"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
– Kay, Men In Black
As the nation went to sleep on the night of May 23, 1983, everyone (save for a small number of devoted baseball historians) knew that Civil War General Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. It was a well-known piece of history that helped to explain why the Baseball Hall of Fame was in such an out of the way location. Imagine the surprise around the country then when, 29 years ago today, people around the country opened their newspapers the next morning to see this article from the Associated Press:
Not only did Abner Doubleday not invent baseball, he never even mentioned the game in his journals, and neither he nor his family were in Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839 when the first game supposedly was played, according to American Heritage magazine.
Doubleday and Cooperstown, as the father and birthplace of baseball, "is a double-barreled historical falsehood," said author Victor Salvatore in a story titled "The Man Who Didn't Invent Baseball."
The article was published in the June/July 1983 issue of American Heritage. Other articles in that issue were "Baseball's Greatest Song", "The Old Ball Game", and "Escape from Vichy." Salvatore's original article can be found here.
The discovery of the Doubleday story as myth by Salvatore wasn't exactly groundbreaking. In fact, the AP article explicitly mentions that "several standard encyclopedias agree that a Doubleday role in creating the national pastime is at best questionable." Even so, this article nearly 30 years ago may have been the first time the mythical nature of the story was widely broadcast to the general population. Salvatore, then, was Colombus "discovering" America to the past historians' Leif Ericson.
The Doubleday myth isn't very popular these days. There are just too many facts disproving it and, anyway, the real "father of modern baseball" Alexander Cartwright is fascinating in his own right (did you know he was the fire chief of Honolulu from 1850 to 1863?). Twenty-nine years ago, however, the news must have been enough to cause a few shocked faces and coffee spit-takes over the morning paper. It was worth it.
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This story about the American Heritage article in May 1983 was published by the Associated Press, though. And, with the AP's reach into 1,000s of newspapers across the country, it likely did more to broadcast the news than any articles published before it or any encyclopedias sitting around on library shelves. There was also an article in SI in 1969 or so, too, about it.
Whatever the case, I just think it's interesting to know that today is the anniversary of so many people learning something that we've all known for so long now...
By contrast, had the myth survived until, say, January 2012, every baseball fan, even casual fans, would have learned of its explosion almost immediately.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/born-kenya-obama-literary-agent-misidentified-birthplace-1991-214423507.html
"-In Tennessee only 33% of GOP primary voters think Barack Obama was born in the United States, while 45% do not.
-In Georgia 40% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 38% do not.
-In Ohio 42% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 37% do not."
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/03/limbaugh-and-birthers.html
Incidentally, if Obama can't even get 60% of the vote in 4 states' Democrat primaries, it's a safe bet Democrats in those states don't think much differently about him than Republicans.
The game evolved from Britain's cricket and rounders. Various parts of the U.S. and Canada had their own versions. The New York version, which, for example, did not allow runners to be put out by having the ball thrown at them, became the version that was eventually adapted by the rest of the continent. Cartwright may have written those "Knickerbocker" rules physically, but other members of his club such as Doc Adams, William Wheaton, and William Tucker, were much more the team leaders and the driving forces behind regulated baseball. If you want to credit Cartwright, you'd have to, at least, credit the entire Knickerbocker Athletic Club.