How Baseball’s Official Historian Dug Up the Game’s Unknown Origins

John Thorn, perhaps the most knowledgeable historian of our national pastime, at home in Catskill, New York. Elias Williams Baseball, more than any other sport, is grounded in history, built on legend, an enduring portal into the past. So it made a certain sense in 1999 when Major League Baseball’s ninth commissioner, Bud Selig, created an unusual position in pro sports, ensuring that this most classic of…