Free subscription >> Â, Please consider a donation to help us keep this American treasure alive. Support with a donation>>. Perhaps the shakiest part of Spalding’s letter to the baseball commission is the sentence that describes Graves and Doubleday as “playmates.” Doubleday was born in Ballston Spa, New York,on June 26, 1819. 1820-1892. But it never did. It is known as onion skin because of its flimsy and delicate nature. I know of no signed photographs, gum cards or baseballs. He provided the first set of written rules for the game, and so he "invented" it. Cartwright is a rare signature on a per se basis. There is another type of medium that needs to be discussed, as many collectors have purchased what they believed was a genuine Cartwright signature only to find out later that it was a 19th-century version of a facsimile. But the Depression forced cancellation of Delaware & Hudson passenger trains that served the town, and only a trickle of well-heeled summer residents continued to make yearly visits to the area. Coopers town is not the birthplace of baseball, and Abner Doubleday had nothing to do with the invention of baseball. I will abide by such a commission’s findings regardless.”. Cleland soon got together with Ford Frick, the sports reporter who by then had worked his way up to the presidency of the National Baseball League. An “Alexander Cartwright Day” was quickly appended to the centennial program, and Cartwright was among the first to be honored with a plaque in the new Hall of Fame of the museum as a “Father of Modern Baseball.” Graves, who was admitted to an adjoining ward “a physical and mental wreck” according to the Denver. By the 1880s he had gone from a successful baseball career—he was the nation’s top professional pitcher in the 1870s—to the presidency of the company that was, as it boasted, the “Largest Sporting Goods House in America.” Its success was largely due to Spalding’s talent for promotion. For two years letters came in from all over the country. He had the ball mounted on a base and put it on public display; over the years the battered object became known as the “Abner Doubleday baseball.”. They, of course, are not and are of marginal value. Let’s start with Spalding. © 2020 Active Interest Media All rights reserved. Alexander Cartwright and not Doubleday, he said, should be honored as the originator of the modern game of baseball. paid to Alex. But at long last, after persistent prodding from Spalding and others, Mills issued the commission report. It is not clear whether the startled Judge Landis ever showed Cartwright’s letter to the major league owners. He died there in the autumn of 1926. It is an autograph that dominates the medium it is placed upon. Here is a Cartwright signature circa 1860. The wet ink from the original is transferred to the onion skin. Bruce Cartwright died a few weeks later, and the letter went into a file cabinet. Cartwright was a prolific letter writer. Baseball, he declared, was invented and first played in America and owed nothing to any English predecessor. The forger came close to replicating the hand but could not master the proper hand speed. • Doubleday was not in Cooperstown in 1839. So who did invent baseball – Alexander Cartwright or Abner Doubleday? The father of modern baseball, Alexander Cartwright, has a distinct signature that is not only hard to replicate but was also used in facsimile fashion. He also pointed to the rules that Cartwright and his committee had written for modern baseball in 1845. Perhaps this part of the fable involved a case of mistaken identity. He was 72 years old. Some credited a book salesman from New York named Alexander Cartwright. Cartwright’s signature is a rare and welcome addition to any autograph collection and a wonderful link to the birth of the National Pastime. Among them were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. General Abner Doubleday gets the nod from many historians. As commission secretary, Sullivan was in charge of collecting and checking the material. Cartwright did it. The ball used in baseball was invented by Alexander Joy Cartwright. The seller resided in Germany. Many times the stamp is simply trimmed off. After he retired, he became a prominent member of theTheosophical Society, an organization that researches the esoteric and the occult. Archive material stolen These letters have entered the black market. One of the first publications of baseball was done in 1774 in England. While working as a bank clerk and volunteer firefighter in New York, Cartwright started playing a popular game known as “town ball” or “base ball.” Unfortunately, the stamp was usually placed near the edges of the letter. Cartwright was born Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. on April 17, 1820 in New York City. Secondly, the ink was transferred by a press. Cartwright’s hand produced strokes of marked thickness. One historically significant letter was stolen out of the state Archives of Hawaii. None dealt with baseball. For his efforts, Cartwright was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938. Clark was inspired: he began to make plans for a full-scale baseball museum. • After retiring from the Army in 1873, Doubleday wrote a number of articles for newspapers and magazines. They didn’t. His signature is one of the finest of all the Hall of Famers. Graves was born in Cooperstown on February 27, 1834. CLARK INHERITED a large chunk of the $500 million fortune left by his grandfather, Edward Clark, a partner of the sewing machine inventor Isaac Singer. Answer. To license content, please contact licenses [at] americanheritage.com. Others, including President Teddy Roosevelt, promoted sports writer Henry Chadwick. It is hard to figure out just why Graves would have dragged Abner Doubleday’s name into his baseball story. Frick had committed himself completely to the Cooperstown myth. At age 16, he began work as a bank clerk and played bat and ball games after hours with local volunteer firefighters. So a six-man commission was appointed—by Spalding. Most signatures are signed as “Alex J. Cartwright,” but on occasion he would sign his first name as “Alx.” Cartwright’s hand remained strong his entire life. He witnessed Abner Doubleday lay the groundwork for the game of baseball. He was a cadet at West Point and had been since September 1, 1838. Read more about this here: The First Professional Baseball Team Congress officially declared in 1953 that Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Well-formed letters and effortless strokes create a signature with maximum eye appeal. A letter-press copy will sell for only $50-$100. Here lies Alexander Cartwright, one of the Fathers of Baseball who created some of its earliest rules. The Commission conducted months of exhaustive research. He can be reached at chesbro41@aol.com. For 70 years, American Heritage has been the leading magazine of U.S. history, politics, and culture. This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager. It should be noted that those same historians have now set their sights on Cartwright, trying to discredit his role in the National Pastime. This idea was based on a game called "Rouders.". Alexander Joy Cartwright, Jr. was one of seven children born to a New York City sea merchant in 1820. Graves’ testimony proved key and, to this day, remains the only concrete evidence of the origins of the game. The baseball was like the ones used in the early days of the game. "It was a very exciting game," Cartwright said. He had contributed little to the 1923 drive to raise five thousand dollars to purchase what is now called Doubleday Field. There are a handful of well-executed forgeries in the market all produced by one forger. What did Alexander cartwright use to invent baseball? He thought a couple rules and put a diamond as a field and called this wonderful game baseball. Abner Doubleday had an eventful life, but as far as we know, he never gave a thought to the game with which his name is so firmly linked. The Doubleday story is indeed naïve, yet the Cartwright story is scarcely less so. Abner’s birthdate is not given, but his brother’s birthday puts him at least in the same generation as Graves. Knickerbocker Rules Listed below are the rules of the game which were first adopted and developed by Alexander J. Cartwright on September, 23, 1845. hope this helps. The Commission, chaired by former National League President Abraham Mills, consisted of six other prominent figures of the game including fellow League Presidents Morgan Bulkeley and Nicholas Young. And this life, if Graves himself is to be believed, was colorful. He said he was one of the first pony express riders. It was a letter written to fellow Knickerbocker teammate Charles DeBost. Ron Keurajian is a freelance contributor to SCD. Alexander Cartwright was born in 1820 and past away in 1892. They had left the village two years earlier. For the game, baseball which Alexander Joy Cartwright invented, he traveled a lot to teach many individuals this game. Cartwright is generally credited with fixing the distance between bases at 90 feet (27.4 metres). Contrary to the official myth about the origin of the sport, Alexander Cartwright (1820-1898) is the man who should be credited with doing the most to invent the modern game of baseball. That makes Doubleday nearly fifteen years older than Graves. Years later, Alexander Cartwright's descendants gave the Hall of Fame his diaries and newspaper clippings to prove that he was instrumental in inventing the modern game. Bruce Cartwright died a few weeks later, and the letter went into a file cabinet. His name is Alexander Cartwright and he comes to us from New York City and the role of Provost and Executive Vice-Chancellor for the State … By the 1880s he had gone from a successful baseball career—he was the nation’s top professional pitcher in the 1870s—to the presidency of the company that was, as it boasted, the “Largest Sporting Goods House in America.” Its success was largely due to Spalding’s talent for promotion. Read more >>, The magazine was forced to suspend print publication in 2013, but a group of volunteers saved the archives and relaunched it in digital form in 2017. After about two decades of controversy, invention of America's "national game" of baseball was attributed to Abner Doubleday by the Mills Commission (1905–1907). ... No, Alexander Graham Bell was the one to invent it around 1875. (Diagram and rules are on file today in the National Baseball Museum library. ) But how did Cooperstown and Doubleday get tangled up with the national pastime? Frick had no trouble selling baseball’s powers, the owners of the major league teams, on Clark’s plan. A few years back, some nicely executed presidential forgeries were offered for sale on eBay. An irregularly trimmed Cartwright letter-press letter is very likely due to the stamp being cut away to prevent identification. Among its members were A. G. Mills of New York, the third president of baseball’s National League; Sen. Morgan G. Bulkeley of Connecticut, former governor of Connecticut and first president of the National League; and James E. Sullivan of New York, president of the Amateur Athletic Union. Who Invented Baseball? Clark was convinced that tourism was the only way to boost the economy of the isolated village. Their evidence included the eyewitness testimony of noted mining engineer Abner Graves. While most have been lost to history, a record of these writings have survived. All the correspondence was destroyed in a fire in 1911. These, however, are considered extremely rare. Many signed documents are written in the third person and signed in the body of the document. Alexander Cartwright is credited with being the inventor of modern baseball. You have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. His signature evidences sound letter construction. His only leave of absence during his four years there was from June 18, 1840, until August 28, 1840. • Doubleday’s family was not in Cooperstown in 1839 either. Alexander Cartwright was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938 in a “pioneers” category for the Veterans’ Committee ballot. Many of the Archive letters feature an oval stamp near the top or bottom of the letter that reads “Archives of Hawaii.” If you happen to run across one of these letters, avoid purchasing it and notify law enforcement. It is alleged that Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, NY in 1939. After the Civil War he was briefly in the cattle and farming business in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and spent the last thirty years of his life in Denver. Before the end of the year they had set up a one-hundredthousand-dollar fund to stage a seasonlong celebration in 1939 of baseball’s “centennial.” Meanwhile, Clark agreed to have his family’s Scriven Foundation put up the money—just forty-three thousand dollars—to build a museum, and he donated the land for it. His many innovations have proven invaluable to the game we know today as baseball. J. Cartwright the sum of fifty dollars.” A couple of signed books from Cartwright’s personal library are in the market. You have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. “Quietly, in 1935,” Frick wrote, Clark “called a meeting of village fathers, historical society officials, and legal and financial experts who handled the various foundations representing the vast Clark holdings. A thin sheet of translucent paper, known as onion skin, is placed over the letter. From time to time he released tidbits to the press, but month after month went by with no tangible results. It was merely a very slight adaptation on existing games. Asked by Wiki User. Much to the dismay of the revisionists, Major League Baseball, in a September 2010 statement released by Commissioner Bud Selig’s office, reaffirmed General Doubleday as the man who invented the game of baseball. In June 1924 Graves, then aged ninety and so crippled he could not walk, shot and fatally wounded Minnie after a quarrel over her refusal to sign a bill of sale for their house. • Doubleday left sixty-seven diaries; not one of them mentions baseball. At fourteen, Graves said, he rounded Cape Horn under sail. Be the first to answer! Neither did. Alexander Cartwright and his wife Eliza were fortunate in having strong physical and mental constitutions. Through newspapers and sporting publications it invited anyone who was interested to send information on baseball’s origins. Controversy. Alexander Cartwright Alexander Cartwright (1820-1892) of New York invented the modern baseball field in 1845. A freshly penned letter is placed on the press. This seller was also auctioning off a Cartwright signature that was dated “July 1861.” The forgeries were convincing but all evidenced a very slight hesitation. The letter came from Bruce Cartwright, who pointed out that it was his grandfather, Alexander Cartwright, Jr., a charter member of the Knickerbocker Club of New York, and not Doubleday, who drew the first baseball diamond. Some baseball historians promptly cried foul and others joined throughout the 20th century. By the 1930s the Clark family had built Cooperstown a fine hospital, a huge hotel with an 18-hole golf course, a gymnasium and recreation center, and an office building. © Copyright 1949-2018 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. Alexander Cartwright and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, devised the first rules and regulations for the modern game of baseball. It is apparent that many of these letters were stolen from the State Archives. It is clear that Cartwright was on firm ground in making his claim. It is believed that Cartwright and his friends formed their baseball club in the early 1840s and named it after Manhattans volunteer Knickerbocker Engine Company. They were for the most part reminiscences of old ballplayers. In 1905, the elder statesmen of Major League Baseball, including Hall of Famer Albert Spalding, formed the Mills Commission to answer once and for all who invented the game of baseball. The company’s major profits came from the sale of baseball equipment, and the big, bluff, extroverted man never stopped pushing the game, chiefly through his Baseball Guide , the most widely read baseball publication of its day. Most forgeries tend to exhibit a labored appearance and are exposed with little examination. As of this writing, I know of only one forger who can replicate Cartwright’s hand with a high degree of accuracy. Alexander Cartwright - Controversy. Throughout the years, many of these copies have been sold as genuine. 1 2 3. In 1845, Cartwright laid out the key rules of the game, including the dimensions of the field. As such, the lines are thicker, more uniform and slightly fuzzy in appearance. Abner Graves was a boy playmate and fellow pupil of Abner Doubleday at Green’s Select School in Cooperstown, N. Y., in 1839. The inventor is supposed to be the Civil War general Abner Doubleday; he is supposed to have thought up the game in 1839.This is a doublebarreled historical falsehood. The letter is dated 1865. A genuine Cartwright ALS can sell for $10,000. Who invented baseball? Cooperstown, a community of twenty-four hundred people, was founded in 1787 by William Cooper, father of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, and some of the local scenes figure in the Leatherstocking Tales. An “Alexander Cartwright Day” was quickly appended to the centennial program, and Cartwright was among the first to be honored with a plaque in the new Hall of Fame of the museum as a “Father of Modern Baseball.” Too much money and prestige had been committed to do more than that. It was dated December 30,1907, and was really nothing more than a rather informal letter from Mills, commission chairman, to Sullivan. By Jay Martin and Alexander Cartwright: The Life behind the Baseball Legend. Yet others claimed it wasn’t an American invention at all but a game that could be traced back to England. But in 1935 a seemingly minor discovery by a farmer in the tiny nearby hamlet of Fly Creek piqued Clark’s interest. In the middle of his plans for the baseball centennial, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was jolted by a letter that brought into serious question the propriety of holding such a celebration at all. Doubleday was a United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. Did Abner Doubleday invent the game of baseball in a cow pasture just outside of Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1839, or did Alexander Cartwright set down the rules to the game in 1845? Due to the complex and artistic nature of Mr. Cartwright’s hand, his signature is very difficult to replicate. Alfred Reach, Hall of Famer George Wright, Art Gorman and John E. Sullivan, president of the old Amateur Athletic Association, rounded out the Commission. They were worried: the Depression was hurting baseball attendance, and they were receptive to any plan that might boost the gates. In 1905, the Commission pronounced General Doubleday as the Father of Baseball. They had a bomb on their hands that could explode any day. Though Cartwright did not invent the game, he made many important advances and is considered the Father of Modern Baseball. In 1903 the Guide ’s editor, Henry Chadwick, published an article that traced the evolution of baseball from rounders and cricket. An example would be “. Basically there were three letters: one from Chadwick, stating his own views about the origin of baseball; one from Spalding, summarizing the skimpy evidence he submitted in support of his American origin theory; and a third from John Montgomery Ward, shortstop, lawyer, and moving spirit behind the short-lived Players’ League, supporting Spalding’s theory. ... One of them—volunteer firefighter and bank clerk Alexander Joy Cartwright—would codify a new set of rules that would form … Alexander Cartwright. The blame can be placed primarily on three men: Albert Goodwill Spalding, the sporting goods magnate; Stephen C. Clark, an extremely wealthy resident whose chief goal in life was the promotion of tourism in Cooperstown; and Abner Graves, a ne’er-do-well who liked seeing his name in the paper. The press compresses the two sheets of paper together. . But we are still left with two school kids playing a game in 1839 that one of them “invented.”. New questions in Health. Please support this 70-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage. He assigned Alexander Cleland, of his estate office staff, to scour the country for baseball relics. The fabricated story completely ignored Alexander Cartwright's contribution to the game. FAQ when was baseball invented. Steven A. Riess, Live All You Can: Alexander Joy Cartwright and the Invention of Modern Baseball. He penned a countless number to friends, family and business associates. Whatever original material (if any) Mills based his report on, besides the letters submitted by Spalding, Chadwick, and Ward, will never be known. They are easily identified with examination. American baseball pioneer. He acquired coal properties in Wyoming, just across the Colorado state line. They are drawn by the large, brick museum on Cooperstown’s Main Street, and many still cherish the belief that this is the place where baseball began; here it was invented and first played. The first widely-accepted lie about baseball being a truly American sport revolved around Alexander Cartwright, who … The problem is that Doubleday was at West Point in 1939, so he couldn't have been in Cooperstown. Alexander Cartwright and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club devised the first rules and regulations that were accepted for the modern game of baseball. This game started a new and uniquely American tradition. Who was this man? And finally he states flatly that “baseball had its origins in the United States” and that “according to the best evidence obtainable to date” the game “was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, N. Y. in 1839.”. Ask baseball fans the name of their sport's founder, and most will answer "Abner Doubleday. Alexander Joy Cartwright (1820-1892) of New York invented the modern baseball field in 1845. This is history, not the surmise of a “reputable gentleman” who ended his days in an insane asylum after giving his testimony. Graves had a long life. In the hospital the dying woman sent her husband a message of forgiveness but she also cut him out of her will. In 1938, Cartwright joined the prestigious ranks of baseball greats, a great fact about Alexander Cartwright. First, the paper is very thin. You have read that baseball’s color line was uncrossed … But the transcript that was compiled for Mills survives, and so does the data compiled by Spalding. He is a popular subject. The next answer is that Alexander Cartwright invented baseball in 1845 in New York City. Though Cartwright did not invent the game, he made many important advances and is considered the Father of Modern Baseball. 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