lies Exposed” and “The True Story Revealed” combined with an introduction by “The Official Historians of Major League Baseball, John Thorn raises the curiosity of any true baseball fan to read the treatise by Thomas W. Gilbert, author of several baseball books.
A reader should be forewarned that Gilbert includes a limitless number of players, places, teams, and topics that sometimes makes it difficult to keep up but the controversies are fascinating!
Did Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright (a New York City bank clerk and his friends in the Knickerbocker Club in New York City) invent baseball? The truth is that neither did and it is asserted that Albert Spaulding, sports equipment entrepreneur and eventual owner of the Chicago Cubs and the defacto Chief Executive Officer of Major League Baseball created the Doubleday myth that introduced baseball in 1839 and even set up the infamous Mills Commission (1907) of seven baseball allies to confirm unequivocally that AD was the inventor of the national pastime.
The final contention is that the game evolved from a variety of situations from thousands of amateurs who created the rules of the game, shape of the fields, equipment, etc. which now is a game dominated by the players, television revenue, and billionaire owners, etc.
The commercial development of the game of baseball continues challenged by its traditional opponents of football and basketball and the new competitor of soccer that threatens to take over the title of “National Pastime”.
(PS: A total of thirteen men have been reported as being called the “Father of Baseball” including at least four who had the title inscribed on their grave marker or a bronze plaque!)
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You can reach Jerry Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com