Game One? The sign in front of City Hall calls Hoboken “the Birthplace of Baseball”- but it’s not the only town that claims that title.

by Stephen Silver

As anyone who has lived in Hoboken for any length of time knows, it is known as the birthplace of two American icons: Francis Albert Sinatra in 1915, and baseball, in 1845. While it is undisputed historical fact that Frank really was born and lived in Hoboken, the claims about our national pastime’s origins are a bit more controversial.

For a sport as in love with its history as baseball is, it’s a bit ironic that most fans know so little about its beginnings. Even though most modern basketball fans have almost no memory of the sport before the 1950s (if not the 1980s), there is no dispute at all that James Naismith invented that game in Springfield, Mass.; on the other hand, historians have been arguing for nearly 100 years about where, when and by whom baseball was created.

While games involving various aspects of baseball (a round ball, bases, bat-like sticks, etc.) had been played in Europe and America since the early 1600s, it wasn’t until the 1800s that men began refining these components of the game into something resembling what is played today. According to The Pictorial History of Baseball (John S. Bowman and Joel Zoss), the game’s immediate forerunner had been a sport called “town ball” (also called “the Massachusetts game”), in which the primary way of throwing out a runner was to hit him with a thrown ball.

In 1842, the story goes, a group of city gentlemen led by Alexander Cartwright and Daniel “Doc” Adams began drawing up rules for a new game that they had been practicing, to be called “base ball.” In 1845, they formed the first-ever baseball club, adopting 20 rules not previously included in earlier editions of the game: three strikes to a batter, three outs to an inning, tags and force-outs in lieu of throwing at batters, and the addition of an umpire. Cartwright and Adams named their team the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club.

On June 19, 1846 the Knickerbockers played the first organized, pre-planned game under those rules against another team called the New York Nine, losing by a score of 23-1 in four innings in front of a small crowd. That game took place on the Elysian Fields (now the area west of Washington Street) in Hoboken, and after illustrations of that game were widely distributed, the new sport caught on and before long, different cities had their own clubs and inter-city games became commonplace. The first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings (now known as the Reds) began play in 1869, and the first nationwide professional league was founded in 1871.

That a baseball game took place in that place and on that date is not in dispute- the question is, was that in fact the national pastime’s first game? In fact, the plaque on the corner of 11th and Washington streets leaves a bit of wiggle room in describing the events of September 23, 1845— “It is generally conceded that until this time, the game was not seriously regarded.”

Ask the average fan who invented baseball, and they’ll more likely than not answer “Abner Doubleday.” The most commonly held baseball legend states that Doubleday, a student in the Cooperstown area at the time, came up with the idea of the modern game in the summer of 1839, seven years before the Hoboken game— and it’s to be assumed that if Doubleday created the sport, the first game was played in his presence as well.

It is indisputable that Abner Doubleday was in fact a real person— in fact, he went on to graduate from West Point and became a Major General in the Army, serving with distinction in both the Civil War and Mexican War. Doubleday is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and his decendent Nelson Doubleday is a co-owner of the Mets.

Yet despite all those accomplishments, it has been virtually proven by most baseball historians in recent years that Abner Doubleday did NOT invent baseball. According to a 2000 article in National Review, Doubleday was not in Cooperstown in 1839 (in fact, he was studying at West Point at the time). Also, in 67 diaries written in his life, Doubleday makes no mention of having invented or even played baseball, and some say he never even visited Cooperstown at all!

Where did the myth come from? As it turns out, a commission was convened in 1907 in order to discover, once and for all, the circumstances under which baseball was invented. The leader of the commission, A.G. Spalding, was a former baseball star who by that point had become a successful sporting goods manufacturer (the company that bears his name provides uniforms and equipment for teams to this day). According to Ken Burns’ 1994 documentary Baseball, Spalding, a major patriot, was particularly eager to discover a distinctly American origin for the game, as opposed to the European-begun evolution that led to the Hoboken game.

Spalding’s commission was led to Doubleday by Amber Graves, an 84-year-old mining engineer who claimed to have known Doubleday as a young man in Cooperstown, and said he remembered actually watching Doubleday create the game. A patriot like Spalding, of course, certainly would have preferred to think of the game as the brainchild of an American, especially a war hero like Doubleday. Graves, for what it’s worth, later murdered his wife and was sent to a mental institution shortly thereafter, so his credibility as an historical source is certainly questionable to say the least.

History has more or less held up this story (regardless of the facts) and of course, ever since its establishment in 1936 the National Baseball Hall of Fame has stood in Cooperstown. The historical exhibit in the Hall’s museum, predictably, runs with the Doubleday story and makes no mention at all of Hoboken or of Cartwright and Adams. Baseball’s Hall of Fame Game, held each year during Induction Weekend, is played at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown. Even organized baseball backs up the Doubleday theory; last year on a trip to Arlington, Commissioner Bud Selig laid a wreath at Doubleday’s grave.

While the Hall of Fame is likely going to stay where it is, a group of businessmen in Hoboken attempted a decade ago to get Hoboken an expansion franchise. probably due to Hoboken’s small size and population, Denver and Miami were chosen for new franchises instead.

So if the Doubleday story can be proven false, does that mean the Hoboken story is true? More likely than not yes. However, a recent AP story refers to an archived newspaper story referring to a game known as “base ball”— from 1823! While it is unknown if this sport had anything in common with the game we know today except for the name, we may never know the whole truth.