I've been living a lie!

Growing up in Georgia, the only professional sports team worth a damn was the Atlanta Braves. In school, every student that got straight A's for a whole semester was rewarded with tickets to a Braves game (never mind that it was almost always to a game against the Montreal Expos, it was a free Braves game!)

Being the teacher's pet, over-achiever type that I am, I got tickets every semester. And being that I take after my older sister, so did she. So there's a guaranteed 4 games a year that I attended. On top of that, I had a friend whose family had season tickets and let me tag along a lot. I actually got to tag along to the last game ever played in Atlanta Fulton Co. Stadium (the very same stadium where Hank Aaron hit his historic 715th home run 22 yrs earlier!) This last game in AFCS was the 5th game of the '96 World Series and the Braves were playing the Yankees. Of course, it ended in defeat for my Bravos (didn't it always?). But I was there! For that moment in history... before it was demolished... and turned into a parking lot... I kid you not.

Parking lot formerly known as Atlanta Fulton County Stadium

All this to say that I know a thing or two about baseball, or so I thought. Fast forward to last week. It's the final question at Team Trivia: "In 1953, Congress officially recognized Alexander Cartwright as the inventor of which sport?" Now I didn't know Alexander Cartwright from Adam, but I was sure that it most definitely was not baseball. Baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday, duh! I learned that on a 4th grade field trip to Ft. Pulaski. Here's how I remember it: Abner Doubleday = a decorated Union officer who taught Union troops the game of baseball (though he spent no time at Ft. Pulaski). Ft. Pulaski = a Confederate fort in Georgia that was captured by the Union.  Baseball = preferred game of Union soldiers after capturing the Ft. Pulaski because the fort's shape was perfect for the new sport.

Ft. Pulaski, full of cannonball holes and FULL OF LIES!

Lies! Lies!! LIES!!!

SPOILER ALERT! My team didn't win Team Trivia that night. Turns out, the correct answer was baseball. So once I got over the initial shock (and the sting of losing) I did some research and here's what I found out:

Abner Doubleday never claimed he invented baseball. During the late 1900s, there was much debate over the origins of the game.  Eventually, one hotshot named Al Spalding, (a former star pitcher turned sporting goods manufacturer) organized a research panel in 1907 to put an end to the debate. As far as the "research methods" go for said panel, well let's just say they wouldn't even fly for a simple grade school report about the sport. Spalding didn't care about history, he just wanted a good story so baseball's popularity would grow and he could sell more sports equipment. And what's better than a story where baseball was invented in a quaint rural town without foreigners or industry by a guy who later become an American war hero?
 
It gets better. The only evidence the panel cited that Doubleday invented baseball was testimony from one man (Abner Graves) nearly 80 years after the fact!  And keep in mind that, while this one man was from Cooperstown, he was only five years old in 1839, the year he claimed Doubleday invented baseball. Also keep in mind that Doubleday wasn't even in Cooperstown in 1839. He left the year before and enrolled in West Point and there are no records of any leave time. It's also important to note that the reliability of this one man as a witness is questionable because he was later convicted of murdering his wife (!) and died in an asylum for the criminally insane!!! Oh yeah, and they couldn't question Doubleday about it directly because he died in 1893. As if that weren't enough, Doubleday left tons of letters and papers after he died, but not a single one of them even describes baseball, or gives any suggestion that he thought himself an important figure in the evolution of the game. And no written records from 1830s or 1840s have ever been found to corroborate the claim that he invented the sport. The only source for the panel's conclusions was the 1907 testimony of Abner Graves, who probably just liked the fact that some war hero had his same first name.
 
As a side note, I also recently learned that I was taught to spell the word "dilemma" incorrectly. I was taught that it's spelled d-i-l-e-m-n-a. But it's not. It's spelled d-i-l-e-m-m-a. I always wondered about that silent "n." What a crock! Next thing you know, someone's gonna tell me the South didn't win the Civil War!
 
(research from baseballhall.org, baseball-reference.com, associatedcontent.com, wikipedia.com, militaryhistory.about.com)