Reinventing the Baseball Hall of Fame: Part 10

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. Throughout its history, the Hall of Fame has had its share of controversies, but none can match the myth that Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented modern Baseball in the village of Cooperstown in 1839.

The Mills Commission was formed in 1905 after a dispute by sports journalist Henry Chadwick and sporting goods magnate Albert Spalding as to the true origins of Baseball. Chadwick claimed that the game was derived from the English game of Rounders, while Spalding countered that Baseball was an American invention. National League President Abraham Mills chaired the six man committee that requested accounts from Americans with firsthand knowledge of the origins of Baseball. A 71 year old mining engineer, Abner Graves, claimed that his childhood friend Abner Doubleday invented Baseball while a student in Cooperstown, NY in 1839 on the farm of printer Elihu Phinney, where Doubleday Field stands today. The committee did not investigate the claim, and proclaimed Doubleday as the inventor of Baseball in their document, the 'Mills Commission Report'. A few years later, Graves killed his wife and was committed to an institution for mental illness, harming his credibility.

Abner Doubleday did not invent Baseball. His family had moved from Cooperstown a few years before 1839, and he was a 19 year old cadet at West Point that year. Graves was barely five years old the year he claimed Baseball was born, and could not have been Doubleday's childhood friend. Graves could have meant another Abner Doubleday, the cadet's cousin who was in Cooperstown that year, however the committee may have used the Civil War hero as a truly American symbol for the game. The actual 'Father of Baseball' is Alexander Cartwright who wrote the modern rules of the sport in Manhattan in 1845, with the first game played under those rules at the Cricket grounds of Elysian Fields in Hoboken, NJ in 1846. Even if Doubleday played a ball game in Cooperstown, he would have played his variation of Town Ball, not Baseball under Cartwright's 'Knickerbocker Rules' which are the base for the modern game of Baseball. The game was not invented in 1839 as it had been played for many years prior as Rounders, Town Ball and even Base Ball in Pittsfield, MA in 1791.

As President of the National League, Ford Frick worked with Stephen Clark and Alexander Cleland in establishing the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Clark lived in Cooperstown and was the grandson of Edward Clark, a partner in the Singer Sewing Machine Company. The Clark family owned a large amount of land and had built a hospital, recreation center, and a hotel with a golf course in the village. The Depression forced the railroad to cease travelling through Cooperstown, and the Clarks needed a way to increase tourism in the village to help the economy. In 1934 in nearby Fly Creek, a relative of Graves produced a baseball from a trunk in his attic and claimed it was used by Graves and possibly Doubleday. Clark bought the ball for five dollars and put it on display in a room in the Village Club as 'the Abner Doubleday Ball'. Soon after, Clark began plans for a museum that he would build on his land to celebrate the centennial of Baseball in 1939, and his staff member Cleland began scouring the country for artifacts. Cleland met with Frick to get Major League Baseball involved in the establishment of a National Baseball Museum. Baseball was suffering in ticket sales throughout the Depression and looked to the museum as a way to increase attendance.

During the planning of the centennial celebration in Cooperstown, Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis received a letter from Alexander Cartwright's grandson who provided details of Cartwright's Knickerbocker Rules, and how his grandfather, not Doubleday, should be regarded as the 'Father of Baseball'. With Baseball invested in the myth of Cooperstown, the letter was filed away. Cartwright was honored with 'Alexander Cartwright Day' in Cooperstown, and elected to the Hall of Fame in 1938 as the 'Father of Modern Baseball'. For all the hype surrounding Abner Doubleday and the invention of Baseball, he has not been elected to the Hall of Fame, proving MLB knew that his story was a myth.

In 1935, the Baseball Writers Association of America was given the task of selecting the greatest Baseball players to be honored when the museum opened in 1939. In January of 1936, they elected Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson to the newly established Hall of Fame. The dedication ceremony took place on June 12, 1939 with the eleven living electees in attendance.

So, what if the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum were put in its proper place? The building would be situated at the corner of 11th St and Washington St in Hoboken, NJ, where there stands a monument dedicated to baseball and the intersection was repaved to resemble a baseball diamond. A block away, Elysian Park remains as the final piece of the original Elysian Fields. Imagine how the fates of the two locations would have changed had the Mills Commission or Judge Landis declared Hoboken as the birthplace of Baseball.