YOU'RE OUTTA HERE!

By Juan Montoya

Local baseball historian and Texas Southmost College Junior College board member Rene Torres isn't going to be happy about this.

In the Summer 2009 edition of American Heritage there is an article on the origins of baseball that may cause the mild-mannered Torres to howl foul.

Not only does the article reject out-of-hand that Abner Doubleday invented the game and taught it to soldiers at Ft. Brown in the 1800s, but it also debunks the claim by some researchers (Rene) that Doubleday even had anything to do with the sport.

The book reviewed in American Heritage was written by David Block.

The book’s jacket (right) shows a baseball-like image from an illuminated Flemish manuscript from about 1300.

We quote reviewer Elizabeth D. Hoover, a former editor at American Heritage magazine:

"The debate about the game’s origins dates to the 1860s, when Henry Chadwick, an English-born sportswriter in New York City, declared that baseball was derived from the English game of rounders. The sporting-goods magnate Albert Spalding made debunking Chadwick his personal mission, and he formed a commission on the subject.

"In April 1905 Abner Graves, a retired mining engineer living in Denver, saw an article on Spalding’s commission and sent a letter in reply. In his letter he recalled the Civil War hero Abner Doubleday teaching him the game in Cooperstown around 1839. The commission loved it. Despite Graves’s advanced years, his confusion about the exact date when the lesson occurred, and his complete lack of physical evidence, the commissioners made out a birth certificate for baseball: Born, 1839; father, Abner Doubleday."

Doubtless most people will accept the historical evidence as to the origins of the game, but knowing Rene, he will continue searching through correspondence from soldiers who served at Ft. Brown for that elusive reference that will prove that soldiers played the game under Doubleday's guidance in Brownsville.