this is a picture of abner doubleday, who is credited with founding baseball. abner doubleday was famous in the 19th century. he was a decorated union officer. in fact, he rose to the rank of major general. a hero at gettysburg, very successful businessman after the war. and while he and his family did live in cooperstown, in 1839, he was at west point completing his military training. at no time during his life did he ever claim to invent the game. it's even possible that he never attended a baseball game. but he did have a friend who liked baseball. the point of this myth, however, was to demonstrate that the origins of baseball were american, rather than english. in any case, historians now, those -- those joy killers, have officially established that rounders, the english game, was the immediate precursor of professional baseball, and its rules were used in the first organized baseball club for men, not boys, called the knickerbockers baseball club of new york played its first game on an empty lot in manhattan in 1842. this is a picture of the new york knic