Slog
News & ArtsWednesday, November 12, 2008
Sports Heresy!
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 2:02 PM
From those limeys at the Telegraph:
Jane Austen wrote about baseball 40 years before its official invention, according to a new book. But evidence of the game's British origins was erased from history by the American sports magnate Albert Spalding, according to the book's author Julian Norridge.
Austen mentioned baseball in the opening pages of Northanger Abbey, which she wrote in 1797-8. Introducing her tom-boy heroine Catherine Morland, Austen wrote:
"It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books."
Just because Obama has become a global president doesn't mean we have to give up our national pride.
This will not stand!
But wait...
In autumn 2010, the Walt Disney corporation opens The Jane Austen Experience on a 50-acre site on the outskirts of Bath. Visitors are greeted by a 12ft high Jane Austen, dressed in period costume. Jane leads them into The Ballroom, where they can watch Jane dancing to a traditional Regency rhythm with a 15ft high Mr Darcy.
Revenge! America's all up in your Bath, England. In your face!
USA! USA!
1
"It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books."
Switch "Catherine" to "Sarah" and "fourteen" to "forty-two" and it's eerily prescient as well!
Switch "Catherine" to "Sarah" and "fourteen" to "forty-two" and it's eerily prescient as well!
3
What. The. Fuck.
Bath = Roman ruins/artifacts, Georgian architecture, tea rooms
Bath ≠ Stupid Disney animatronic Jane Austen
Bath = Roman ruins/artifacts, Georgian architecture, tea rooms
Bath ≠ Stupid Disney animatronic Jane Austen
8
I would, personally, love the existence of a 12-foot-tall animatronic Jane Austen. I think it would be an incredible expression of atrocious taste.
Alas...
Alas...
9
That is a pretty crappy story in the Telegraph. It should be Abner Doubleday, not Abner Graves, and none of this is new information. The origins of baseball have been researched pretty well. I recommend the book Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search For The Roots Of The Game, by David Block.
11
http://www.hickoksports.com/history/roun…
More on the story of Spalding creating the myth of America's pastime.
More on the story of Spalding creating the myth of America's pastime.
12
No historian or rational baseball fan gives any credence at all to the Abner Doubleday story promulgated by Albert Spalding. Spalding's commission was specifically charged with inventing an American origin for the game, and the story they made up is patently ridiculous; numerous variants of baseball was being played all over the Northeast long before Doubleday was claimed to have invented it, and there is no evidence that Doubleday ever so much as saw a game, let alone invented anything to do with it. "The only thing Doubleday ever started was the Civil War", as the saying goes; he fired the opening shots in defense of Fort Sumter.
Baseball's antecedents go back as far as you care to keep looking. The first codified rules for a recognizably modern game were set down by Alexander Cartwright, a Manhattan clerk, in nearby Hoboken in 1945. This has been known by everyone with even a passing interest in the subject for well over fifty years. Baseball historians have also known about the Austen quote for as long as there have been baseball historians.
Baseball's antecedents go back as far as you care to keep looking. The first codified rules for a recognizably modern game were set down by Alexander Cartwright, a Manhattan clerk, in nearby Hoboken in 1945. This has been known by everyone with even a passing interest in the subject for well over fifty years. Baseball historians have also known about the Austen quote for as long as there have been baseball historians.
13
I love baseball, yet I cannot think of a better connection: the world's most boring game & the world's most boring author.
How did they even come to decipher that Austen mentioned baseball? Are we sure the line wasn't: "It was not very wonderful that _______, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer _____, _____-ball, riding on _____back, and running about the ______ at the age of ____teen, to books."
Actually, maybe she invented MadLibs!
How did they even come to decipher that Austen mentioned baseball? Are we sure the line wasn't: "It was not very wonderful that _______, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer _____, _____-ball, riding on _____back, and running about the ______ at the age of ____teen, to books."
Actually, maybe she invented MadLibs!
14
@9, Abner Graves was the patsy who was paid off by the commission to claim that he saw Doubleday invent the game (in a place he could not have been), and bring forward as "evidence" a ratty old baseball. Graves's story was carelessly fabricated bullshit from top to bottom. Doubleday himself played no part in the charade, and had been dead for quite some time when his name was attached to the story.
16
I'm reading Northanger Abbey right now, and that slipped by me entirely. But I'm a faggot who cares not for sports.
17
Fnarf @ 12. I know that you know that you meant to type 1845, not 1945.
(but I almost mis-typed it as well!)
(but I almost mis-typed it as well!)
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