Page "Abner Doubleday" Paragraph 4

One of the persistent myths of baseball history is that Doubleday invented the game in 1839, although he was in West Point at the time.

To his credit, Doubleday never claimed to have invented baseball.

Neither his letters nor his diaries nor his New York Times obituary ever mentions the game, and he was never inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Doubleday myth appears to have rested solely on the testimony of one elderly admirer who was later committed to an insane asylum.