The opening of the 20th century found baseball trying to pin down the games genesis and a great need to label it as an “American” creation was the real goal. In 1905 the Mills Commission set out to do just that.
This past week we celebrated the 101st anniversary of Albert Spalding receiving the letter from the commission that named Abner Doubleday as the creator of the game and the birthplace was placed in Cooperstown New York in 1939. This of course is the current home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Countless hours have been spent in an attempt to debunk the findings of the Commission since its release. By now the general knowledge amongst even the uneducated baseball fan is that it’s a load of bull. Thus it always amuses me when I see items like this one penned by Jane Austen in her novel, Northanger Abbey.
“It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books.”
This item was touched on in UK Telegraph last month, of course if it was in an American paper it would focus on the obvious, the base-ball and branch off on some other examples. This article instead is more sensible it branches off on some fine Jane Austen links, leaving the base-ball lover to have to turn to Google to learn moreabout the origin of the game, I’ll start you off with this link.
I remember reading that in the Austin book – I had to reread the sentence three or four times to make sure I had read it correctly.
Did you see this bit in Sports Illustrated last September?:
Found In Surrey, England, a reference to baseball in a diary entry dated March 31, 1755 – the earliest known reference to the sport. Previously the earliest known mention of baseball was a law banning the game in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1791. But last week, a Surrey historian said he had authenticated a diary in which lawyer William Bray [any relation to our own Bill? ha ha] mentioned the sport 36 years earlier: “After Dinner Went to Miss Jeale’s to play at Base Ball…Drank Tea and stayed till 8.” Bray, who died in 1832, never again mentioned the game in his writings.
I find it interesting that even the Wright Brothers who founded our beloved Reds and thus professional baseball were English, born to a well-known cricket player in England, if I remember correctly. But hey, it died out in Britain and we took it and perfected it to be a game unlike any other.
I love the fact that it was game for gentlemen and ladies, the working class didn’t play, they were too tired.