Abraham G. Mills - The Mills Commission

The Mills Commission

In 1888, Spalding accompanied a group of star players on a world tour to promote the game of baseball, playing an exhibition game in the shadow of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Upon their return the following year, a dinner was held to honor the players and Mills was asked to serve as master of ceremonies. The dinner, held at Delmonico's Restaurant in New York, was attended by an eclectic and prestigious crowd of 300 guests, among them Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt. The event's main theme focused on the sport as America's ambassador to the world. Also emphasized was the notion that baseball had not, as many believed, evolved from the British game of rounders. Reportedly, at various points throughout the evening, audience members broke out into rousing chants of "No rounders! No rounders!" The display of patriotism intrigued Spalding and inspired a debate concerning baseball's origins. The debate came to a head in 1903 when Henry Chadwick published a widely read article tracing baseball's evolution from rounders. In response, Spalding, who believed baseball was a fundamentally American invention, published an article disputing Chadwick's claim and challenged him by suggesting that they appoint a commission to settle the matter. Chadwick agreed, and in 1905 a commission headed by Mills was formed.

The "Mills Commission" featured Mills and six other prominent men: Morgan G. Bulkeley, the NL's first president in 1876; Arthur P. Gorman, a former player and ex-president of the Washington Base Ball Club; Nicholas E. Young, the first secretary and fifth president (replacing Mills) of the NL; Alfred J. Reach and George Wright, well known sporting goods distributors and two of the most famous players of their day; and James Edward Sullivan, president of the Amateur Athletic Union. The commission, through a series of nationally distributed publications, requested any American who had any knowledge concerning the origins of baseball to come forward. They received a response from a 71-year-old mining engineer from Denver, Colorado named Abner Graves, which was published immediately under the headline: "Abner Doubleday Invented Base Ball." According to Graves' account, Doubleday was responsible for improving a local version of "Town Ball" being played by students of the Otsego Academy and Green's Select School in Cooperstown, New York. Graves also claimed to witness the actual formation of the game which Doubleday termed "Base Ball." The commission did not investigate Graves' claim, however, and accepted the story on the basis that Graves' account offered the kind of mythical beginning to a sport they wanted to promote as fundamentally American. A number of circumstantial inconsistencies suggested that Graves' story was most likely fabricated. Despite all of the unanswered questions, Mills wrote a memo known as the "Mills Commission Report" that proclaimed Doubleday the inventor of the game of baseball. For over half a century prior to coming under the scrutiny of historians, it remained the authoritative document on the issue. However, it is now accepted that Chadwick was correct in his belief that baseball had in fact evolved from the game of rounders. Mills himself may have had some doubts concerning the validity of his own commission's findings and he admitted that he had had no conclusive evidence to prove the Doubleday claim.