Stop Thief!

It was most definitely stolen!

Baseball!

You took it and we want it back!

We don't understand it; we don't even like it, but it IS ours and you lot (over the pond) took it!

Now, before you start diving into Wikipedia do check this out, let me tell you that baseball is derived from cricket (we don't really understand this game either, but it's ours), which in turn is derived from unknown medieval (so it is said) stick & ball games. Ball games (or round stones, rag balls, etc.) go back a long many years and way back in the day when tin suits were all the rage, the French were said to use "stick & ball" games as part of the training for their knights (which is said to be how modern sports came to be).

Romans mosaics have depicted children with sticks apparently swinging at round objects.

Anyway, the invention of baseball has absolutely nothing to do with Abner Doubleday (who may have created a rule or two).

It seems obvious to me that the Romans, right, came to Britain and stole the stick and ball idea. When they left Britain they must have stopped off for a bit of sightseeing in France or something (hence the French stick & ball games).  I mean, get real!  The French couldn't invent anything, could they?

Obvious, isn't it?

As a point of interest, the earliest mention of baseball (in a literary sense) was made in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817).

So, now you know where it came from you can give the bloody thing back, OK?