Why do so many people still believe the Doubleday myth?

Question

I think anyone who knows anything baseball history realizes that Abner Doubleday played little or no role in the invention of baseball. Yet I still see in many places, including here, references to him as the inventor of the game. Why is that?

Answer 1

People are hard headed and don't like to be wrong. All it takes is a little research and you will see that Cartwright was the true founder of the game.

Answer 2

Abner Doubleday Myth

Answer 3

It makes for a good story. The truth is, nobody really knows, as various refences are made to the game over the years without any real specifics. Alexander Cartwright is credited with the first list of rules (called the "Knickerbocker rules") in 1845. From Wikipedia:
The distinct evolution of baseball from among the various bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. While there has been general agreement that modern baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, the 2006 book Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, argues against that notion.[1] The earliest known mention of the sport is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of boys playing "base-ball," showing a set-up roughly similar to the modern game, and a rhymed description of the sport. The earliest known American reference to the game was published in a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, statute that prohibited the playing of baseball within 80 yards of the town's new meeting house. The English novelist Jane Austen made a reference to children playing "base-ball" on a village green in her book Northanger Abbey, which was written between 1798 and 1803 (though not published until 1818).

The first full documentation of a baseball game in North America is Dr. Adam Ford's contemporary description of a game that took place in 1838 on June 4 (Militia Muster Day) in Beachville, Ontario; this report was related in an 1886 edition of Sporting Life magazine in a letter by former St. Marys, Ontario, resident Dr. Matthew Harris. In 1845, Alexander Cartwright of New York City led the codification of an early list of rules (the so-called Knickerbocker Rules), from which today's have evolved. While there are reports of Cartwright's club, the New York Knickerbockers, playing games in 1845, the game now recognized as the first in U.S. history to be officially recorded took place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey, with the "New York Nine" defeating the Knickerbockers, 23–1, in four innings.

Answer 4

Simple-number 1, nobody's actually sure whether or not he played a role in the invention of baseball, and 2, there aren't many interesting, believable alternative stories.

Answer 5

Because people find comfort in what they know. Try convincing someone that something they believed their entire life, something that was shoved down their throats, tell them to forget everything they learned because we found a new truth. It's easier for people to hold onto that security blanket.

Answer 6

And now I suppose your going to tell me that there is no
Santa Claus.

Answer 7

Probably because that "myth" you refer to is the truth!!

Chow!!