I haven’t seen the press release yet, but Gordon Edes reports that Bud Selig has announced the formation of a committee that will study the origins of the game of baseball. On the committee: Baseball historian John Thorn, noted plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin, and sepia tycoon Ken Burns.
I don’t want to make rash predictions, but my guess is that with this crowd running things it will be determined that baseball was invented by Carl Yastrzemski and Ted Williams some time in the mid-1960s. And the text of the report will be lifted in its entirety from A Time to Remember by Rose Kennedy.
Ah well, probably doesn’t matter anyway. This is a Bud Selig-created committee. The same Bud Selig who last year was either so ignorant or so unwilling to ruffle feathers that he said that he believed Abner Doubleday invented the game, and everyone knows that’s a bunch of malarkey. And given his track record with committees, we won’t have any results out of this thing until sometime in the spring of 2025.
Personally speaking I’m opposed to the search for the origins of baseball. I believe in baseball Creationism. The game is too orderly to have simply evolved. A man can throw a ball that curves? You can’t explain that!
UPDATE: Oh, one more thing: before Bud Selig unleashes his committee, perhaps he’d be well-served to watch the movie -- that was produced by MLB.com itself -- about the origins of baseball. I watched at the SABR convention back in 2008. It was pretty good! Sort of defeats the purpose of the committee too!