All walks of life develop their own mythologies, and sport is no exception to this rule. As is also the case with myths about the origins of nations, mythologies play an important role in shaping the identities of sports fans, in forging a sense of belonging, an "imagined community", in Benedict Anderson's classic phrase. They assist in binding sports fans together in what they perceive to be an exclusive club, creating a set of beliefs about their beloved sport as potent as any religion or nationalist narrative. Some of these myths have developed gradually over the decades from obscure origins or embellished retellings. Others, however, are consciously manufactured: whereas most of the gradually-developing myths derive from real events or imperfect reporting, those that are deliberated created are centred around events that their creators knew never took place at all. The starkest examples of such myth-making are the origin myths of the sports of rugby union and baseball. Whereas most sports happily advertise both that their roots go back centuries, and that their modern rules gradually evolved over decades, both rugby union and baseball claim to have been invented by one man - William Webb Ellis in the case of the former, Abner Doubleday in the case of the latter - in a single moment of inspiration. Both of these myths have proved to be so successful as to be accepted unquestioningly by the fans of each sport, as well as being unashamedly promoted by the respective governing bodies, yet neither has any basis in reality, and each was consciously created for a specific purpose. It is instructive to analyse both of these myths, and to compare them - in particular, the purposes for which each was created.
Origins of Rugby
The origins of both rugby and association football lie in the traditional games of football that had been played for centuries in most cultures around the world - cuju in China, kemari in Japan, harpastum in ancient Rome and calcio storico in Florence are all well-known examples. Although these sports were loosely known as "football", handling the ball was permitted, and in one version, played at Scone, Scotland, kicking was actually forbidden. For so long seen as the game of masses - to the extent that several Kings attempted to ban the game, seeing it as a distraction from the more important pursuit of archery - in the nineteenth century football was taken up by the public schools. Charterhouse, Harrow, Winchester, Eton and - of course - Rugby all developed their own rules for the game. All of these schools allowed handling of the ball, if only to stop and catch it, though they varied on whether to permit carrying it. At first, football at Rugby was controlled by the boys purely on the basis of custom - not until 28th August 1845 were the rules finally written down. Prior to this, the boys would constantly modify the rules as they saw fit - put simply, there were no fixed rules to be broken, contrary to the Webb Ellis myth. However, the game at Rugby did include many features recognisable in the modern game, such as H-shaped goals, scrimmages, mauls and calling for a mark. A major difference from the modern game was that the scrum was even more dominant than it is today - there were far more forwards than now, and the ball could take up to 20 minutes to emerge from the scrum: the backs' duties were limited to preventing the opposing team from hacking (kicking an opponent in the shin). In addition, as will be discussed below, the game at Rugby was considerably more violent than now.
The differing rules of the different public schools caused major problems when their former pupils wished to play against each other at university, or when they formed football clubs of their own. Thus, on 26th October 1863, a meeting was held at the Freemason's Tavern in London, where a group of clubs, all of them formed by public schoolboys, founded the Football Association, with the aim of finally establishing a common set of rules, However, a split developed between Blackheath, a club formed by Old Rugbeians, and the rest: Blackheath insisted on permitting players to run with the ball in hand, and on allowing hacking - both practices allowed at Rugby School but not elsewhere. Outvoted, Blackheath withdrew from the Football Association on 8th December 1863: on 26th January 1871, at a meeting in the Pall Mall Restaurant in Regent Street, 21 Old Rugbeian clubs formed the Rugby Football Union, in order to play football under the rules of Rugby School. Thus, two forms of football now existed in Britain, "association" football, also known as "soccer", and "rugby" football. At first, the two codes were not as distinct as they are today: the association game initially allowed handling the ball (but, crucially, not carrying it), the method of scoring and the offside rule were the same as in rugby today, and it was even permissible to call for a mark. However, they were already beginning to drift apart, and would eventually develop into the very different sports that we are familiar with today.
Ironically, one of the first acts of the RFU was to ban hacking and tripping, as well as the practice of bringing an opponent down with a kick to the body - this was done because the clubs were constantly losing players to injury as a result of these practices. The RFU also made some very important changes to the scrum. Firstly, the art of wheeling the scrum was introduced: this reduced the amount of pushing, and placed more emphasis on breaking away from the scrum and dribbling the ball at the forwards' feet. Secondly, the custom of heeling the ball out of the scrum for the backs to use was introduced, a change which made running with and passing the ball a more important feature of the game. Thirdly, the scrum would be awarded for breaches of the laws not otherwise addressed. In 1877, the number of players per side was reduced from 20 to 15 - this entailed a reduction in the number of forwards, and a weakening of the dominance of the scrum. Significant changes were made to the scoring system: at first, only goals counted - a try, as the name suggests, simply gave the team the opportunity to "try" to kick a goal. In 1891, the points system was adopted, and has been modified several times over the years, most recently in 1992, to place increasing importance on scoring tries. Other important changes were the abolition of the field goal and the goal from a mark (a mark can now only be called inside a player's own 22), and forbidding the defence from attempting to charge down a kick at goal until the kicker begins their run up. In 1895, the game suffered a seismic shock when clubs in the north of England broke away from the RFU over its pig-headed opposition to broken-time payments, a stance that threatened to drive away the working-class players on which those clubs depended. The breakaway clubs formed the Northern Union (now the Rugby Football League), which eventually developed a new sport, now known as rugby league: the number of players per side was reduced to 13, the play-the-ball rule was introduced, the mark and the lineout were abolished, scrums became uncontested, and eventually the six-tackles rule was brought in.
William Webb Ellis
William Webb Ellis was born in Salford on 24th November 1806. When he was just five years old, his father was killed in the Peninsular War: his mother subsequently received an allowance of £30 from His Majesty's Royal Bounty, and moved the family to Rugby to enable William and his elder brother Thomas to attend the eponymous school without being required to pay fees: Rugby School provided free education to pupils living within a 10 mile radius of the Rugby Clock Tower - "foundationers" as they were known. Webb Ellis attended Rugby from 1816 to 1825, where he played football and cricket. Subsequently, he attended Brasenose College, Oxford, where he played against Cambridge in the Varsity cricket match in 1827. However, he apparently had no involvement with football after leaving Rugby. He subsequently became a well-known clergyman: notably, he gave a stirring sermon on the Crimean War in 1854 - a likely reason why he would later be deemed to be a suitable candidate for the invention of rugby. Having never married, he died on 24th February 1872 in Menton, in the south of France, leaving an estate of £9000, mainly to various charities. At the time of his death, he was honoured for his position as a clergyman, and not for any sporting activities, still less inventing the game of rugby, nor did he himself ever make any such claim. His grave is maintained by the French Rugby Federation.
A Fine Disregard for the Facts
Matthew Bloxam, a local antiquarian and former Rugby pupil, who had attended the school from 1813 to 1820, has the dubious credit of having set the ball rolling on the Webb Ellis myth. Having read correspondence in The Standard on the origins of rugby football, Bloxam wrote to The Meteor, the Rugby School magazine, describing the game as it was during his schooldays: he stated that running with the ball had been introduced some time after Thomas Arnold was appointed headmaster in 1828 (give years after Webb Ellis would later be claimed to have invented the game), but did not elaborate. However, in a second letter to The Meteor, on 10th October 1876, more than four and a half years after Webb Ellis's death, Bloxam claimed to have made further inquiries and "ascertained that this change originated with a Town boy or foundationer of the name of Ellis, Webb Ellis . . . It must, I think, have been in the second half-year of 1823 that this change from the former system, in which the football was not allowed to be taken up and run with commenced": Bloxam did not name the source for the story. In another letter to The Meteor, on 12th December 1880, Bloxam expanded on his tale:
In the latter half of 1823, some fifty-seven years ago, originated though without premeditation, that change in one of the rules, which more than any other has since distinguished the Rugby School game from the Association Rules . . . A boy of the name Ellis - William Webb Ellis - a town boy and a foundationer, . . . whilst playing Bigside at football in that half-year, caught the ball in his arms. This being so, according to the then rules, he ought to have retired as far back as he pleased, without parting with the ball, for the combatants on the opposite side could only advance to the spot where he had caught the ball, and were unable to rush forward till he had either punted it or had placed it for someone else to kick, for it was by means of these placed kicks that most of the goals were in those days kicked, but the moment the ball touched the ground, the opposite side might rush on. Ellis, for the first time, disregarded this rule, and on catching the ball, instead of retiring backwards, rushed forwards with the ball in his hands towards the opposite goal, with what result as to the game I know not, neither do I know how this infringement of a well-known rule was followed up, or when it became, as it is now, a standing rule.
By contrast, some 15 years earlier, Bloxam had written a letter which did not mention Webb Ellis (then still very much alive) at all. In addition, in 1884, Bloxam placed the alleged invention of the game in 1825, after Webb Ellis had left Rugby.
In 1895 - by which time not only Webb Ellis, but also all his teachers, not to mention Bloxam himself, were dead - the Old Rugbeian Society appointed a sub-committee to investigate the Webb Ellis story. The committee interviewed numerous Rugby old boys, all but one of whom had played football at the school in the 1830s. The oldest interviewee, the Reverend Thomas Harris, who had left Rugby in 1828, five years after the alleged Webb Ellis incident, stated that handling the ball had been strictly forbidden. Harris was the only one of the committee's interviewees who had heard of the game's alleged inventor: "I remember Mr William Webb Ellis perfectly. He was an admirable cricketer, but was generally regarded as inclined to take unfair advantage at Football. I should not quote him in any way as an authority." (Harris appears to have been under the erroneous impression that Webb Ellis himself had claimed to have invented ball carrying). He also noted, "I may add that in the matches played by boys in the lower part of the School, while I was myself a junior, the cry of 'Hack him over' was always raised against any player who was seen to be running with the ball in his hands." This suggests that running with the ball was a common occurrence, though forbidden: as Harris joined the Upper School in 1822, this suggests that ball carrying had been happening at Rugby for several years before the alleged Webb Ellis incident (as we have seen, Rugby School football did not fixed rules at the time).
Another witness to the inquiry was Thomas Hughes, author of that classic of Rugby School mythology, Tom Brown's Schooldays. According to Hughes, who had attended Rugby between 1834 and 1842, "In my first year, 1834, running with the ball to get a try by touching down within goal was not absolutely forbidden, but a jury of Rugby boys of that day would almost certainly have found a verdict of 'justifiable homicide' if a boy had been killed in running in." Hughes, did, however, claim that one Jem Mackie was the first "runner-in", who had popularised the scoring of tries in 1838-9, two or three years before the school officially adopted the practice. However, Mackie was subsequently expelled over an undocumented incident: Webb Ellis, an upstanding man of God, was, in the eyes of Victorian public schoolboys, a much more suitable hero. In addition, Bloxam had donated a large sum of money to Rugby in order to finance a new library. With these factors in mind, the Society, in defiance of the evidence placed before it, declared that Webb Ellis had indeed been the first person to run with the ball, citing Bloxam's claims, and Harris's evidence of Webb Ellis's cheating habit - ignoring his statement that ball carrying had been forbidden at the time. However, it also conceded that "To this we would add that the innovation was regarded as of doubtful legality for some time, and only gradually became accepted as part of the game, but obtained a customary status between 1830 and 1840, and was duly legalized first by Bigside Levee in 1841-2 (as stated by Judge Hughes) and finally by the rules of 1846."
It is probably no coincidence that the investigation took place in 1895. As rugby had become a mass spectator sport, increasing numbers of working-class men in the North of England began to play and watch the game. The public schoolboys that had developed the game were fearful of losing control to their social inferiors. Because of this, in 1886 the RFU had banned all payment to players, precisely in the hope that this would drive the "wrong" type of people out of the game - it was alarmed by how the legalisation of professionalism in football had seen the gentleman amateur clubs of the South swept aside by the working-class professionals of the North, and was determined that this could never happen in rugby. Its stance however only succeeded in causing a rift with the Northern clubs: by 1895, tensions were coming to a head, and a split would finally occur just one month after the investigation. It is surely significant that while the Webb Ellis myth is heavily promoted by the rugby union authorities (see below), the websites of International Rugby League, the world governing for rugby league, and of the Rugby Football League, do not mention it - or, for that matter, Rugby School - at all. The committee's report was a last-gasp attempt by the Old Rugbeian Society to reassert control over "its" game, just as the reality of a working-class uprising was about to strike home. It reasserted the primacy of Rugby School as the birthplace of its namesake sport, at the expense both of the working-class players who had popularised the game in the North, and the traditional folk forms of the game, where ball carrying had been common. Far better that the game had been invented by "one of us", and a Church of England clergyman at that, than by the unwashed masses. In addition, in 1900 Rugby School erected its now-infamous plaque, stating:
This stone commemorates the exploit of William Webb Ellis who with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms thus originated the distinctive feature of the rugby game A.D. 1823.
The Webb Ellis myth has now become utterly embedded in rugby union's view of itself: for example, the Rugby World Cup trophy is called the Webb Ellis Cup. World Rugby, the international governing body for rugby union, proudly proclaims that "The legend of William Webb Ellis, who is credited for first picking up the football and running with it, has doggedly survived the countless revisionist theories since that day at Rugby School in 1823. That the game should have its origins in an act of spirited defiance is somehow appropriate". This statement could itself be described as "an act of spirited defiance" against the work of sports historians who have painstakingly uncovered the facts. It also appears to want it both ways, describing the Webb Ellis story as a "legend" while simultaneously affirming its authenticity. In addition, Webb Ellis was one of the first inductees into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2006: the Hall of Fame website makes a cursory acknowledgement of the dubious nature of the story before quickly moving on to more important matters: "While the validity of the Webb Ellis story has been questioned, it is irrefutable that the pupils of Rugby School shaped the game that we know and love". It goes on to describe how the game developed at Rugby School, information which is factually correct but has no relevance to Webb Ellis himself. By contrast, as we have seen, the Webb Ellis myth is completely absent from rugby league: this fact points to the underlying reasons for the propagation of the myth, as noted above, but it is also because it would not fit rugby league's working-class associations to honour a public schoolboy.
Origins of Baseball
Like rugby, baseball's origins lie with a loose family of games that had been played for centuries. Folk bat and ball games have been played since ancient times in the British Isles and in many continental European countries. One of the most significant of these was stoolball, an English game where a player is required to throw the ball at a target which another player defends - originally with a bare hand, but later using a bat. What the target originally was is uncertain: however, as two similar games to stoolball were called "stob-ball" and "stow-ball", from local dialect words meaning "stump", a tree stump may well have been used. If so, this is a possible origin of the use of the word "stumps" to the describe the uprights of a cricket wicket. Ultimately, however, a stool became the standard target, hence the sport's name. In the earliest versions of stoolball, the batter scored a point for successfully defending the stool, and was out if the ball hit: there was no running. In another version, the batter had to run between two stools in order to score, as in cricket, and in yet another, there were several stools, with points scored for running round them, as in baseball and rounders. This suggests that stoolball was the common ancestor of all three of these sports. Stoolball was subsequently taken to America by the English colonists: it is still played today, mainly in Sussex.
Even more significant as regards baseball's origins is the game of rounders: in fact, the first recorded use of the term "Base-Ball" was in a 1744 children's book by John Newbery entitled A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, in reference to a game similar to rounders or stoolball. As in baseball, the batter in rounders is required to run round four bases in an anti-clockwise direction, and may be dismissed if the ball is caught, or the base they are running to is hit with the ball. There are several British references to "baseball", in reference to rounders, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. In 1828, in the second edition of The Boy's Own Book, William Clarke lists the rules of rounders - the first recorded use of that name - where he notes that the game is played on a diamond, just like modern baseball. In 1829, the book was published in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1834, Robin Carver of Boston published The Book of Sports, which describes similar rules to Clarke's, but changes "Rounders" to " 'Base or 'Goal Ball", because these "are the names generally adopted in this country".
In North America, there are several references to baseball in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There are also references to a game called "one ol' cat", in which, when the batter is out, the catcher becomes the new batter, the pitcher takes over as catcher, a fielder pitches, and two other fielders move up in rotation, as well as a variant, "two ol' cat, with two batters, and a diagram in the New York Public Library referring a game called "Four Old Cat" with a square field resembling a baseball diamond and four batters, one at each corner. There are also several eighteenth and early nineteenth century references, both in England and in America, to "bat and ball": though there is no further information about this game, and it may simply be a generic name for any bat and ball game, the US author Arthur Elwyn recalled playing a game of "bat and ball" that was similar to modern baseball during his childhood in 1810s New Hampshire.
The issue is complicated because baseball at first had several names: the most common ones were "round-ball" (a name possibly derived from rounders) in New England, "base-ball" in New York and "town-ball" in Pennsylvania and the South. Usually, these early versions were played on a rectangular field, with the batter standing between fourth and first base, the number of players per side varied from six to more than 30, there was no foul territory, teams were either "all out, all out" (as in cricket) or "one out, all out", all batted balls were in play, pitching was overarm, and baserunners were put out by being "soaked" i.e. hit with a thrown ball. The Boy's Book of Sports, published in 1835 contains separate chapters for both "Base ball" and "Base, or Goal-ball", which appear to be virtually identical: it contains the earliest known uses of the words "innings" and "diamond".
The earliest published rules of baseball were written in 1845 for a club called the New York Knickerbockers. An important feature of the Knickerbocker Rules was the outlawing of "soaking": it was replaced by tagging, a practice significantly less likely to result in injury. They also introduced the concept of three outs per inning. Foul lines and foul balls were introduced, runners could not advance on a foul, and the diamond was significantly enlarged. All these are key features of the modern game: however, the Knickerbocker Rules forbade overarm pitching, strikes were only counted if the batter swung and missed, balls were not counted, the batter was out if caught on the first bounce, and the game was played until one team scored 21 "aces" (runs). The Knickerbocker Rules also made no mention of positions, players per side, pitching distance, or the direction of base running, and that an "ace" was scored by crossing the home plate was only implied. Most of these issues were probably assumed, so intrinsic to the game had they become: however, the number of players remained contentious.
The first baseball game under codified rules was played between the Knickerbockers and the New York Ball Club in June 1846. The Knickerbocker Rules were published in 1848 - there was one significant change, the introduction of the force out, though only at first base. In 1852, the Eagle Club published its own rules, and 1854, the Knickerbockers, the Eagles and a third club, Gotham, established a common set of rules - for the first time, the pitching distance was set. In 1857, a convention of 16 clubs in the New York area agreed to standardise the rules, based mainly on those of 1854 with some revisions: games would consist of nine innings, rather than being played to a certain number of runs; force outs could occur at any base, the distance between bases was set at 90 feet; teams would consist of nine players per side. Thus, the modern game of baseball was established: the convention is also usually regarded as the formation of the National Association of Base Ball Players, the sport's first governing body. Henceforth, baseball grew rapidly in popularity, with the 1857 rules displacing the earlier versions, such as the Massachusetts game and town ball. It is also clear that the professional baseball leagues which originated in the 1870s developed from urban clubs, not from small rural backwaters, as the Doubleday myth would later allege.
Abner Doubleday
Abner Doubleday was born in Ballston Spa, New York, on 26th June 1819. He spent his childhood in Auburn, New York, and was later sent to the village of Cooperstown, the place where he would later be alleged to have invented baseball, to live with his uncle and attend high school. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1838 to 1842: it is very unlikely that he travelled to Cooperstown in 1839, the year he supposedly invented baseball there, as first-year cadets were rarely given leave at the time. Indeed, there is no record that he was ever on leave during his four years at West Point. In 1842, after graduating, he joined the US Army: after serving in the Mexican-American and Seminole Wars, he was subsequently appointed second in command at Fort Sumter, a federal garrison in Charleston, South Carolina. On 12th April 1861, Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter, beginning the American Civil War: Doubleday aimed the cannon that fired the first return shot, and would subsequently dub himself the "hero of Fort Sumter".
Doubleday served with distinction throughout the Civil War, displaying notable bravery at the Battle of Antietam, arguably the most crucial battle of the War. His finest performance came at the Battle of Gettysburg, when he found himself in charge of a corps of 9,500 Union soldiers after his commander, Major General John F Reynolds, was killed. After resisting 10 Confederate brigades, consisting of a total of 16,000 men, for five hours, Doubleday was eventually forced to retreat, losing 65 per cent of his men, but not before inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. Although he was subsequently demoted after a false report that he had lost control of his corps and caused the entire Union line to collapse, he returned to division command and fought well for the remainder of the Battle, including being wounded in the neck. Relocating to Washington for the defence of the capital, among other activities Doubleday rode with Abraham Lincoln on the train to Gettysburg before the President gave arguably his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address. These associations were undoubtedly a major reason for his later identification as the inventor of America's national sport - similarly to Webb Ellis's Crimean War sermon.
After the Civil War, Doubleday wrote two important works on the conflict, and he also left behind numerous letters and papers. Baseball is only mentioned once in his papers, in an 1871 letter when he requests his superiors to "purchase baseball implements for the amusement of the men". In his autobiography, baseball is not mentioned at all. He died of heart disease on 26th January 1893, and is buried at the Arlington National Cemetery. As with Webb Ellis, his obituaries made no mention of any involvement with sport, let alone having invented baseball: indeed, one obituary stated that he was "rather averse to out-door sports".
No Base in Reality
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as baseball blossomed to become America's national game, a dispute arose over its origins - did it develop from rounders or was it an entirely American game? Note, by contrast, in the case of rugby, there is no dispute about the game's origins in folk football, or its development at Rugby School - the only matter in dispute is whether or not William Webb Ellis was the pioneer of ball carrying. The British-born sportswriter Henry Chadwick, often known as the "Father of Baseball" for his role in popularising and developing the sport, espoused the rounders theory: he himself had played both rounders and cricket. In a 1903 article for Chicago Cubs president Albert Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide, Chadwick wrote about the clear similarities between rounders and baseball, and concluded that "There is no doubt whatever as to base ball having originated from the two-centuries-old English game of rounders". The contrasting hypothesis was promoted by Spalding himself, who criticised Chadwick's article in the next edition of his Base Ball Guide, and Abraham G Mills, president of the National League from 1884 to 1902, who in an 1889 speech claimed that baseball was American, a fact he said had been determined through "patriotism and research": the crowd responded by chanting "No rounders!" Mills's claim of "patriotism and research", as well as the crowd's reaction to his words, gave the game away: objective research into the game's origins was very much secondary to American nationalism.
In 1905, Spalding called for a commission to be set up - as, of course, had already been done in rugby exactly a decade earlier - ostensibly to settle the arguments. Chadwick agreed to this, but he would soon have cause to regret it: the commission was chaired by Mills, and selected by Spalding, making sure to include supporters of his claim and to exclude Chadwick and others who defended the rounders link. None of the Mills Commission's members was a historian, and several of them had personal connections to Spalding. The Commission appealed for witnesses: letters from former players provided evidence of early variations of the game, but not for the claim that the sport was an American invention. On 1st April (appropriately enough) 1905, Spalding wrote an article in the Akron Beacon Journal, calling for details on baseball's origins to be sent to James Sullivan, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, who was responsible for compiling information and sending it to the Commission. Lest there be any doubts about the type of material he wanted to receive, Spalding, a staunch American imperialist, dismissed the rounders theory as "pap", claiming that he would "refuse to swallow any more of it without some substantial proof sauce". In response to Spalding's appeal, Abner Graves, a Denver mining engineer, wrote a letter claiming to have witnessed Doubleday create a diagram of a baseball field in Cooperstown in approximately 1839 (Graves placed the momentous event before or after the time of the 1840 presidential election), having invented the sport as a modified version of town ball: Graves, who had only been five years old in 1839, alleged that there had been 11 players per side in the inaugural baseball game (two more than in the modern game), and even listed the names of seven players from an early baseball game that he had supposedly witnessed. He also claimed to have been at school with Doubleday (who, in reality, was 15 years older than Graves). His letter was published in the 4th April edition of the Beacon Journal, under the headline "Abner Doubleday Invented Base Ball". Note how the Doubleday myth rests on eyewitness testimony, albeit of a highly dubious nature, unlike Matthew Bloxam's claims about Webb Ellis, which originated as a second-hand description of an incident that Bloxam could not have witnessed.
Spalding wrote back to Graves asking for more evidence, and in response Graves sent a diagram matching the one supposedly drawn by Doubleday, along with a letter explaining that the original was no longer available and that most of the players from the time were dead: as of course, was Doubleday himself - just like Webb Ellis, Doubleday was conveniently in his grave before claims about his having invented a sport emerged. Note also, as with the Webb Ellis story, the reliance on hearsay: just as there were no eyewitnesses to Webb Ellis's alleged rule breach, so Graves could not produce Doubleday's original diagram. Graves also claimed that the first baseball game took place between 1839 and 1841. Although Graves was unable to provide any supporting evidence, Spalding not surprisingly supported his claims. In addition to the obvious ballast that Graves provided to his beliefs about baseball's origins, Spalding may have had an additional reason to believe the Doubleday myth: he financially supported, and his wife was heavily involved in, the Theosophical Society, of which Doubleday had served as a chapter vice president. Indeed Spalding was residing in the Society's compound in San Diego at the time.
The Mills Commission received the available evidence in October 1907, and on 30th December, Mills wrote a report to Sullivan declaring that Doubleday had invented baseball in 1839, further emphasising that the game had originated in the United States - of course, this had been the very purpose of the Mills Commission from the outset, even before Graves's intervention. What is more, Mills significantly elaborated on Graves's story: he claimed that Doubleday had reduced the number of players from town ball in order to minimise the risk of injury; credited Doubleday with inventing the diamond and the players' positions, and writing the rules; noted that he himself had taken part in games with 11 players per side, the number supposedly specified by Doubleday; and suggested that Doubleday had introduced the put out, replacing the town ball practice of "soaking" (Graves had claimed this practice had survived in Doubleday's version of the game). Mills had in fact been a lifelong friend of Doubleday, even organising his funeral, but had never connected him with baseball or even heard him mention the sport until Graves made his claims.
In 1912, Spalding published America's National Game: as the title suggests, he cited the Mills Report as vindication of the theory of American origins. He did not mention Graves's name, instead claiming that the Doubleday story came from "a circumstantial report by a reputable gentleman", and that he had "nothing to add to [Mills's] report". He also expressed delight that baseball had been invented by a US Army general. In so doing, he let slip the Doubleday myth's underlying purpose: just as, in Victorian England, a patriotic Anglican clergyman was deemed suitable for the origin myth of rugby, so in a country where the armed forces are revered with an almost religious fervour, a war hero was an appropriate figure for the role of baseball's inventor. With the United States growing in power and influence, Americans were only too happy to lap up the Doubleday myth as an example of American exceptionalism. In addition, the choice of a small village such as Cooperstown as the venue for the game's invention was not an accident: it fitted in with American romanticisation of the pastoral life, and was also a place with very few immigrants, thus cleansing baseball of even the merest suggestion of foreign influence. In short, the myth was a Trumpian fantasy.
In 1912, the Denver Post published an interview with Graves which gave a substantially different version of the Doubleday claim than had been submitted to the Mills Commission. Graves claimed the first game had taken place in 1840 (not 1839), and that he had played in the game (at the age of six!) as a student at "Green College" (not Frog's Hollow School as he had originally claimed). In reality there was no Green College in Cooperstown. Despite this, the reporter challenged none of his assertions. Finally, in 1916, in a letter to The Freeman's Journal, Graves repeated his claim to have played in the first baseball game. By contrast, Matthew Bloxam provided only vague descriptions of the alleged Webb Ellis incident, and was dead by the time the Old Rugbeian Society gave his claims the seal of approval.
There are various reasons to doubt Graves's reliability as a witness, quite apart from the changes he made to his story. He claimed to have been a deliveryman for the Pony Express since 1852, eight years before the company was founded. Later, Graves shot dead his wife, and was found insane by a jury and spent his final years in a psychiatric hospital. In addition, in a letter to the Mills Commission, he wrote "Just in my present mood I would rather have Uncle Sam declare war on England and clean her up rather than have one of her citizens beat us out of Base Ball": a statement highly suggestive of his motives for the Doubleday claim.
The Doubleday myth has become just as entrenched among baseball fans as the Webb Ellis myth has among followers of rugby union: baseball historian John Thorn has aptly described Doubleday as "the man who did not invent baseball but instead was invented by it" (much the same could be said of Webb Ellis and rugby). In 1939, the centenary of Doubleday's alleged invention, the National Baseball Hall of Fame was opened in Cooperstown, the supposed site of baseball's creation. The Hall of Fame long promoted the Doubleday myth, but now its website, unlike its World Rugby counterpart, has the good grace to admit that the origin myth is discredited, and Doubleday himself, in contrast to Webb Ellis, is not among its inductees. Yet it also notes "The Myth has become strong enough that the facts alone do not deter the spirit of Cooperstown", and the Hall of Fame building displayed a large oil portrait of Doubleday for many years. In 1934, the Hall of Fame's founder, Stephen Carlton Clark, purchased a baseball supposedly belonging to Graves's family: it has become known as the "Doubleday ball", because of the belief that it was used by the alleged founding father. Cooperstown is also home to a baseball stadium called Doubleday Field, just a few blocks down from the Hall of Fame: the Field contains a plaque crediting Doubleday, eerily similar to the Rugby School plaque honouring Webb Ellis. The New York state government used to endorse the Doubleday myth in promotions for Cooperstown. In 1996, the minor league franchise the Auburn Tigers renamed themselves the Auburn Doubledays. As recently as 2010, then Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig asserted that "I really believe that Abner Doubleday is the 'Father of Baseball'". The myth has even mutated to allege that Doubleday organised baseball games for military camps in Mexico during his service in the Mexican-American War, which drew the interest of Mexican spectators, explaining the growth of baseball in that country.
Conclusion
As can be seen, these two myths have many similarities. Both originated many decades after the alleged event, and several years after the deaths of the supposed founding fathers. Both originated with a letter to a newspaper. Both relied heavily on second-hand evidence. In both cases, the originator of the myth had never known the sport's purported inventor. Both centre on an individual who had no connection with the development of the sport at all. In both cases, the alleged founding father was chosen because he fitted certain values - an Anglican clergyman in Victorian England, a war hero in the United States. Both, despite the (at best) flimsy supporting evidence, were endorsed by an official inquiry. Both were part of attempts by those in charge of the sport to assert their control against challenges by outsiders, whether to maintain the dominance of public schoolboys in rugby, or to deny foreign influence on America's national game. Both have been assiduously promoted by the two sports, and are fervently believed by fans, regardless of how much contrary evidence emerges. In both cases, there is even a plaque honouring the supposed inventor at the site of the sport's alleged creation. There are some differences as well: Matthew Bloxam, unlike Abner Graves, never claimed to have witnessed the birth of a new sport - instead, he claimed to have heard the story from unnamed others (of course, naming his informants would have made it much easier to discredit his story). Also, Graves's evidence was pivotal to the Mills Commission's findings, whereas Bloxam died before the Old Rugbeian Society inquiry began. Graves provided much more detail about the sport's invention than Bloxam did. The Doubleday myth emerged during a debate over baseball's development - by contrast, the folk origins of rugby have never been disputed. Consequently, whereas Webb Ellis is only claimed to have pioneered carrying the ball, Doubleday is alleged to have invented all the major features of baseball.
Despite these differences, ultimately it is the similarities between the two myths that are more important. Ultimately, both stand out as illustrations about how myths can prove more enduring than facts: something which is as true in sport as in every other walk of life. The idea that the game had been invented in one moment, by a lone genius, ultimately proved much more seductive than the less exciting reality of its gradual development.
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