Author Julian Norridge’s book “Can we have our balls back, please?” claims that baseball was invented in Britain, according to a
CNN report.
The book focuses on Britain's role in writing the rulebooks for a long list of sports and as proof, Norridge points to the opening pages of Jane Austen’s novel “ Northanger Abbey” in which baseball in mentioned.
Austen's novel was finished in 1798, forty-one years before Abner Doubleday was credited with inventing the sport in Cooperstown, NY.
Norridge also points to even older evidence -- a Guildford, Surrey teenager's diary references baseball as early as 1755.
