by bruce gourley, Online Editor • photos by john pierce
‘It is about time for our young men to disband their baseball clubs … and go to work.’
Baptists & Baseball1 Myths, musings and memories
A
ll across America, millions of citizens are waking up to the November blues: the bats are silent, the bases are packed away and the crowds are gone. Baseball season is over. For the lucky fans of this year’s World Series champs, wistfulness is tempered by the foreverglorious memories of October. Yet the harsh reality is that the great American pastime has given way to autumn chill, leaving fans out in the cold, wondering what magic awaits next season. Baseball, the subject of mythology, owes much to a Baptist family. Or so the legend goes. While baseball’s roots can be traced as far back as the 14th century and an English game called “stoolball” (forbidden in churchyards) that preceded “rounders” and “cricket,” an American myth places the beginnings of baseball in Elihu Phinney’s cow pasture in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1839. Phinney was the first printer in Cooperstown, and the publisher of regional Baptist associational annual minutes. Now the quaint village is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. 38 | Feature
In this mythical story, Abner Doubleday, a 20-year-old from an established Baptist family, is the inventor of baseball. His father, Ulysses F. Doubleday, was a prominent Baptist deacon and writer of religious literature. Following his recreational pursuits in Cooperstown as a young man, Abner enlisted in the military and served in the American Civil War. At Fort Sumter, Captain Abner Doubleday fired the first shot of the Civil War from the Union side, returning fire from Confederate forces. At Gettysburg, Doubleday served as the commanding Union officer during the first day of fighting. In November 1863, Doubleday rode on the train with Lincoln as the president traveled to deliver the Gettysburg address. Yet for all this, Doubleday is best remembered, without adequate historical evidence, as the inventor of baseball. And for many years, Baptists were not particularly fond of such recreation. The first mention of baseball in the North Carolina Baptist newspaper, Biblical Recorder, appeared in 1860 and was innocuous enough.
In an editorial on “Physical Education,” the writer gave his approval of “a general awakening in various quarters to the importance of physical education and discipline. The corporation of Yale College, at the suggestion of the faculty, are about erecting a large gymnasium for the whole University. Cricket and base-ball clubs are coming rapidly into favor.” Many other Baptists, however, were not keen on physical recreation. An 1867 Baptist article offered a somber warning about playing baseball: “Lemuel G. Perry, a student at Brown University, died last week of abscess brought on by excessive exercise at the time of the University match game of baseball between the students of Harvard and Brown, some two weeks since.” The following year, during the hard times of the post-war South, a Baptist editor declared “it is about time for our young men to disband their baseball clubs, and dispense with their tournaments, and go to work.” In 1869 the first professional baseball team took the field. The Cincinnati Red November 2013