Live All You Can

If you’re a baseball fan, particularly if the history of baseball matters to you, then Live All You Can by Jay Martin is a must read. The subtitle is Alexander Joy Cartwright and The Invention of Modern Baseball. It’s a mystery to me why the invention of baseball was credited to Abner Doubleday for so many years, but the myth was perpetrated by Albert Spaulding, a star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox in the 1880's. It turned out Spaulding was an entrepreneur in the 1880’s, he organized a world tour as the popularity of baseball really took off. Although acknowledging Cartwright’s role in laying out the bases 90 feet apart, limiting the games to nine innings and nine men on the field, Spaulding still like to credit his buddy Doubleday as having a key role in the creation of the game.

 There’s no doubt that Cartwright had a key role. He was born in New York City in 1820. He was a founder of the New York Knickerbockers in 1845, the same year he wrote down the rules of the game. Clearly obsessed with the game, when he chose to leave New York, Cartwright taught baseball everywhere he went. He traveled briefly to California but then moved to Honolulu where he continued to actively promote the sport. He died there in 1892.

 

The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, was founded in 1936, and it was only two years later that Cartwright was inducted. There’s a plague there which honors Cartwright as the “Father of Modern Base Ball.” The plague reads, “Set Bases 90 feet apart. Established 9 innings as game and 9 players as team. Organized the Knickerbocker Baseball Club of N.Y. in 1845. Carried baseball to Pacific Coast and Hawaii in Pioneer Days.”

 

This book is a biography of baseball’s creator who led a most interesting life. If you love baseball, I recommend that you take a look at this one.