The Religion of Baseball (It’s not what you think!)

I get worn out by political arguing, and am especially wary of attempts to appropriate patriotism and religion for political purposes. Not surprisingly, these tricks aren’t anything new. I’ve got a story for you, a tale of patriotism and religion and the invention of baseball, that makes today’s partisan skirmishes look like child’s play.

In 1905, Albert Goodwill Spalding, former baseball star and entrepreneurial founder of the eponymous sporting goods empire, was so taken aback by baseball writer Henry Chadwick’s assertion that baseball evolved from the British game of rounders, he formed a commission to ascertain the true origin of baseball. Surely, America’s national pastime could not have foreign origins.

The commission was a sham; behind the scenes Spalding pulled the strings and determined the outcome. Ignoring all evidence, the commission concluded baseball had been invented ex nihilo in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, by Abner Doubleday. Never mind that bat and ball games go back to ancient Egypt, or that in Northanger Abbey in 1798 Jane Austen mentions “base ball” or that Pittsfield, Massachusetts, had an ordinance in 1791 prohibiting playing baseball close to the town hall for fear of broken windows. Abner Doubleday had two things going for him: he was an American hero, the man who had ordered the first shots of the Civil War on the Union side at Fort Sumter and later distinguished himself at the Battle of Gettysburg. Second, and probably most importantly, he was dead, which meant he could not protest this strange, unexpected honor. When he died in 1893, none of his obituaries mentioned baseball and none of his letters or papers contained anything about baseball. He was actually a cadet at West Point in 1839 when he was supposed to have been inventing baseball, and his family had moved from Cooperstown a year earlier.

Here’s where the plot thickens: Albert Spalding nominated Doubleday not just because he was a war hero, but also for religious reasons.  

Spalding was a man of many accomplishments. He’d been a star pitcher in the 1870s and popularized wearing a glove in the field, moved into management and had the idea that it would be helpful to take his team in the spring to a warm spot to practice before the season began, helped develop the National League, and later found his true calling selling sporting goods. But his life was complicated. He fathered a child out of wedlock who was raised by his sister and given the name Spalding Brown. After Spalding’s first wife died, he married the mother of his child and they legally adopted their son, renaming him Spalding Brown Spalding. Although he went by Albert Spalding, Jr., instead of his legal name of Spalding Spalding, and although he resembled his father, his parents kept up the charade that he was their adopted son throughout their lifetimes.

All that would simply be awkward trivia if not for one other thing about Spalding’s second wife, Elizabeth Churchill. She was a Theosophist, and the newlyweds moved to the Theosophist compound at Point Loma, California. Theosophy is a mix of mystical experience with philosophy that ranges far afield from orthodox religious belief. Albert Spalding became a Theosophist, though many of his former associates were skeptical of his spiritual convictions. Cap Anson, a preeminent baseball star of the 19^th century said, “I don’t know what in thunder a theosophist is, but if it’s something you can make money out of you can bet Al Spalding will be one.”

Theosophy was founded in 1875 by three people including Madame Helena Blavatsky. It was New Age long before anyone heard of New Age, blending various elements of Gnosticism and Eastern Religions. Madame Blavatsky called it the perfect synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy. Born in Russia, Madame Blavatsky’s life was fascinating, but for our purposes know this: When Madame Blavatsky left the United States for India in 1878, she hand-picked her successor from a number of followers. Whom did she choose? None other than Civil War hero and Theosophy adherent Abner Doubleday. In 1878, Doubleday became president of the American Theosophical Society. There may not be anything about baseball in his letters and papers, but there is plenty about Theosophy.

In 1905, when Albert Spalding needed a founder for baseball, he killed two birds with one stone, selecting not just a Civil War hero but a Theosophist. This gave the game a wholly American origin and, Spalding hoped, legitimized Theosophy by bringing the movement into the mainstream of American life. The commission’s anointing of Doubleday gave baseball a creation myth that claimed it was born at a specific time in a specific place. Baseball not only had a new a hero, it now had a sacred origin ground. (Our minds much prefer a tidy story over untraceable evolution.)

Cooperstown is a quaint village, the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is attractive and extremely well-done, and a visit there is worth the trip. Yet as you venture off the beaten path in upstate New York, you may wonder why you are heading to this remote spot. The answer is religion and patriotism.  

In actuality, Henry Chadwick was right. Baseball is a derivation of rounders, an English game. Different versions of baseball sprang up in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Many of the rules that give us baseball as we know it today were formalized by teams playing in the 1840s at the Elysian Fields across the Hudson River from Manhattan in Hoboken, New Jersey. The game was played for exercise and from its beginning, as an excuse to gamble. (This is something the commission also swept under the rug.) The Civil War helped spread the game as troops moved across the country and Abner Doubleday’s only involvement in baseball was approving the distribution of equipment for recreation for his troops during the war. That’s the real story. But the myth that a Civil War hero and later Theosophist invented baseball out of the blue in 1839 lives on. As Albert Spalding understood and many others have imitated over the years, why let the facts stand in the way of a good story?

My thanks to John Thorn and Baseball in the Garden of Eden for information in this article.