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  • How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed by Thomas W. Gilbert
  • Mark McGee
Thomas W. Gilbert. How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed. Boston: David R. Godine, 2020. 381 pp. Cloth, $27.95.

Maybe the title of this book should have been "MythBusters," stealing from the television show of that name. Thomas Gilbert wants to tell baseball fans that virtually all of what they know about the origins of the game are false or misguided.

After a thoughtful and detailed introduction by John Thorn, Official Historian of Major League Baseball, Gilbert attempts to set the record straight. He concentrates on an era few baseball historians write about—the amateur teams who first stepped on baseball fields.

What is most fascinating is the way Gilbert weaves in the history and culture of our country as he argues the true facts of the game's origin.

So where did baseball start? It started in the state of New York—but it wasn't in Cooperstown, the site of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Abner Doubleday, a Union general during the Civil War, did not invent the game and, as Gilbert points out, he is given credit "for reasons that nobody today understands" (17).

Those who think the first game was held in Hoboken, New Jersey are wrong as well.

There have been other myths about how the game started, but Gilbert reveals the truth.

Baseball was first played in New York City. Amateurs started playing the game in the early 1800s, though Gilbert's research could not find an exact year; reports of games were first seen in newspapers in the 1840s. [End Page 222]

Men from all walks of life, from doctors and businessmen to dock workers, played "bat-and-ball" games. Fireman and militia groups formed teams. Some early players also played cricket. Some may have played a game called "rounders."

Different parts of the country played different styles of the bat-and-ball games. The "New York" game most closely resembles what we know as baseball today, but how was it both different and similar to what was known as the "Philadelphia" game?

Gilbert explores the Doubleday myth in depth. Albert Spalding, known for his sporting goods company and ownership of the Chicago Cubs, is credited with starting the lie. Spalding was upset with people who claimed baseball was derived from the English game of "rounders." Editor Henry Chadwick was a major proponent of this belief, but Gilbert points out how Chadwick was wrong as well.

Did baseball begin with Alexander Cartwright, whose Baseball Hall of Fame plaque names him the "Father of Modern Baseball"? What role did the New York Knickerbockers, friends who played for the enjoyment of the game and nothing else, play in origin of baseball? Was Chadwick the "Father of Baseball" as proclaimed on his tombstone?

Gilbert argues it is not possible to point to one person as singularly responsible for the origin of baseball. He examines how the changing culture of the nineteenth century, including the Civil War, affected the development of baseball as it became "the American pastime."

He pursues other myths as well: were the Cincinnati Red Stockings really the first professional baseball team in 1869? Gilbert provides an in-depth study of the Red Stockings and the personalities behind the team.

How did baseball evolve from a purely amateur game featuring "chowder" dinners as one of the job benefits for players, to what would become a professional sport?

Gilbert regards a post card bearing pitcher James Creighton's image as the first true baseball card. Was Creighton the inventor of the curve ball? You have to read Gilbert's analysis of what kind of pitch Creighton threw. Then you can make up your mind.

Were Creighton and Al Reach the first players to receive money for their playing abilities?

Gilbert is ferreting out what is true and untrue about baseball's beginning. His research concerning the game and cultural and historical aspects of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries fills the book with interesting facts. [End Page 223]

How did pleasure gardens and a desire for fresh air and exercise influence the development...

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