Author doubts Doubleday created baseball

The origins of baseball, America's game, may go back many centuries before Leif Erickson or Christopher Columbus visited this continent. In his search for the origins of the game, David Block explores studies that indicate the game dates back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. He takes us through the ages with, among other artifacts, reproductions of medieval illuminated manuscripts; an 18th-century German manuscript containing rules for the game; and illustrated accounts of a game in Britain called "Rounders," which is similar to today's baseball. In many of these, while the rules and names are different, the principle of a pitched ball and a bat of some sort is consistent.