ABSTRACT
Simple bat-and-ball games were played in the United States of America (USA) early in the nineteenth century. During the 1840s-1860s three games, Philadelphia ‘town ball’, New York ‘base’ or ‘round ball’ and cricket, competed for ascendancy. Cricket, already codified and well established in England, waned in popularity while, concomitantly, baseball emerged in a developed and refined modern form. In 1907, a Commission that had been established to examine the origins of baseball published a report stating that the origins of baseball were owed entirely to the innovation of a single American, Abner Doubleday, in 1839. While these claimed origins have since been shown to be a fabrication, they nonetheless constitute a powerful sporting myth, crystallized in the minds of succeeding generations of Americans, apparently wanting to believe that ‘their’ national sport was entirely conceived within the USA. Using a figurational sociological approach, this chapter endeavours to explain the processes underlying the development of baseball and the processes involved in the creation of the ‘Doubleday myth’.
