The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-06-26
Fans Should Honor Memory
 of the Father of Baseball

"Doubleday, Abner. military offic- CT; born in Ba1lston Spa, N. Y., June 26, 1819."
 In this form begins the encyclope- die biographies of the man to whom all fandom owes a debt of gratitude as the father and inventor of base ball.
 The reference works pay little or no attention to this, his greatest achievement, but devote considerable space to setting forth the facts that he graduated from West Point in 1842, that he serVide in the artillery in the Mexican war, and later fought the festive redskins in the Seminole war; that he was a captain at Fort Sum ter during the siege and fired the first gun upon the Confederates from that fort; that he rose rapidly in rank dur ing the civil war, becoming a major general in 1862, and that he took a. prominent and gallant part in Fred ericksburg, Chancenorsville and oth- CT battles, that he retired from the army in 1873, and thereafter lived at Mendham, N. J., where he died in 1898.
 It was at Cooperstown, N. Y, a will lage in Otsego county in the central part of the Empire state, that base ball was first played in 1889, and the future general was the originator and inventor of the game, which soon gained a wide vogue among the boys and young men of the neighborhood. Of course, the present day fan would turn up his nose at an exhibition of such crude playing as that at Coop erstown in 1899, but the pastime of young Doubleday and his comrades contained the germs of the great sport of the future.
 Three years from today will be the centennial of Doubleday's birth, and it q T1U of United States and Canada to begin preparations for a widespread ob- servance of June 26, 1919. It will be the first time that baseball enthusi- asts have had the opportunity to cele- brate a centennial of any important person or event connected with the game, and certainly none deserves higher honor than the man who in vnted it. A little later. of course, we shall celebrate the .centennia1s of Ho- great players, but in the meantime Abner Doubleday should not be for gotten.
 The Doubleday brand of baseball didn't have a great deal in common | with the game as it is now played, | except that bases, bats and balls were l used. The original mine" was an 1 eleven" and to be put out a batter | had to be hit by the ball while run ming to the base. The diamond form l of the field was the suggestion or one | of DoubIeday's contemporaries, Alex ander J. Cartwright, who was the primo mover in the first regular base | ball club, the Knickerbockers of New | York, and who drafted the first set of rules governing the game in 1845. Henry Chadwick, often called the Father of Baseball published a rule
 book in 1857, and played an important 1 part in the modern development of 1 the game, but his claim to paternity l must give way to that of Doubleday. l Doubleday lived to see baseball the | favorite pastime of his native land, and of Canada as we'll The General
 was modest, quite man, and seldom i had anything to say about his connec- i ton with the early history of base
 ball. On one occasion, it is related
 while visiting in Philadelphia, he dio | permit himself a little boast. A
 friend invited him to baseball game | and inquired if he knew anything l about the sport.
 'tKnow anything about t?' smiled
 the General; "why, I invented it.''