National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

While it is often believed that U.S. Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, this is actually a myth that wasn't discovered until it had been too ingrained into baseball lore.


The Spalding Commission, which was fronted by the president of the Spalding sports company, A.G. Spalding, was charged with the task of searching for the origins of baseball. After a few years, they declared that it had been discovered.

Abner Graves, a mining engineer, proclaimed that Abner Doubleday, a decorated Union Army officer who directed the first shot at Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War and later served at the Battle of Gettysburg, had invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown. The Commission bought it, and so it was decided.

In the 1930s, Stephen C. Clark asked National League president Ford. C. Frick if the would support the establishment of a Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The idea was a hit and in 1936, the inaugural Hall of Fame class of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner was elected.

On June 12, 1939, the Hall of Fame building officially opened in Cooperstown, and the rest is history. The Doubleday myth has been exposed, Cooperstown was not the site of baseball's genesis, but at this point no one cares. It'll always be Cooperstown.

Doubleday