Who Invented the Game?

One summer day in 1839, on a village green in upstate New York, Abner Doubleday was playing town ball with his schoolmates. The rules of town ball were loose - every hit was fair, and the players often ran into each other. So Doubleday created a new set of rules for a new game - a game he called baseball.

It's a nice story, and it's been told for generations - but it simply isn't true.

Then how did baseball begin? Who played the first real game? The first night game? Who invented the curveball? Why were players once reluctant to use gloves and masks? Why is the pitcher's mound precisely 60 feet 6 inches from home plate? How did baseball evolve from a leisurely pastime into a billion-dollar industry?

You'll find the surprising answers to these and many other questions in this highly readable history as colorful and complicated as that of America itself.

Based on the PBS television documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns, and illustrated with more than seventy dramatic photographs, here is an entertaining and informative homage to our "National heirloom." It's a book that belongs in every baseball fan's library!