The come-on worked with George Washington, so why not the "inventor" of baseball.

It could be a marketing dream for a B&B in Cooperstown. Who wouldn't want to stay in the home, or bedroom, once occupied by Abner Doubleday?

It was during his time in Cooperstown that he was supposed to have invented the game of baseball, according to the Doubleday myth surrounding the creation of what was to become the national pastime.

The house, at 29 Pioneer Street, was purchased earlier this month by Rod and Robin Torrence, owners of the Stagecoach Coffee building next door. According to records in the county real property tax office, the purchase price was $125,000.

Last week, the village planning board, with little fanfare, granted the couple a demolition permit for a shed-style structure that was added to the original house within the last 15 years.

According to the permit application, the addition was built of substandard materials and did not have the required building permit.

The Torrences did not attend the meeting to discuss their plans for the building, indicating on the application only that the intended use was "undecided."

"We will be submitting architectural plans and site plan to the board in the months ahead, but removing this rear structure would greatly assist the planning process," they wrote in the application.

Planning Board Chairman Paul Kuhn commented during the review of the application that the structure is now "gutted right down to the studs."

The board's historical advisors had no objection to razing the addition and the application was approved unanimously.

It was noted in the building inventory form completed for the historic district application process in the mid-1970s that the house at 29 Pioneer St. "was the home of Abner Doubleday, founder of baseball." Certainly, if Doubleday invented the game of baseball as the myth says, he must have lived somewhere in the village at the end of the 1830s when he explained the game to a group of young school boys playing town ball.

The building inventory form cites the Ward File in the special Collections Library at NYSHA as the source for the Doubleday information. The file, however, contains little more than some 1889 newspaper references to the building as the "Doubleday cottage."

And while a growing body of evidence suggests the Doubleday story of the genesis of baseball was indeed a myth, it has served Cooperstown well over the years.

"Although this designation by a commission of distinguished baseball executives was based on a false creation story, Cooperstown nevertheless became a place of national and international renown as the birthplace of baseball," wrote local historian and former Baseball Hall of Fame librarian Tom Heitz two years ago in a series of articles about Cooperstown and baseball.

"By virtue of baseball tourism, a community enterprise now spanning more than 60 years, Cooperstown has accumulated additional layers of real history. To some observers, that acquired history overshadows the flaws of the Doubleday creation story, rendering it superfluous. The acquired history of baseball in Cooperstown is said to legitimize the claims to baseball's nativity, myth or no myth.

"Others simply prefer the myth to the complexities of a convoluted real history that cannot be retold simply in a straightforward manner. Indeed, the tale of a young West Point cadet named Abner Doubleday, later a Civil War hero, visiting a small rural village and teaching a group of local boys how to play baseball is a charming and plausible story," Heitz wrote.

According to Heitz's research there was an Abner Doubleday living in the village during the 1830s, but he was a cousin to the Abner Doubleday who was to become a West Point graduate and hero of the Civil War.

"In 1839, the Cooperstown cousin Abner was possibly six to ten years old, while the military cousin Abner was twenty years of age and a plebe cadet at West Point," Heitz wrote.

Almost 100 years after Doubleday described the game in Cooperstown, an antique baseball was reportedly discovered in a trunk in a home outside Fly Creek.

"That baseball, purchased from a local farmer for five dollars by Stephen Clark, Sr., was to become the so-called 'Doubleday Baseball,' the foundation artifact of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum," Heitz wrote in his series.

How the game of baseball evolved and who deserves the credit for its creation will no doubt be debated by historians of the game for years to come. Shreds of evidence crop up periodically, but to ever nail it down with certainty is unlikely and that will allow the Doubleday myth to persist in the minds of many people.

"I think I can speak for the entire board when I say we would love to see the home restored to its original condition," Kuhn said. "It's a great example of a 19th century village home."

Kuhn added that with some verification that it was Abner Doubleday's home it might be possible and appropriate to get a historic marker for the site like many of the others around the village.

The Torrences did not respond to repeated requests for comment.