Dickens: America sucks

[CountDeMoney]

I don't think Baseball was actually "invented".  It sort of evolved.  People were playing something very similar to it in the US probably since the country was founded. 

Obviously nobody sat down and invented it out of whole cloth but the game that was created in the 1850s had very important evolutionary differences (like the pitcher going from the least important to the most important person on the field, the number of players capped at 9 and so forth) that made it pretty different from the similar games we played previous.

There's a fantastic document on display in Cooperstown about banning "base ball" from around a town hall building in Massachusetts.  It's dated 1791.

[derspiess]

It indeed evolved from some sort of "Rounders" and similar games, before becoming codified around the 1850-60s. There's actually pictures of ACW soldiers playing some form of base ball.  It's funny that it has a bit of a pastoral flair these days when it mostly originated in the bustling cities of the 19th century.

Baseball was the real deal by the ACW.  I forget which movie (I think either Glory or Gettysburg) had a brief scene that seemed to portray it pretty accurately as well.  How awesome would it be to go back in time & witness baseball in its purest form?

Damnit, you guys got me thinking about baseball already.  It's too early.  I hadn't planned on thinking about it until-- erm, tonight actually

[Valmy]

Yeah the ACW introduced (at least on a national level) two new obsessions to the United States: Baseball and coffee drinking.  Soldiers would go to pretty absurd lengths to get their coffee fix.

[Eddie Teach]

The South is both more english AND more celtic than the north.

There weren't a whole lot of Polish and Italian factory workers in New York in 1840.