Where Did Baseball Start?

Where the game of baseball actually started is hazy, since many cultures had some type of game played with a ball and a stick. The general belief is that baseball in the United States had its roots in an English sport called "rounders." This sport employed a bat, a ball and bases that the players ran around. It is also a widely held misconception that Abner Doubleday invented the American version of baseball. That credit should go to Alexander Cartwright, who hailed from New York. This article will explain where baseball got its start.

Alexander Cartwright lived in the Manhattan section of New York City. He was a volunteer fireman who earned his living as a bookseller. In 1845, Cartwright came up with a set of rules that combined many elements of previous versions of baseball with some of his own ideas. This set of rules evolved into baseball as we know it today. Cartwright and his Knickerbocker Baseball Club, composed of fireman, played their games on a field that Cartwright designed. On June 19, 1846, Cartwright's club met the New York Baseball Club in Hoboken, New Jersey, where his team was defeated in a 23 to 1 score.

Abner Doubleday was originally credited with inventing baseball, but the U.S. Congress officially recognized Cartwright as the game's inventor June 3, 1953. Doubleday supposedly came up with the idea of baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. A commission put together in 1905 by Abraham Mills, the president of the National League, researched the invention of the sport and claimed Doubleday had been the man to bring the game into being by December 1907. Eventually, however, it was determined that the commission accepted as fact many half-truths as viable testimony from Doubleday's relatives. Doubleday was actually enrolled at West Point when he was supposed to be inventing baseball and went on to become a general for the Union in the Civil War, allegedly firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. Doubleday never claimed to have been the man that invented baseball and died in 1893.

Cartwright's rules caught on for the sport. In 1857, a convention took place in New York that drew representatives from a large number of amateur clubs that were playing baseball. Rules of the sport were tweaked at this convention. The distance between bases, for example, was set at 90 feet. Games were also set up with nine innings. These teams then formed the National Association of Base Ball Players. The new league became popular and, by the end of the 1860s, included as many as 300 teams across the nation.

The National Association Professional Base Ball Players became the first league of a professional nature in the United States, emerging in 1871. It lasted just four years and failed because players fixed games for money. The National League came out of the remains of the NAPBBP and endured. A fixed schedule was maintained, and players were paid by the businessmen that owned and ran the clubs. In 1882, the American Association, a rival league, was started but could not last. Four of its teams were absorbed into the National League.

In 1901, the popularity of baseball and the National League eventually brought about the formation of another league, the American League. This league began to raid National League rosters for talent. Eventually, these two leagues came to an agreement to coexist, designating themselves as the "major leagues." In 1903, the World Series was first played, pitting the winners of each league against each other.