In 1839, Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball. The story is more fiction than facts.  The legend says Abner Doubleday introduced baseball in Cooperstown, New York (where the Baseball Hall of Fame is located.)  People played games of baseball before Doubleday, but he was the first to draw a diamond shaped playing field, picked the number of players, and assigned positions to each player.  But this couldn't be true because in 1839 he was a cadet in West Point.  Doubleday went on to be a army officer and a writer.  

In 1905, the Major Leagues hired a commission to find out who invented the game.  They did this to find out that baseball is truly an American sport and not a sport from another country.  A man on the commission, named A.G. Mills said he was in the same army post as Doubleday after the war .  He knows for a fact that Doubleday was the "father" of baseball because Mills  came across a letter from a man named Abner Graves.  This letter went back 70 years back, the Graves knew Doubleday invented baseball.  With this letter the commission declared Abner Doubleday the father of baseball. 

Alexander Cartwright, a banker from New York wrote the rules for baseball.  The New York Knickerbockers, played the first game played under Cartwright's rules. 

This is Abner Doubleday, the inventor of baseball.

These are memebers of the Knickerbockers.  Cartwright is in the center of the front row.  Other baseball teams were formed to compete against Cartwright's Knickerbockers.  

This is Babe Ruth.  His real name is George Herman Ruth.  Ruth entered the major leagues in 1914 as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.  Ruth was to good of a hitter, so he quit pitching and got traded to the Yankees as an outfielder.  In The Babe's career, he hit 714 homeruns.  He retired on June 13, 1948.  His jersey number 3  was retired in Yankee stadium.  He died 2 months after his retirement of throat cancer. 

This is the 1919 White Sox.  Eight White Sox including "Shoeless" Joe Jackson got caught in the biggest sports swindle in the history of all time. They made a deal with the nations leading gamblers, to lose the 1919 World Series, to the Cincinnati Reds.  This team was known as the Black Sox.  The players were never found guilty in court, but they were all banded from baseball.  This story is remember in the motion picture "Field of Dreams."