It Happened Here --The Man who Didn't "Invent" Baseball (but did a lot of other things.)

Abner Doubleday was born in Ballston Spa and moved with his parents at a very early age to Auburn, New York and is most famous for something he probably didn't do. 

Albert Spaulding was a professional baseball  player, manager and baseball executive who founded the National League.  In 1877 he used a glove to protect his pitching hand, then his baseball gloves became a major seller in the A. G. Spaulding Sporting Goods Company, a company he founded that dominated the sporting goods industry. In 1905 he published a book about baseball which featured an article by British-born Henry Chadwick, a sportswriter and early baseball statistician whose "box scores" helped excite interest in the game. Chadwick asserted that baseball grew out of the British games Cricket and "Rounders." Spaulding took offense at Chadwick's article and called for the creation of a commission to determine the "real" origins of the sport.  Albert G. Mills, a former president of the National League headed the Mills Commission.  Spaulding took care to make sure that no one who supported a foreign origins theory of baseball was appointed to the commission, and further revealed his bias to a reporter before the commission released its findings by writing "Our good old American Game must have an American Dad." The commission advertised for anyone who knew anything about the early days of baseball to write the commission. After a year of meager responses, they received a letter from Abner Graves who claimed, as a five year old boy in 1839, he was with a twenty year old Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York when Doubleday took a stick and scratched out in the dirt a diagram for a new game he had created and Graves had helped him set out the bases. On December 30, 1907, citing this letter as evidence, the Mills Commission announced it findings: an American, Abner Doubleday had "invented" baseball*. 

On Front St., Ballston Spa

Spaulding enthusiastically supported the Commission's conclusion, writing about it in his 1911 America's National Game.  In 1936 residents of Cooperstown, trading on the Doubleday/Cooperstown story sought to build a tourist attraction in Cooperstown. In 1939 the National Baseball Hall of Fame opened its doors and soon after, Doubleday Field was named in his honor in Cooperstown.

The Doubleday House in Ballston Spa

 For nearly half a century Doubleday and Cooperstown were largely accepted as the "inventor" and "birthplace" of baseball until a new generation of historians began to scrutinize the evidence, and found it lacking. Abner Graves story had no corroboration. (Graves, later accused of murdering his wife was judged incompetent to stand trial and was sent to an institution for the criminally insane.) Doubleday, himself, never claimed to have created baseball, nor do any of his rather extensive writings mention it. (One acquaintance reported the General actually did not like outdoor recreations.) Mills, coincidentally, was friends with Doubleday, but never claimed to have any personal knowledge of Doubleday's involvement with baseball's origins, though as someone who helped organize Doubleday's funeral in 1893, he probably was asked about Doubleday's personal history. (Mills could, however, attest to the old soldier's character and suitability as a father figure to baseball.)  Finally, historians have documented that Abner Doubleday was in his first year at West Point throughout 1839, and not in Cooperstown. A detailed record of his daily expenditures and underclassman demerits -- (He was an average cadet.) --confirm he was primarily occupied at West Point.

Abner Doubleday graduated from West Point  in1842 to begin a lifelong career in the military. Perhaps because he had shown considerable aptitude in mathematics he was assigned to the 3d U.S. Artillery and served in several coastal batteries.  At the beginning of the Mexican War he was transferred to the 1st Artillery, joining General Zachary Taylor in his invasion launched through Texas. At the Battle of Monterrey he experienced his first bombardment and artillery duel.  Before the events leading up to the Battle of Buena Vista his unit was re-equipped with larger guns, turning it into a "heavy artillery" unit.  Doubleday was tested in a long forced march through the desert heat and mountains that severely tested both men and their artillery trains.

After the war,  Doubleday was assigned to investigate damage claims of an American miner operating in Mexico and discovered they were largely fraudulent. His work on the case opened up for him a secondary career in military justice. A stint at fighting the sub-tropical swamps to build a road near the present day Miami followed, during the 3d Seminole War (1855-1858),  then it was back to coastal artillery duty, up north.

 Had it been different times, a coastal artillery assignment might have been a sedentary, routine job, but the United States was drifting toward Civil War and Doubleday found himself at the epicenter of the coming conflict. Doubleday was sent to Fort Moultrie, a crumbling old fortress that had last seen action in turning back a British expeditionary force in 1776.  It was commanded by Major Robert Anderson, a southerner. In 1861, as the clamor for secession increased,  and states one by one dropped from the Union, U.S. government forts and facilities became a central issues as seceding states demanded they be turned over to them. Fort Moultrie, located on a narrow spit of shifting sand was indefensible from attacks from land so Major Anderson, acting on his own initiative made a decision.  Fort Moultrie was abandoned and the tiny garrison secretly moved into another heretofore unoccupied fort located in the center of Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter. The southern secessionist forces were outraged, and gave Major Anderson an ultimatum--get out or be attacked!  Anderson held firm, and as the world held its breath, the Confederates opened fire. As Southern forces began to pummel Fort Sumter into rubble Anderson could not bring himself to personally fire on his own countrymen and the task fell to Captain Doubleday.  The bombardment, and the Fort's counter-fire continued for several days but in the end it was inevitable Anderson must surrender, and Doubleday became known as the first man to fire against the Confederacy.

As the war grew in scope and ferocity, Doubleday would have many commands, and would advance to the rank of Major General.  In May 1861 he was appointed as a Major in charge of artillery for the 17th Infantry under General Patterson, operating in the Shenandoah Valley;  then as a Brigadier General of Volunteers, commanding a brigade in General McDowell's Corp in February 1862. Doubleday assumed command of his division at the Second Battle of Bull Run when his commander, General Hatch was wounded. He led the division at the Battles of South Mountain, Antietam and Fredericksburg. 

 Doubleday was promoted to Major General of Volunteers, commanding the 3d Division, I Corps 
at Chancellorsville and a few days later took over command of I Corp when General John Reynolds was killed  in the early hours on the first day of the battle for Gettysburg. Doubleday led a stubborn fighting withdrawl through the town of Gettysburg, holding back advance units of the whole Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, preventing a disasterous rout until reinforcements arrived.
Doubleday's 9500 men held off an army of 16,000 rebels and seven of his brigades suffered 35 to 50% casualties. By the next day when his Corp reached a more secure position on Cemetery Ridge a tally of his "effectives" was down to 1/3 his initial force.  Doubleday's conduct should have entitled the General to keep his new position, but his commander, Gen. George Meade, on the basis of old prejudices growing out of the Battle of South Mountain, incomplete and erroneous reports gave permanent command of I Corp to John Newton, a less experienced officer.

Following the battle, and Meade's snub, Doubleday returned to Washington and assumed administrative duties that included commanding Washington's defenses and presiding over the Courts Martial.  Doubleday and his wife Mary became friends with President Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln and were often seen at events together. Doubleday rode with Lincoln on the train to Gettysburg to commemorate the National Cemetery, there.

In August 1865 Doubleday mustered out of the Volunteer Service and returned to the downsized regular army at the rank of Lt. Colonel, assigned to the 35th U.S. Infantry. He was stationed in San Francisco, and became involved in a project to adopt a cablecar system of public transportation to replace the system of horse drawn omnibuses in the hilly town that quickly fatigued and wore out draft animals. The system and innovations that Doubleday's group promoted and patented formed the basis of the system still in use in San Francisco, to this day. (Doubleday's exact role in this project, given that he was still a full-time army officer, is unclear.) 

The Colonel's last military assignment was in 1871 with the 24th U.S. Infantry at Fort McKavett, in charge of a regiment of African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" on the wild Texas frontier. Incidentally, this is the only time any of Doubleday's papers mentions "baseball." Concerned that boredom and poor morale was contributing to high desertion rates, Doubleday wrote his superiors asking that he be allowed to use some surplus base monies to buy "baseball implements." (-not terminology suggesting someone especially familiar with the game!) His request was denied.

The old soldier mustered out in 1873, moving to New York, then to Mendham, New Jersey.  For the next twenty years he was interested in spiritualism and was active in the Theosophical Society.  In 1893 he died and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, located on the former estate of his one-time adversary General Robert E. Lee.




*There were many Doubledays living in and around Cooperstown at this time,  but this Abner Doubleday was not one of them. They included a cousin, also named Abner from Richfield Springs, who was 10 years old in 1839.  If Graves was off by a few years,  perhaps this was the Doubleday who could have laid out the game. (Graves, after all, was recollecting an event from his youth, some 68 years before.)


Next Week--It Happened Here -- "Dallas" on the Hudson ?