Baseball’s Creation Myth: Adam Ford, Abner Graves and the Cooperstown Story

The story about baseball’s being invented in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839 by Civil War hero Abner Doubleday seemed to prove America’s national pastime was an American game, not derived from the English children’s game of rounders as had been believed. The tale, embraced by Americans, has been proven to be false. To this day, Cooperstown is celebrated as the birthplace of baseball based on an assertion long ago dismissed as impossible. The story has captured the hearts and minds of millions. But who spun that tale and why?

This book provides a surprising answer about the origins of America’s most durable myth. It seems that Abner Graves, who espoused Cooperstown as the birthplace of the game, likely was inspired by another story about an early game of baseball. The stories were remarkably similar, as were the men who told them. For the first time, this book links the stories and lives of Abner Graves, a mining engineer, and Adam Ford, a medical doctor, two residents of Denver, Colorado. While the actual origins of the game of baseball are the subject of ongoing debate and study, new light is shed on the source of baseball’s durable creation myth.