The mythical story of Abner Doubleday inventing the game of baseball in Cooperstown, New York,  has been circulating for more than a century. The tale was actually the creation of a special panel of experts assembled by Albert G. Spalding, a former professional baseball player who had become a successful sporting goods entrepreneur.

Spalding, in the early years of the 20th century, became annoyed that baseball was generally believed to have been derived from the older English game of rounders.

He became determined to prove that baseball was entirely American, so he formed a commission in 1905 to solicit historical research and determine the roots of the game.

The commission was headed by Abraham G. Mills, a Civil War veteran who later served as president of the National League. The "Mills Commision," as it became known, enlisted the help of six prominent citizens who had connections to the game.

The public was asked to submit information. And an elderly man, Abner Graves, wrote a letter in which he told a touching story of how Abner Doubleday formulated the first rules of baseball in 1839.

The story told by Graves was never investigated and it contained obvious inconsistencies. But the Mills Commission declared it to be the true history of baseball's origin.

Did Abner Doubleday Know He Invented Baseball?

One aspect of the story made it especially attractive: Abner Doubleday had been an American hero. A West Point graduate, he served as a general in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Doubleday had been second-in-command at Fort Sumter, and had served with distinction in the Army of the Potomac. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in 1893.

There was no doubt Doubleday had served his country. But did he invent the national game?

Obituaries of Doubleday published in various newspapers naturally mentioned his military service. For instance, the New York Times, on January 28, 1893, noted that Doubleday's command at Antietam had "held the extreme right, which opened the battle and captured six battle flags."

Other newspapers mentioned his writings, and his interest in the Theosophical Society. But no one seemed to know he had invented baseball. And Doubleday never made any such claim for himself.

In his letter, Abner Graves had described Doubleday, as a boy in 1839, outlining the rules of the game by drawing diagrams in the dirt to show his friends. That alone was highly suspect, as Doubleday had already entered West Point a year earlier, in 1838.

Why Concoct a False History for Baseball?

Albert Spalding was apparently motivated to create the commission, and what turned out to be his suspect history of the game, after Henry Chadwick, an acknowledged historian of baseball, published an essay claiming the game was based on the English game of rounders.

Chadwick's theory was sound. There was no particular point at which baseball emerged as distinct game. It had evolved over the decades of the 19th century until, in the period following the Civil War, it became essentially the game we know today.

Chadwick and Spalding had been friendly for decades. And though Spalding no doubt respected Chadwick, he still felt a need to prove that baseball was entirely American. In the 1905 edition of the baseball guidebook he published annually through his sporting goods company, Spalding appealed for people to submit "any proof, data, or information" on the matter.

Three years later, in the 1908 edition of Spalding's Official Baseball Guide, the story of Abner Doubleday inventing the game appeared. The tale was almost immediately refuted.

The Doubleday myth might have been entirely forgotten, but when the idea for the Baseball Hall of Fame was proposed in the 1930s it was suggested that Cooperstown would be the ideal place for it. So the hall was built there. And the peculiar version of baseball history concocted by Albert Spalding was fixed in the public record and Cooperstown is commonly called the birthplace of baseball.