Andrew Forbes, the author of The Utility of Boredom: Baseball Essays recently released an updated version with a “minor” correction.

” if you were to open both of those hypothetical copies of the book to the essay entitled “Madison Bumgarner and the Beautiful Lie,” and more specifically to pages 50 and 51, you would find that I, with the full backing of Team Invisible, have made a minor change to the text. “…

… “More recent scholarship, though, has clarified things, and ousted Cartwright from the founder’s role. Most notably, the excellent John Thorn – who, as the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, inarguably possesses the coolest title on the planet – has dug deep into contemporary records and accounts and replaced Cartwright’s name with that of Doc Adams, another Knickerbocker. Thorn’s work was confirmed with the discovery of “baseball’s Magna Carta,” the document entitled “Laws of Base Ball” which provided the smoking gun linking Adams, a convention of baseball players and organizers in 1857, and the codification of the amended rules.”

Kudos to Mr Forbes for making the change. Hopefully, the National Baseball Hall of Fame Early Baseball Era Committee will make a similar correction this December.

“Rewriting History: Why I made a minor, tiny, virtually insignificant change to The Utility of Boredom”, Invisible Publishing, (12/18/19)