“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’ … God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” — Genesis 1:26, 31a
The Origins of Life
The origins of baseball are a little tricky. There were many games prior to baseball that involved a ball and bat-like object that came from folk games in England, like cricket and something called “stoolball.” But no one knows exactly when and where the specific game of baseball was created.
So in the early 1900s, Albert Spalding (yes, that Spalding) led something called the Mills Commission. It included many former big leaguers and baseball men who were charged with finding out the origins of baseball. When the Mills Commission published its report, it claimed that longtime military man Abner Doubleday invented the word “baseball,” designed the diamond, indicated fielders’ positions, and wrote the rules in 1839, in Cooperstown, N.Y. However, the commission’s main source was a letter written by Abner Graves, who wrote that letter when he was 5 years old, and at the time the commission talked to him, he was elderly and had spent time in a mental institution.
Doubleday himself never claimed to have invented baseball, and there has never been any other evidence to support that he did. No one is really sure how the game of baseball became baseball, but it did, and we play it today.
Like baseball, people have often wondered how we came into existence. There are big bang theories, origins of species and many other ideas, but unlike baseball, Christ-followers know there is no mystery about our origins. God told us in the Bible that He created us, in His image, and it was very good.
— Aaron May
If you would like to submit a reader devotional, please email all submissions to jason@sportsspectrum.com.
