What was invented first rounders and baseball

Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Who Was Abner Doubleday? Recommended for you. Who Invented Football? In Spalding called for an official investigation into how the sport was invented and he totally rigged the investigation in his own favor. The commission consisted of seven men, including Mills and six other men who he already knew to support his theory of baseball being a distinctly American game. He specifically excluded Chadwick and anyone else who had cited rounders as the source.

To give the appearance of rigorous research the committee solicited feedback from the public and received a number of letters from people who had played the game in the middle of the 19th century who offered their recollections. Most of the responses supported the rounders theory, so Spalding and Mills kept asking people until they found an answer they liked. They finally got one from a man named Albert Graves. Graves wrote a letter in which he claimed that he had seen a man named Abner Doubleday create a diagram of a baseball field and then set up the first baseball game in Cooperstown, New York, in Graves said that Doubleday had invented the game as a modified version of town ball, with four bases on the field and batters who attempted to hit balls thrown by a pitcher standing in a ring with a six-foot diameter.

Spalding later pressed Graves for more information and, according to Spalding, Graves supplied him with all manner of information establishing that Doubleday had invented, and even named, baseball. Of course, Doubleday dying in also made it pretty convenient for Spalding and Mills to ascribe traits to him with no one being around to push back.

Not because it had any evidence to back it but because it provided the kind of mythical beginning to a sport they wanted to promote as fundamentally American.

The game of rounders has been played in England since Tudor times, with the earliest reference being in in A Little Pretty Pocket-Book where it was called "base-ball" by John Newbery.

Block argues that rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of each other, and that the game's most direct antecedents are the English games of stoolball and "tut-ball". Rounders was played before baseball. Get a new mixed Fun Trivia quiz each day in your email.

It's a fun way to start your day! A complete trip around the bases was called an 'ace. As the New York Game became established, in a young surveyor by the name of Alexander Cartwright designed the first baseball diamond, departing from Boston's "Town Square" design.

The contest featured the New York Nine vs. Each club had nine players, apparently for no better reason than that New York insisted on that number After the Civil War, the game became a popular activity, as every hamlet, village, town, and settlement formed a team. A challenge match between teams from nearby communities was often the setting for a local holiday.

As interest in baseball rose, changes were made to ensure the game's continued popularity. For instance, by the early s a round bat was used instead of a flat cricket bat. Modern cricket bats are expensive and individualized to suit the tastes of different batters, while baseball bats can be used by just about anybody who wants to play. All players including the catcher started using padded mitts and protective gear when necessary. More importantly, the rules were also changed to give back the 'feeder' or 'pitcher' more of a role in getting batters out.

First, they were allowed to pitch as they wished, not how the striker wanted him to as in rounders. Then, the batter was restricted to three "strikes" i. Scoring hits were soon restricted to the spaces between the bases facing the batter.