BASEBALL'S FIRST 100 YEARS -- THE FABLE AND THE CHASTITY

Once or twice in the proverbial blue moon, a person finds himself rummaging through hoary old attic or closet contents, with an occasional surprise discovery. “Gosh, I’d forgotten about this” is the usual impromptu comment.

A fairly recent such nosing-about venture caused this writer to uncover the June 1939 issue of Baseball Magazine. At the time, this highly revered copy was nothing short of a museum piece, hence still worth holding onto 70 years later.

What was so special about this particular issue? Well, it commemorated the game’s supposed 100th anniversary. The front cover picture featured Major General Abner Doubleday, who had purportedly “invented” baseball exactly one century earlier.

Any present-day fan up on his diamond lore now realizes that perhaps the General did participate in a few games during those early days, but numerous competent researchers have long proven his originative accomplishments to be sheer folly. His so-called contribution to the sport holds no more validity than does comedian Bob Newhart’s still memorable monologue skit about a game company executive telling Mr. Doubleday over the phone that nobody would ever be interested in playing baseball.

It does seem strange, however, that the Doubleday myth had persisted as long as a full century. Apparently, everyone even remotely concerned with baseball back then blithely accepted the romantic fable with never the need (or maybe the audacity) to question the historical “facts”.

Nevertheless, throughout our earth’s 25,000-plus daily whirlarounds since 1939, our society has progressed from a state of extreme naïvity to a sophistication degree perhaps a thousand times over. No longer are we the least bit inclined to accept inadequately-documented tales.

The real baseball story, in fact, is that, like Topsy of literary fame, it “jist growed” from as far back as the 1830s or thereabouts.

Still, that particular element makes up only part of our subject matter here. Back in June 1939, the avid Baseball Magazine reader wasn’t simply naïve, but ready and willing to accept as well a duly antiseptic-laced historical account of the game’s stated 100-year official existence.

We certainly don’t wish to detract from the niceties of our national pastime in this commemorative edition, since it contained a great many nostalgic articles and past era player photos. We hold no regrets over having kept the magazine tucked away for posterity.

On the other hand, thanks to the whitewashing process, the editors made sure to portray the game as having been pure as the driven snow all along. Accordingly, the reader saw no mention whatsoever of George Herman Ruth’s unsavory off-the-field activities, Grover Cleveland Alexander’s passion for the hard stuff, or any similarly distasteful matters. The former days’ Hollywood film industry censors had nothing on this magazine’s publishers. Not only did they scrub the Babe and Old Pete with Dutch cleanser, but even failed to offer the slightest reference to the Black Sox scandal of 1919, when the World Series was sold out to gambling barons.
About all we can add at this stage is that, should a comparably decontaminated baseball lore publication go to press today, we readers as a collective body would promptly toss it into the nearest waste basket. Nobody would dare attempt to convince us that the likes of Ruth, Alexander, et al bore angel’s wings and the 1919 Series went off squeaky clean from start to finish.

Perhaps the moral to this theme is that we seem to have made some significant advances over the past seven decades, from a state of blind belief to one literally oozing a taste for realism.