Editor

A National Baseball Hall of Fame official acknowledged Monday that the game of baseball probably did not originate in Cooperstown, as legend has it, but that symbolically and nostalgically Cooperstown will always be the Home of Baseball.

A story in Sunday's "New York Times" revealed that two newspaper articles were recently discovered showing the game was played earlier than historians thought. Abner Doubleday had been credited with inventing the game in 1839 on a dirt field in Cooperstown near where the Hall of Fame stands today.

But the articles discovered by New York University librarian George Thompson, Jr. in daily newspapers in New York in 1823 describes a game of "base ball" a "manly and athletic game."

"We have pretty much acknowledged the fact that historically baseball probably did not originate here," said Hall spokesman Jeff Arnett. "But it will always be that when people think of Cooperstown, they will think of baseball."

In the Hall of Fame's 2001 Yearbook under the heading 'Why Cooperstown', it says the Mills Commission was appointed in 1905 to determine the origins of the game of baseball. The committee's final report on Dec. 30, 1907 stated in part that "the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown in 1839."

Twenty seven years later, the "Doubleday baseball" was discovered in Fly Creek. The ball belonged to Abner Graves, a childhood friend of Doubeday's. Stephen C. Clark bought the ball for $5, and conceived of the idea of displaying the ball, along with other rare baseball-related items, in a room called the Village Room, now the Cooperstown village offices.

When the one-room exhibit attracted tremendous interest, the idea of a National Museum was born. With the backing of National league president Ford C. Frick and then commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the idea started to gain momentum. To mark baseball's 100th anniversary in 1939, Frick proposed that a Hall of Fame be established.

The story in the Hall's Yearbook concludes, "whatever may or may not be proved in the future concerning baseball's true origin, is, in many respects, irrelevant at this time. The Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown to stay; and at the very least, the village is certainly an acceptable symbolic site for the game's origin."