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Show 'The True Story of Baseball' By GRANTLAND RICE Dean of Sports W'riters BASEBALL is known as our national game. But how many know anything any-thing about the real story of baseball, including its origin? Very few among the millions who follow it today. So I am bringing to you one of baseball's greatest historians, histo-rians, Will Irwin who also happens to be one of the best writers and one of the top reporters re-porters this country has ever known. To me, this is the true story of baseball: "Dear Grant: This year is the hundredth anniversary of New York's Knickerbocker Baseball club, and I understand that there is to be some kind of celebration this summer. But judging from preliminary prelimi-nary notices, we seem likely to celebrate cele-brate the right event in the wrong way. The Knickerbocker was not the sssyr ;? 1 t ' ..' K f" ' , f ' 1 I 4 Henry Chadwick devised the first boxscore and compiled the first official of-ficial baseball rules book, which was printed in 1857. His efforts did much to promote uniformity of play throughout the country. Some writers writ-ers call Chadwick "The Father of Baseball" on this account. first baseball club in the United States, but it was nevertheless the founder of the modern game. And Alexander Cartwright, its first president, may have been the young genius who by one simple improvement improve-ment transformed a venerable Eng-ish Eng-ish game, now called 'rounders,' from a children's sport to a game for hardy young athletes and a national na-tional institution. As for Gen. Abner Doubleday, the notices seem to endorse en-dorse the carefully fostered myth that he invented the game at Cooperstown, N. Y., in 1839; whereas where-as he has no valid claim whatever either as inventor or improver of baseball. Old Game Called 'Rounders.' "About 1912, and while many players play-ers who went back to baseball's early days were still alive, I investigated in-vestigated the origins of the game for a national weekly and published pub-lished the conclusions stated above. At that time, Abner Doubleday passed only as a hero of Gettysburgthe Gettys-burgthe myth of Cooperstown had not yet gained its adherents. Then in 1939, Robert W. Henderson, of the New York Public library, after painstaking research in the old books of that great collection, published pub-lished a pamphlet which knocked the Doubleday legend higher than one of Babe Ruth's pop fouls. By document evidence, he proved that a game called baseball was played in' England in the days of Abner Doubleday's great - grandfathers, that it was known in America before be-fore the Revolution, that it was identical iden-tical with what the English have for the last century called 'rounders' and that with a number' of minor changes and one major one, it was the game which our big leagues are playing today. I will begin with his data, supplemented by my own. "One of the earliest known references refer-ences occurs in the lively letters of Mary Lcpell, Lady Horvey. Under date of November 18, 1718, she takes a fling' at the frivolous habits of the Frince of Wales and his court, who waste whole days playing 'baseball, 'base-ball, a play all who are, or have been, schoolboys, are acquainted with.' Then comes Jane Austen. In the first chapter of 'Northanger Abbey,' composed in 171)8 but not published until 1818, she wrote: 'It was not very wonderful that Cath- erinc . . . should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running run-ning about the country at the age of 14, to books.' Used Soft Ball. "But the clincher is 'The Boy's Own Book,' which was published in London in 1828 and ran through seven sev-en British editions by 1849. a description de-scription of 'Rounders' appears in the second edition, probably issued in 1829. The text notes that this is the name of the game in western England, but that Londoners call it 'feeder,' and goes on to describe it a feeder or pitcher, two catchers, the second to cha.se what the first had missed, four bases arranged diamond-form, the home base and the plate beside which the batsman stands being identical, 'three strikes and out,' 'a ball caught on the fly is out,' 'a point scored whenever a man safely circles the bases.' "But here comes the all-important point when a batsman hit a fair grounder or a runner was caught between bases, the fielder put him out by HITTING HIM WITH A THROWN BALL. A missile like our modern baseball would have caused the players to commit mayhem may-hem or involuntary homicide at every ev-ery game. So they had to use a ball of yarn, not wound too tight, or, later, the standard hollow, air-inflated rubber ball. "Following the cheerfully unmoral practice of the time, a Boston publisher pub-lisher pirated that book, verbatim, in the early 1830s. In 1835, a pirate of Providence, R. I., republished it as 'The Boys' and Girls' Book of Sports.' He had probably played the game here, for he revised the rules slightly and changed the chapter-heading from 'Rounders' to 'Base, or Goal Ball.' That was four years before Doubleday's alleged stroke of genius at Cooperstown. "Both Lady Hervey and Jane Austen spent most of their lives in southern England. And the greater part of our English immigrants came in Colonial times from that district. It seems probable that the boys of Sussex and Hampshire and Dorset called it 'baseball,' as those of west England called it 'rounders' 'round-ers' and of London, 'feeder' and that along with the game they brought the name to America. Popular in Early 1800s. "That game, then at least a century cen-tury old, is what Abner Doubleday taught the boys of Cooperstown in 1839 if he taught them anything. Even that is doubtful. In 1839, 'he was a cadet at West Point and it was not the year of his leave. The main testimony in his favor came from a very old man named Abner Graves. And a commission, working work-ing not to establish the truth but to prove that no English hand had ever sullied our national game, made a fatal slip when it let him testify that in the game revealed to Cooperstown, Coop-erstown, the fielder put a. runner out by hitting him with the ball! "There is evidence to show that this form of the game sometimes some-times called '"Town ball" became be-came popular in and about Boston during the 1820s and 1830s. Then, in the early 1840s, the modern game made a dramatic appearance in New York City. An early tradition of the old-time baseball players tells the story about as follows: In that period, Madison Square was a pleasant, level field at the edge of town. There the adolescent boys and the young men used to kick footballs foot-balls or play such games as 'crack the whip.' Then one day in the early 1840s Alexander Cartwright said to some of them: " 'Fellows, I've got a new game to show you. Help me lay it out' At his direction, they laid out a diamond dia-mond with bases at the corner, of about the dimensions of our modern mod-ern infield. He produced a round bat and a hard but elastic, leather-covered ball, and taught them rounders, round-ers, town-ball or early-day baseball ffftMwM::-' ' '- v "? s 'lX 1 'Y ' Alexander Cartwright, first president pres-ident of New York's Knickerbocker Baseball club is credited with being the real originator of modern baseball. base-ball. He introduced one revolutionary revolution-ary change the putout by tagging with the ball. Previously the baseman base-man threw the ball at the runner. run-ner. Cartwright's innovation permitted per-mitted the use of the hard ball. or whatever you wish to call it, with one great, vital exception. The fielder field-er put out a runner between bases not by 'burning him' with a thrown ball but BY HOLDING THE BALL IN HIS OWN HAND AND TOUCHING TOUCH-ING HIM WITH IT. The variation of this play, in the case of a batsman bats-man making for first base or of a force play, came later. That was the stroke which transformed baseball. Henceforth, the players could use a hard ball. The boys liked it. The slap and sting on their hands was a challenge to their fortitude, and the smack of the bat on this solid but elastic ball a most satisfactory sensation. sen-sation. Further they could throw it with the speed of a bullet. The game had grown up, become one of the 'manly' sports. "And even if this story about Cartwright Cart-wright be only false tradition, the fact is that by 1845, when those same boys founded the Knick erbocker Baseball club, the boys of New York City and the nearby New Jersey towns were playing the game in the new way. Here, let me mention two links with the parent game. At that time, the modern method of scoring nine innings, with the team making the most runs the winner had not yet come in. The first team making 2! runs won the game, as in handball. And this, I found by correspondence in 1912, was the time-honored rule in English Eng-lish rounders. The pitcher, in 1845 and for some years afterward, had to throw underhand without bending bend-ing his elbow. And the pictures in the old books cited above show the pitcher or 'feeder' doing exactly that. 'New York Game' was Rugged. "The game spread to upstate New York and to Pennsylvania. New England, however, continued to play baseball in the old way. By the time of the Civil War the newspapers newspa-pers and certain rudimentary sporting weeklies were publishing items about it, including scores of the important matches. Always they distinguished, a little contemptuously contemptuous-ly in New York, between the 'Boston 'Bos-ton game' where no one took chances with damaging his pretty iiands and the 'New York game' where knotty fingers were scars of glorious wounds for it was a point of honor not to wear gloves. During the war, the New York regiments played it in camp and taught it to men of other states, even to Confederate Con-federate prisoners on parole. These novices carried it home; and the Boston game went back to the children, who are playing it yet. "The Baseball museum and Hall of Fame is a worthy institution. But it is in the wrong place. It should stand on Madison Square, New York. Most of the pioneer baseball base-ball players whom I knew in the early 1910s revered that spot as the cradle of the game. Whenever Sam Crane passed it, he took off his hat and said, 'There was planted the little acorn from which the great oak grew.' "Will Irwin." r . ' . , k : " r a ,-4 O J" - ' " ' ' " ' i i A tense moment in the "Grant Match for the Championship" between the Knickerbockers and the New York Nine played in Hoboken, X. J. in 1846, is captured in this Currier and Ives print. The quaint uniforms, i underhand pitching, awkward stances of batter, catcher, basemen and fielders seem laughable today. |