Although Doubleday's fame ought to be based on his performances at Fort Sumter and Gettysburg, he is best remembered as the alleged "inventor" of baseball in Elihu Phinney's cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York, 1839.
How did this come about? The Mills Commission was appointed in 1905 to determine the origin of baseball. Its final report, on December 30, 1907 stated:
. . . the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. . . . in the years to come, in the view of the hundreds of thousands of people who are devoted to baseball, and the millions who will be, Abner Doubleday's fame will rest evenly, if not quite as much, upon the fact that he was its inventor . . . as his brilliant and distinguished career as an officer in the Federal Army.
hmmm . . .
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