Posted on 05/12/2004 3:02:38 PM PDT by 68skylark
PITTSFIELD, Mass., May 11 - A generation ago, the popular belief was that baseball was invented in 1839 in Cooperstown, N.Y., by Abner Doubleday. That belief was later refined, with the birth date shifting to 1846, in Hoboken, N.J. Still later, a New York University librarian found two newspaper references to some form of "base ball" in 1823 in New York City.
Now comes a new claimant. Pittsfield, a city of 40,000 in the Berkshires, was the site Tuesday of a news conference in which the star was a document from 1791 that suggests the game of baseball had already become a nuisance here when the nation was in its infancy. As such, the document moves the American version of the game back into the 18th century.
The discovery of the document had its origins in some late-night research by John Thorn, a baseball historian. At the news conference in City Hall, he was like a proud father as the 1791 document, a bylaw passed by the town council then, was displayed in a glass case. The document is a sheet of tan paper, slightly smaller than 8 inches by 10 inches. The words it contained voiced concern over broken windows in a new meeting house, or church. In part, it read:
" for the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House no Person or Inhabitant of said Town, shall be permitted to play at any Game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Batball, Football, Cat, Fives or any other Game or Games with Balls, within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House."
Violators were warned that they would be fined five shillings.
Thorn, 57, lives in Kingston, N.Y. He said the discovery of the document began by accident. He has been writing baseball books for 30 years, and the eighth edition of his "Total Baseball," a 2,688-page statistical encyclopedia he edits, is near completion. He is also writing a book on baseball's origins, and it was that effort that had him up late.
"A year ago, at 2 a.m., I was searching the Net for baseball with various spellings: B-A-S-S, B-A-S-E, B-A-S-E with a hyphen,'' he said at the news conference. "For some reason, I don't know why, I was looking at the University of Michigan's site 'Making of America.' There was a reference to a 1734-1800 history of Pittsfield, and there it was. It was not just a reference to a game of ball, but it was the real thing: baseball."
When Thorn appeared last month on ESPN's mock trial called, "Break Up the Bombers: The Yankees on Trial," Thorn mentioned his finding to Jim Bouton, a former Yankees pitcher.
For Bouton, 65, the news was a jackpot. He lives in North Egremont, Mass., a half-hour drive from here, and he is part of a group that is restoring Pittsfield's ballpark, Wahconah Park. He told Thorn the discovery was something big for this city.
Thorn called Pittsfield officials, who assured him that council records dating from the 18th century were stored at the Berkshire Athenaeum, the city's public library. Bouton encouraged the officials to look for the original document. A librarian, an archivist, a local historian and volunteers started looking.
The Michigan reference on the Web site cited a 1793 document. Nothing turned up. The searchers kept searching, and 10 days after they started, they found what they were looking for in council minutes from 1791, not 1793.
The document in question was taken to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center, and experts there said it was real. Now Pittsfield can lay claim to being the birthplace of baseball, but for how long?
"There's no evidence yet of games played here then," Thorn said, "but not many people are looking into it.''
He added: "I don't have a life other than this, so I'll be looking for evidence every day. We'll find something new."
What next for the document?
"It's going back to the vault where we found it," Mayor James Ruberto said.
What next for Cooperstown, Hoboken and the other would-be birthplaces of baseball?
Thorn's assessment: "Abner Doubleday, Santa Claus and Dracula are equally mythic figures."
Before I read this article, I thought that the earliest known mention of "base ball" was in a location that few sports fans would ever find -- an 1803 romance novel by Jane Austen, "Northanger Abbey."
Abner Doubleday was a Union officer during the Civil War.
James Naismith was teaching physical education at the Young Men’s Christian Association Training College in Springfield, Massachusetts, and felt discouraged because calisthenics and gymnastics didn’t engage his students.
What was needed was an indoor wintertime game that combined recreation and competition. One evening he worked out the fundamentals of a game that would quickly catch on. Two peach half-bushel baskets gave the name to the brand new sport in late 1891.
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