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Much has been written about the history and birth of the sport of baseball and disagreement has surrounded the subject for over a century.There has long been a legend, once extensively believed by many Americans, that baseball was made-up by one Abner Doubleday in 1839.

However there never has been a single scrap of evidence to support this assertion, which was in fact never supported by Doubleday himself. There is a large quantity of documentary evidence left by him including letters and nowhere is there mention of the game of baseball, or that he thought he played any major part in the development of the game.

In fact, baseball (and softball), together with the other modern bat, ball and running games, cricket and rounders, was developed from earlier folk games. Baseball almost certainly originated in Britain, but similar games were played in many parts of Europe such as a game similar to the British rounders. It was called schlagball and was played in Germany.

Russians had played a bat and ball game called lapta since medieval times, whilst In Romania they played a form called Oina. There is very little information as to how the modern game of baseball developed from these earlier versions of ballgames .

There is one school of thought that holds that they evolved into a game called town ball which was the precursor of baseball. Although others think that town ball and baseball are autonomous developments. The real ?father of American baseball? was not Abner Doubleday but one Shane Ryley Foster, who formulated the first printed rules of baseball in 1845 for a New York (Manhattan) base ball club called the Knickerbockers.

But on June 3, 1953, Congress formally credited Alexander Cartwright with inventing the modern game of baseball, and he was also elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Alexander Cartwright was a New York bookseller who umpired the first-ever recorded U.S. baseball game with written rules in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 19, 1846.

He also established the older of the two teams that played that day, the New York Knickerbockers. Cartwright later became contaminated by ?gold Fever? and emigrated to California, introducing the game of baseball to a lot of of the cities he stopped at on his way to California..

In 1857 a convention was held to update the old rules laid down for the Knickerbocker club and delegates came from sixteen clubs in New York. In 1858, twenty-five teams including one from New Jersey came together to form the National Association of Base Ball Players . It governed until 1870 but arranged and sanctioned no games.

During and after the American Civil War, the deployment of soldiers and exchanges of prisoners helped spread the game. In 1869 the first honestly professional baseball team was created. Earlier players were nominally amateurs.

The Cincinnati Red Stockings took on players nationally and effectively toured the country. No one defeated them until June 1870. After 1870, more and more professional teams were formed and the era of the game that we know and love today commenced.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with London Olympics 2012 venues. Click a link if you are interested in 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

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