Baseball’s Creation Myth Adam Ford, Abner Graves and the Cooperstown Story Brian Martin McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-0206-6 © 2013 Brian Martin. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover baseball image (iStockphoto/Thinkstock) McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers   Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com To my wife, Kay, and our sport-loving kids, Lindsey and Scott Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface 1. A Simple Letter 2. A Son of Cooperstown 3. A Letter from Denver 4. The Doctor Moves On 5. Eleven Years in Denver 6. The Doctor Strikes Out 7. Filling a Need 8. The Myth Promoted, Exposed, Adopted 9. An Unhappy Ending 10. Cooperstown Prevails 11. Remembering the Storytellers 12. Testing a Tale 13. Grand Theft, Baseball? Epilogue Appendix A: A. G. Spalding’s Appeal for Information About Early Baseball (Akron Beacon Journal, April 1, 1905) Appendix B: Abner Graves’s Response to Spalding (Akron Beacon Journal, April 4, 1905) Appendix C: Adam Ford’s Letter (Sporting Life, May 5, 1886) Chapter Notes Bibliography List of Names and Terms Acknowledgments Acknowledging the help provided to an author in the course of his or her research comes with the risk of overlooking someone. But research invariably leads to people who share what they know and the information for which they are responsible. This author has found the most helpful people everywhere he has looked and they must be acknowledged for their time and trouble. So upfront, my sincere apologies to anyone who may have been forgotten in the list that follows. Special thanks are owed to David Arcidiacono, a baseball researcher from East Hampton, Connecticut, and a fellow member of the Society for American Baseball Research. For years, he and I have swapped information on a little- known but intriguing aspect of baseball. When I told him about this project, David suggested I contact Gary Mitchem, senior acquisitions editor at McFarland. At the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, I am indebted to the always helpful reference librarian Freddy Berowski, whose knowledge and skill I tapped on countless occasions. Also at the Hall, photo archivist Pat Kelly and library Steele intern Cassidy Lent were wonderful and patient. In Cooperstown, the village’s official historian Hugh MacDougall was most generous, sharing his research into the life and times of Abner Graves. Hugh’s efforts as a researcher and his writing ability are truly impressive. Claire Graves Strashun and her daughters Barb and Edy in the Seattle area were generous and sharing with their memories, photographs and documents. Claire, the granddaughter of Abner Graves, passed away January 21, 2013 while this book was in production. This was just eight days before she would have turned 92, the age at which her grandfather died. Margalyn Hemphill, the wife of one of Claire’s grandsons (Luke), who produced a book about Graves for the family, was also extremely kind, supportive and helpful. I am indebted to many people in Denver. Baseball researcher Jay Sanford, with whom I have swapped baseball research for years, has been a great supporter, adviser and friend. If it happened in baseball in the Denver area, Jay knows it. He also has a vast amount of material about the Negro Leagues. Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, consulted Jay while making his epic series Baseball, for good reason. Diana Copsey Adams, with her amazing genealogical and research abilities, her kindness and her friendship, proved to be a real gem in unearthing information and navigating the reference sources in her mile-high city. Christie Wright, another historical researcher who went out of her way to help, deserves a special shout-out. Also in Denver, the amazing staff at the Western History and Genealogy Collection at the Denver Public Library bent over backwards to help find information. At History Colorado, Sarah Gilmor was extremely helpful. The Masons in Denver, particularly historian Claud Dutro and James Brown couldn’t have been more kind, giving me rare access to the fine Masonic Building in which Adam Ford once practiced and shared membership information about Abner Graves. Wonderfully eccentric social historian Phil Goodstein provided assistance with invaluable information about his city. It is nice to have such friends in “high” places. In Canada, sport historian and academic Robert Knight Barney was supportive and helpful throughout, despite his busy and active schedule at an age when others would have slowed down long ago. He drips with New England charm and he is never far from some symbol of his beloved Boston Red Sox. At St. Marys Museum in the lovely town of St. Marys I am indebted to manager Trisha McKibbin and curators Emily Cartlidge and Amy Cubberley. Their cheerful willingness to dig into the thick files of town history and the papers chronicling the life of Adam Ford and his family was impressive. Also at the museum, former curator Mary Smith proved to be a great help and valuable resource over many years. Thank you, ladies. Larry Pfaff, historian and researcher, also provided insight that was most appreciated. Others deserving thanks include Susan Greer, writing consultant, editor and friend, London, Ontario; Carl MacDonald, curator, Beachville Museum, Beachville, Ontario; Paul Leatherdale, archivist, Upper Canada Law Society, Osgoode Hall, Toronto; Kathryn Clark, senior communications coordinator, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Toronto; Andrea Gunn, Christina Archibald and Deirdre Bryden, communications and archives, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario; Donna Bame, licensing supervisor, Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, Division of Registrations, Licensing and Support Section, State of Colorado, Denver; Vicki Thornton, reference librarian, St. Joseph Public Library, St. Joseph, Missouri; editor Bruce Winges, managing editor Doug Oplinger and executive assistant Mary Lou Woodcock, Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, Ohio. Summit Akron (Ohio) Public Library, Akron; Cynthia Osteroff, manager public services, manuscripts and archives, and Judith Ann Schiff, chief research archivist, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Lara Medley, registrar, and Lisa Dunn, head of reference, Colorado School of Mines, Golden; and the Society for American Baseball Research. Preface This book may make some ball fans a bit uncomfortable. It looks at an old story with new eyes, a new perspective, and it draws a conclusion that may upset baseball traditionalists. Baseball is a game that is near and dear to many of us. We are possessive about it, having spent so much time playing it, reading about it and watching it. Baseball is like an old friend. So anyone who introduces new evidence about its fundamental underpinnings is bound to meet resistance. The game has a long history in North America, research clearly shows. Some Americans may be surprised at the reference to North America. The game is known as America’s national pastime, not North America’s, after all. But the fact is, simple ball-and- bat games were brought to the new republic and to the British colonies north of it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by settlers from England. Those games were refined, developed regional differences and ultimately morphed into the game of baseball we know today. A parallel pastime has evolved with baseball over the years: the unending search for its origins. Like anthropologists seeking the roots of civilization, the baseball community has been fixated on determining who invented the modern game, when, and where. Accepting it as an evolution of bat-and-ball games played by English children has been difficult, if not impossible, for some Americans to accept. A bit more than one hundred years ago, Albert Goodwill Spalding settled the issue, in his own words, “for all time,” in his book America’s National Game. The former star pitcher, owner of the Chicago White Stockings, president of the National League and head of the Spalding Sporting Goods empire wrote that baseball captured and reflected all the best qualities of America and Americans. He noted that a special commission (which he himself established) had traced the origins of the game to a small village in New York state where a military man invented it. Spalding asserted that it couldn’t have been the product of the English, whose preferred game was cricket, he wrote, because cricket “is easy and does not overtax their energy or their thought.”