Show the true stor story y of baseball by GRANTLAND RICE dean of sports writers IS is known own as our B national game but how J f many know anything a bout about the real story of base baseball ball including its origin very few among the millions who follow it today so I 1 am bringing to you one of baseballs greatest historians will irwin who also happens to be one of the best writers and one of the top reporters this country has ever known to me is the true of baseball dear grant this year is hundredth anniversary of yorks knickerbocker club and I 1 understand that there is to be some kind of celebration this summer but judging from preliminary notices we seem likely to celebrate the right event in the wrong way the knickerbocker was not the Z V i all P t henry chadwick devised the first bonscore box score and compiled the first official baseball rules book which was printed in 1857 his efforts did much to promote uniformity of play throughout the country some writers cau call chadwick the father of baseball on this account first baseball club in the united states but it was nevertheless the founder of the modem game and alexander cartwright its first president may have been the young genius who by one simple improvement transformed a venerable engish game now called from a childrens sport to a game for hardy young athletes and a national institution As for gen abner doubleday the notices seem to endorse the carefully fostered myth that he invented the game at cooperstown Coopers town N Y in 1839 whereas he has no valid claim whatever hat ever I 1 either as inventor or improver of baseball old game called 9 about 1912 and while many players who went back to baseballs early days were still alive I 1 investigated vesti gated the origins of the game for a national weekly and published the conclusions stated above at that time abner doubleday passed only as a hero of gettysburg the myth of cooperstown Coopers town 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 a pamphlet which knocked the doubleday legend higher than one of babe ruths pop POD fouls by bv evidence he proved that a game called baseball was played in england in the days of abner Double days great grandfathers that it was known in america before the revolution that it was identical with what the english have for the last century called and that with a number of minor changes and one major one it was the game which our big leagues are playing today I 1 will begin with his data supplemented by my own one ot of the earliest known references occur occurs sin iii the lively livel Y letters of mary alary lepell lady hervey under date of november 18 1748 she takes a fling at the frivolous habits of the prince of wales and his bis court who waste whole days playing base ball a play all who are or have been schoolboys are acquainted with then comes jane austen 1 in the first chapter of 4 Nort hanger abbey composed in I 1 1798 but not published until 1818 she wrote it was not very wonderful that th at catherine should prefer cricket base ball riding on horseback and running about the country at the age of 14 to books used soft ball but but the clincher is the boys own book which was published in london izi in 1828 and ran through seven british editions by 1849 a description of 0 f appears in the second edition probably issued in 1829 T the he text notes that this is the name of the game in western england but that londoners Lon doners call it feeder and goes on to describe it a feeder or pitcher two catchers the second to chase 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 is 0 out ut 1 a point scored whenever a man safely circles the bases but here comes the all imbor tnt tant point when a batsman nit hit a fair grounder or a runner was caught between bases the fielder put pui him out by HITTING HIM WITH A THROWN BALL A missile like our modern baseball would have caused the players to commit mayhem or involuntary homicide at every game so they had to use a ball of yarn not wound too tight or V later the standard hollow air in rubber ball following the cheerfully unmoral oral practice of the time a boston publisher pirated that book verbatim in the early in 1835 a pirate of providence R I 1 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 chap ter heading from to base or goal ball that was four years before Double days alleged stroke of genius at cooperstown Coopers town both lady hervey and jane austen spent most of their lives in in southern england and the greater part of 0 f ours our english immigrants came in colonial times from that it the boys of sussex and hampshire and dorset called it baseball as those of west england called it and of london feeder and that along with the game they brought the name to america popular in early that game then at least a century old is what abner doubleday taught the boys of cooperstown Coopers town 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 monr in his favor came from a very old man named abner graves and a commission working 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 coop ers town the fielder put a runner out by hitting him with the ball there is evidence to show that this form of the game some times called town ball became popular in and about boston during the and then in the early 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 a and n d the young men used to kick toot f 0 ot balls or play such games as crack the whip then one day in the early alexander cartwright said to fo some of them fellows ive got a new game to show you help me lay it out at his direction they laid out a diamond with bases at the corner of about the dimensions of our modern infield he produced a round bat and a hard but elastic leather cov ered ball and taught them town ball or early day baseball F eal 1 fill Z 51 N t m X 14 ma 5 61 w U U Z alexander cartwright first president of new yorks knickerbocker baseball club is credited with being the real originator ol of modern baseball he introduced one revolutionary change the putout butout by tagging with the ball previously the baseman threw the ball at the runner cartwrights Cart wrights innovation permitted the use of the hard ball or whatever you wish to call it with one great vital exception the fielder 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 HIM WITH IT the variation of this play in th the case of a batsman 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 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 be only false tradition the fact is that by 1845 when those same boys founded the knickerbocker er 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 21 runs won the game as in handball and this I 1 found by correspondence in 1912 was the time honored rule in english the pitcher in 1845 and for some years afterward had to throw underhand without bending his elbow and the pictures in the old books cited above show the pitcher or feeder doing exactly that new 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 an and d certain rudimentary sporting weeklies were publishing items about it including scores of the important matches always they distinguished a little contemptuously in new york between the boston game where no one took chances chance with dama damaging girg his pretty hands 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 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 hali 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 players whom I 1 knew in the early revered that spot as the cradle of the game whenever sam crane passed it he took off his hat and said there was pl planted the little acorn from which the great oak grew will irwin |