Alexander Cartwright is the man most historians see as the inventor of baseball. He was a New York banker and member of the New York Knickerbocker club, which played early versions of the . New York in the 1840s was a place where the games of "base ball" and "town ball" were commonly played. In 1845, Cartwright and his fellow members decided to put formal rules to the game. These "Knickerbocker Rules" became the first formal rules for the game of baseball and were written on September 23, 1845. They included details like; four bases, three outs, innings, ninety foot base distances, and countless other rules. These rules would be the same rules used when Cartwright and his Knickerbocker club played another New York club in what is considered the first official baseball game. They played it at Elysian Fields on June 19, 1846 and the Knickerbockers lost 23-1. But the Cartwright left New York for the Gold Rush in 1849. After getting sick in California, he left for better weather in Hawaii, where he lived the rest of his life. Wherever he went though, he continued to teach the game of baseball and actually baseball was more popular in Hawaii in the 1850s than it was in many Eastern cities. Alexander Cartwright was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1938, proving his importance to the game even in those early Hall of Fame years. He definitely goes down as a "Founding Father".
