HOBOKEN — Baseball revels in legends. Players emerge as characters, and lore becomes fact.

The same seems to hold true for the origins of the game: The truth is rarely remembered and myths seldom die. But has the mythology behind the birth of baseball shortchanged Hoboken?

The sport isn’t wholly an American creation, but the culmination of centuries of stick and ball games, which historians believe colonists brought over from England. Yet, baseball is still considered the quintessential American sport. And while the

National Baseball Hall of Fame

is in Cooperstown, N.Y., some argue that Hoboken has a stronger claim on the sport’s early days.



A myth is born

The first recorded baseball game in the United States, played with formal rules, was played in October 1845 at Elysian Fields. It joins Hoboken’s litany of firsts: The first brewery, the first Blimpie and the first manufactured zipper. And another favorite claim to fame, the birthplace of Frank Sinatra.

But the Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown in 1939, to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the supposed invention of baseball by a Union Civil War general. Historians have repeatedly disproven this story of baseball’s birth, according to Jim Gates, Hall of Fame library director.

"At the time, it seemed like a good story and people went with it," Gates said. "It's mostly mythology. But baseball without mythology wouldn't be any fun, would it?"



The false genesis of baseball largely sprung from a desire to separate the game from any possible British connections — specifically its relation to rounders, a team sport played with a leather-cased ball and a wooden bat. Sporting goods tycoon A.G. Spalding created a panel in the early 1900s to officially determine where baseball got its start. The group determined that Abner Doubleday, a Civil War general, wrote the rules for baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown.

The Doubleday myth fit the bill for the age's zeitgeist, which was largely dominated by jingoism and anti-British sentiment, said Richard Hershberger, a member of the 19th Century Committee of the Society of American Baseball Research.

“The idea that baseball, that this great American pastime, was British was unpatriotic,” he said.

Baseball's evolution

Historians eventually ruled out the Doubleday theory, but not before the Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown. With the Doubleday story debunked, Cooperstown now takes an “evolutionary” approach to baseball, Gates said.

Modern baseball is extremely different from the game played at the turn of the century, and continues to change, so pinpointing its start is impossible, he said. Ancient Egyptians played a variation of a bat and ball game. Writer Jane Austen describes baseball in “Northanger Abbey,” which was written between 1797 and 1798 — before the Hoboken game. Several baseball clubs were playing the game in New York around the same time as the Knickerbockers, the club that played at Elysian Fields in 1845.

One step in baseball's creation — such as the game played in Hoboken in 1845 — can’t necessarily be considered the all-important step.

“There is no single birthplace,” he said. “It was just a wide variety of evolutionary steps being taken.”

Of the two, Hoboken has a stronger claim to the game’s origins than Cooperstown, Hershberger said. Alexander Cartwright developed rules for the game that are believed to be the foundation of the modern rules, which were officially tested out in Hoboken.

Since the baseball fields in New York were too crowded, Cartwright and and the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York took a ferry over to Hoboken’s Elysian Fields.

It was here that the club played what is widely regarded as the first official game of baseball. The Knickerbockers first played an intra-squad game on October 6, 1845. The team later played a rival team in June 19, 1846, according to Cartwright's rules. To commemorate the game, the Hoboken Nine Social Club plays the game according to Cartwright's rules —with old fashion uniforms and without gloves.

A member of the group, Frank Stingone, said that Hoboken has some claim to the game's origins but that identifying a single birthplace is difficult, given the prevalence of different variations of stick and ball games. He said the vintage games are a novelty, and a fun way for onlookers to get a brief history lesson.

The Hoboken Nine's season this year kicks off April 5, according to the group's Facebook page.

Hoboken strikes out

The debate, for now, is somewhat moot. Stolen fame or not, the National Baseball Hall of Fame is safe in Cooperstown — though it no longer owns the “Birthplace of Baseball” trademark, which it cancelled in 2005 according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Nicholas Acocella, a Hoboken resident who has written several books on the history of baseball, said that the city never really had a chance to steal Cooperstown’s “thunder.” When the Hall of Fame was opened, Hoboken was an industrial, waterfront city, he said. At that time, there wasn’t a lot of interest in claiming America’s favorite pastime.

And, when it comes down to it, most people are content with believing fiction over fact, he said.

“Nobody but historians care,” he said. “It’s a great and fabulous myth.”