Doubleday Doubletake: One Ball, Three Strikes, One Man Out

For more than 100 years, Civil War hero Abner Doubleday was at the heart of the myth of the invention of baseball. His name is on monuments, playing fields, and many a book.

Contemporary baseball historians paint a far more complex picture and now discount Doubleday's role altogether. Some have even speculated that, being long dead when the Doubleday myth was created, he was a convenient foil for a conspiracy led by the powerful Albert Spalding, who was part of a prominent religious movement of the day, to set in stone the American roots of the game and, perhaps, to advance some additional goals.

What would be Spalding's motivation for creating such a myth? What were the mythmakers striving for? What secrets were they hiding? What if we have only begun to grasp the mystery surrounding Abner Doubleday and the origins of baseball? Join award-winning writer and baseball sleuth Adam Wallace as he explores the shadowy beginnings of the National Pastime. You, too, may do the Doubleday Doubletake.