07/22/2004 10:00 AM ET Cooperstown's myth endures By Barry M.
Bloom / MLB.com Based on current knowledge, the National
Baseball Hall of Fame probably shouldn't be nestled in
Cooperstown, N.Y. But the out-of-the-way hamlet, just 70 miles
west of Albany, the state's capital, remains the small town at
the heart of baseball. Cooperstown was bestowed with that honor
because of the mistaken belief that, sometime around the middle
of the 19th century, a local resident named Abner Doubleday was
the first American to turn the English game of "rounders" into a
semblance of what would eventually become baseball. "The
Doubleday thing is a total myth. We've got proof in writing.
We've got all the papers here," said Ted Spencer, vice president
and chief curator of the museum since 1982. The Mills committee,
convened in 1905 at the behest of early baseball owner and
sporting goods merchandiser Albert G. Spalding, commenced a
three-year study of the matter and endorsed Doubleday as
baseball's founder. Three decades later, th