By Gary Is
February 7 2003

The new Major League Baseball season has begun. Thirty teams across the whole of the USA and Canada all converge into two leagues, the American and the National to bring you the very best in sporting action throughout the whole summer.

Known as the American National Pastime, but did the American's really invent it?

If you ask every American and possibly most Canadians, they will no doubt say that baseball is a typically American sport. They will say that one Abner Doubleday was the founder of the greatest sport. But is that strictly true?

Let's find out!

Abner Doubleday, later to become a Civil War hero, is said to have "invented baseball" at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. However one year earlier in Canada, 1838, the first recorded game of baseball is played by residents of Oxford County gather near Beachville, Ontario.

So the game isn't Doubleday's.

Even earlier though in 1832, baseball is played (not rounders of town-ball) in New York City by two clubs. One club is comprised of players from the first ward (lower Manhattan). The second club includes players from the ninth and fifteenth wards (upper Manhattan). The club from lower Manhattan evolves into the New York Club and later splits into the Knickerbockers and Gothams. The club from upper Manhattan evolves into the Washington Club which in turn gives way to the Gothams.

So that rules out the Canadians' claim on the sport.

The English also claim to have invented it because in 1828 'The Boy's Own Book' is published in London and contains a set of rules for rounders, an early version of baseball.

So could it be an English invention? Let's carry on…

The rules for "Poisoned Ball" are described in a French book of boys' games back in 1810. "In a court, or in a large square space, four points are marked: one for the home base, the others for bases which must be touched by the runners in succession, etc."

Surely it couldn't have been the French, could it?

The English stake another claim in 1798 as Jane Austen mentions "base-ball" in her novel Northanger Abbey. And way back in 1744 John Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book contains a wood-cut illustration showing boys playing "baseball" and a rhymed description of the game.

So baseball is English then?

1700, In his memoirs, the Rev Thomas Wilson, a Puritan divine in Maidstone, England, states: "I have seen Morris-dancing, cudgel-playing, baseball and cricketts, and many other sports on the Lord's Day."

Yes, so it's got to be English now then, hasn't it?

Christmas Day 1621: Governor Bradford finds the men of Plymouth Plantation, "frolicking in ye street, at play openly; some at Virginia pitching ye ball, some at stoole ball and shuch-like sport."

Oh, so that means…?

A massive jump though to 1200s-1300s see primitive bat and ball games are used in religious observances in Eastern France.

Oh no, not those French again!

Another jump now to 1085 sees Stool ball, a primitive stick and ball game and a forerunner of rounders and cricket. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book.

And that's where the story ends, not because we've found out the first origin of baseball, merely the historians have not yet dug any further back. So it could still be anyone's game.

It could be the English, it could be the Americans or it could even be the French. I bet whoever did invent it wasn't expecting his invention to become the number one game in the most powerful nation on the world.

One thing's for sure though, he'll have a big smile on his face up there now with one phrase in his head…

"I made this, let's play ball!"