"Most Americans think Abner Doubleday invented the game but he had little or nothing to do with cricket"
About this Quote
Chadwick is doing a sly two-step: puncturing a national myth while smuggling in a jab at American self-regard. The line hinges on a bait-and-switch. You expect him to correct the familiar Doubleday fable about baseball; instead he pivots to “cricket,” a word that lands like a raised eyebrow. It’s not just that most Americans are wrong. It’s that they’re so busy crowning an inventor-hero that they can’t even keep the story’s supposed sport straight.
That misdirection matters because Chadwick wasn’t an aloof commentator. As a British-born writer who became one of baseball’s earliest and most influential journalists (often called the “Father of Baseball”), he lived inside the culture war over what the game meant. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, baseball was being marketed as a distinctly American creation, conveniently severed from its English bat-and-ball cousins. The Doubleday legend, promoted aggressively by boosters and later canonized by the Mills Commission, offered a clean origin story: military pedigree, pastoral innocence, no messy transatlantic lineage.
Chadwick’s intent is corrective, but not purely pedantic. The subtext is that nations prefer comforting fables to complicated histories, especially when those histories suggest borrowing rather than destiny. By invoking cricket, he reminds readers of the old world fingerprints on the “new” national pastime, and he does it with the lightest possible touch: a single sarcastic turn that lets the audience feel the embarrassment of believing too eagerly.
That misdirection matters because Chadwick wasn’t an aloof commentator. As a British-born writer who became one of baseball’s earliest and most influential journalists (often called the “Father of Baseball”), he lived inside the culture war over what the game meant. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, baseball was being marketed as a distinctly American creation, conveniently severed from its English bat-and-ball cousins. The Doubleday legend, promoted aggressively by boosters and later canonized by the Mills Commission, offered a clean origin story: military pedigree, pastoral innocence, no messy transatlantic lineage.
Chadwick’s intent is corrective, but not purely pedantic. The subtext is that nations prefer comforting fables to complicated histories, especially when those histories suggest borrowing rather than destiny. By invoking cricket, he reminds readers of the old world fingerprints on the “new” national pastime, and he does it with the lightest possible touch: a single sarcastic turn that lets the audience feel the embarrassment of believing too eagerly.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sports |
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