"....readily accepted that baseball was invented by one General Abner Graves in Cooperstown, New York State, in 1839.

General Abner...Graves?

Graves is the English translation for Doubleday

Graves was the guy that testified before the Mills Commission as a favorable witness for the Doubleday Theory.

Nice catch by the author to introduce us to a little-known book like Northanger Abbey.

Northanger = RHP who hangs a lot of curves

Nice catch by the author to introduce us to a little-known book like Northanger Abbey.

Well, it is the weakest of her completed novels, which I'd rate:

1. Persuasion
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Sense and Sensibility
4. Emma
5. Mansfield Park
6. Northanger Abbey

Jane was one of two girls in a family with six brothers, and as an adult loved to dance - it's very possible that she was a bit of a tomboy, like Cathy Morland, and played cricket and rounders with her brothers, and the boys at her parents' school, as a girl. Claire Tomlin writes in her excellent biography of Austen,

"A girl growing up in a boy's school is likely to take up boys' games. This is the best reason for believing that Jane made Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey partly in her own image, 'Fond of all boys' plays', and preferring cricket and baseball to playing with dolls or keeping a pet dormouse or canary."

The made-for-TV movie based on Jane's life last year portrayed her batting as a young women in a family cricket game, and while it was clearly an invented episode, I think it quite possible...

Once again, just because someone wrote the words "base" and "ball" next to each other does not mean that they were referring to the game we know today as baseball. Or any predecessor. I mean, it could refer to the game "running bases".

The mention of a 7-page description of baseball in a German book would actually shed some light on the matter.

Mansfield Park must have been the book about baseball.

Once again, just because someone wrote the words "base" and "ball" next to each other does not mean that they were referring to the game we know today as baseball. Or any predecessor. I mean, it could refer to the game "running bases".

Well, when the exact quote puts the word "baseball" right next to the word "cricket", doesn't it seem more likely that it is talking about related games?

Billy Beane should have never written Northanger Abbey.

I'm flummoxed by this. The alleged 1796 book with seven pages on "Englischer baseball" gets just a mention, and yet for the purposes of establishing the history of the game that would be much more relevant than two words in Jane Austen. Has anyone heard anything about this?

Edit: Ah, here it is.

Austen on Jeter:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a glove.

The version of baseball described by Guts Muths contains some features that have changed considerably over the years. For example, the bat is only two feet long and oddly shaped, the number of bases varies with the number of players, and the batting team is entitled to only one out before the side is retired.
Sounds suspiciously like localized whiffle ball rules to me. Of course whiffle ball rules also have to take into consideration things like parked cars, moving cars (if you are playing in the street), bullies stealing the ball, flower beds of old curmudgeons, etc.

This was the first description of a baseball-like game to appear in English. It introduced the diamond shaped layout of the four bases. Baserunners, however, ran in a clockwise direction.
Figures, those dopes ride on the wrong side of the road, too.

The name Guts Muth makes me think he is an ancestor of Charlie Manuel. It would also work as a Star Wars' character.

Guts Muths went so far as to devote a separate short chapter to promote his ideas for an improved hybrid game that would “unite both forms.” He said it would be based upon the superior rules of English baseball, but would adapt the longer, stronger bat of the German ball game so that the ball could be hit with greater power. He also recommended, in addition to a home base, a fixed layout of four bases arranged in a square pattern. (In fact, his proposal is similar to later rounders and town ball configurations.) He believed these improvements would make the game more appealing to German players.

George Herman Ruth and Lou Gehrig would have approved. BTW, i read somewhere that reporters once heard them speaking to each other in german. they were both children of german immigrants, so i can see how they may have exchanged a few words in german now and then, sort of like cajuns speaking a little country french to each other.

Well, when the exact quote puts the word "baseball" right next to the word "cricket", doesn't it seem more likely that it is talking about related games?

Not really. It's also right next to "horseback riding" and two items away from "running about the country". In fact, I could argue that considering how different cricket, horseback riding, and cross-country running* are from each other, that she wouldn't put a sport similar to any one in her sentence. She would put four completely different activities there to make the point.

*Yes, I know she wasn't referring to a race.

Maybe, but I'd prefer to believe that my favorite writer was familiar with my favorite sport...

Pride And Prejudice would have been much improved if fifty or so pages of tedious back and forth between Darcy and Bennet had been removed and replaced with a pennant race.

This is all touched on in "The Creation Myth of Cooperstown", my favorite essay by Stephen Jay Gould.

EDIT: This site doesn't seem to like hotlinking to its articles, but it's the first search result here:

http://nhmag.com/search.html?keys=cooperstown&x=0&y=0&sitenbr=157877211&bgcolor;=#C7E0B0

Quite amazing how soon September 11th has been forgotten...