Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1945-06-08
The True Story of Baseball
By GRANTLAND RICE
Dear, of Sports Writers

the second edition, probably issued
in 1929. The text notes that this is
the name of the game in western
England, but that Londoners call it
FEEDER and goes on to describe it
a feeder or pitcher, two catchers,
the second to chase what the first
had missed, four bases arranged
dlamond-form, the home base and
the plate beside which the batsman
stands being identical, three strikes
and out "a ball caught on the fly
is out a point scored whenever a
man safely circles the bases
"But-here comes the all-impor-
tant point - when a batsman hit
fair grOunder or a runner was
caught between bases, the fielder
put him out by HITTING HIM WITH
A THROWN BALL. A missile like
our modern baseball would have
caused the players to commit may
hem or involuntary homicide at ev-
cry game. So they had to use a ball
of yarn, not wound too tight, or,
later, the standard hollow, air-in-
flated rubber ball.
Following the cheerfully immoral
practice of the time, Boston pub
Usher pirated that book, verbatim,
In the early 1906. In 1885, a pirate
of Providence, R. l., republished
1t as The Boys and Girls Book of
Sports He had probably played
the game here, for he revised the
rules Slightly and changed the chap
ter-heading from Founders to
Base, or Goal Ball. That was four
years before Doubleday's alleged
stroke of genius at Cooperstown.
Both Lady Hervey and Jane
Austen spent most of their lives in
southern England. And the greater
part of our English immigrants
came in Colonial times from that
district. 1t seems probable that the
boys of Sussex and Hampshire and
Dorset called it baseball as those
OF west England called it round
ers' and of London, feeder and that
along with the game they brought
the name to America.
Popular in Early 1905.
THAT game, then at least a CEN
fury old, is what Abner Doubleday
taught the boys of Cooperstown in
l839-if he taught them anything.
Even that is doubtful. In 1889, he
was cadet at West Point and it
was not the year of his leave. The
main testimony in his favor came
from very old man named Abner
Graves. And commission, work.
ing not to establish the truth but to
prove that no English hand had ever
sullied our national game, made
fatal slip when it let him testify
that in the game revealed to Coop
erstown, the fielder put runner out
by hitting him with the ball!
There is evidence to show that
this form of the game - some
times called "TOwn ball" - be-
came popular in and about Boston
during the 1S20s and 1905. Then,
in the early 1840s, the modern game
made dramatic appearance in
New York City. An early tradition of
the old-time baseball players tells
the story about as follows: In that
period, Madison Square was
pleasant, level field at the edge of
town. There the adolescent boys and
the young men used to kick foot
balls or play such games as crack
the whip Then one day in the early
1840s Alexander Cartwright said to
some of them:
Fellows, I've got a new game
to show you. Help me lay it out
AT his direction, they laid out a dia-
mond with bases at the corner, of
about the dimensions of our mod
ern infield. He produced a round bat
and a hard but elastic, leather-cov-
cred ball, and taught them round
ers, town-ball or early-day baseball