The birth of a fairy tale

The seemingly well-meaning folks at something called the Mills Commission announces 118 years ago today that onetime Civil War officer Abner Doubleday is the inventor of the grand game of baseball.

After hearing some sketchy testimony, the commission concludes Doubleday develops the basic concept of the game in 1839 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

If only.

Doubleday is all of 20 years old in 1939 and already a cadet at West Point, some 160 miles southeast of Cooperstown.

Abner Doubleday

Nonetheless, swaying the Mills Commission is the written testimony of Abner Graves, a mining engineer from Colorado who claims to be a childhood friend of Doubleday.

The operative word here is “child” as Graves in 1839 is only 5 years old.

No matter.

The Mills Commission is looking for a reason to credit someone – really, anyone – as baseball’s innovator. So much so that the commission never meets with Graves. Just takes his word for it from a letter Graves writes in 1905 to the Akron Beacon Journal.

For the commission, Graves’ version neatly fits the narrative, given Cooperstown provides a picture-perfect country setting and Doubleday’s backstory as a Union general provides a glamorous protagonist.

For his part, Doubleday never takes credit for inventing the game and dies in 1893 – more than 14 years before the Mills Commission makes its erroneous claims 118 years ago today.

Doubleday’s real contribution to history comes in 1861 at the start of the Civil War.

Literally at the start, too, as Doubleday, the second in command of the Union Army garrison at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, directs the first salvo at the Confederates at the start of the Civil War.

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