28. The General Who Was Credited With the Invention of Baseball
Abner Doubleday was a career US Army officer, who fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter at the start of the American Civil War. He rose to general rank in the Union Army, and played a pivotal role during the Battle of Gettysburg. On the civilian side of the ledger, he secured a patent on the San Francisco cable car railway that runs to this day. He is best known, however for his links to baseball, and he was credited for many years as having invented the game in the 1830s. As it turned out, the baseball story was a myth, but although he did not invent a national sport, Abner Doubleday still had a significant national impact.
The future general Doubleday was born in 1819 in New York, to a family of warriors. His father had fought in the War of 1812, his paternal grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War on the side of the Patriots, his maternal grandparent had been a messenger for George Washington, and at least one of his great grandparents had been a Minuteman. Doubleday was accepted into West Point in 1838, graduated four years later, and was commissioned as an artillery officer. Before the Civil War, he fought in the Mexican War, 1846 to 1848, and in the Seminole Wars, 1856 to 1858.