Editing Alexander Cartwright (section)

== Legacy ==
[[File:Alexander Cartwright HOF plaque.jpg|thumb|Cartwright's plaque at the [[National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum]]]]
After about two decades of controversy, invention of [[Sports in the United States|America]]'s "national game" of baseball was [[Doubleday myth|attributed]] to [[Abner Doubleday]] by the [[Mills Commission]] (1905–1907).  Some baseball historians promptly cried foul and others joined throughout the 20th century.{{Citation needed|date=January 2013}} Cartwright was inducted into the [[Baseball Hall of Fame]] in 1938.<ref>{{Cite web|title=1938 Hall of Fame Voting|url=https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_1938.shtml|access-date=2020-08-13|website=Baseball-Reference.com|language=en}}</ref>

New York City librarian Robert W. Henderson documented Cartwright's contributions to baseball in his 1947 book ''Bat, Ball, and Bishop''.<ref>{{cite book |author=Robert William Henderson |title=Ball, bat and bishop: the origin of ball games |publisher=Rockport Press |year=1947 }}</ref> Although there is no question that Cartwright was a prominent figure in the early development of baseball, some students of baseball history have suggested that Henderson and others embellished Cartwright's role. The primary complaint is that touting Cartwright as the "true" inventor of the modern game was an effort to find an alternative single individual to counter the "invention" of baseball by Abner Doubleday.<ref name=thorn />

Cartwright was the subject of a 1973 biography, ''The Man Who Invented Baseball'', by Harold Peterson.<ref name=Debate>{{cite news|last=Thorn|first=John|title=Debate Over Baseball's Origins Spills Into Another Century|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/sports/baseball/13thorn.html?_r=0|access-date=August 28, 2013|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=March 12, 2011}}</ref> He was the subject of two biographies written in 2009. Jay Martin's ''Live All You Can: Alexander Joy Cartwright & the Invention of Modern Baseball'' supports Cartwright as the inventor of baseball, while ''Alexander Cartwright: The Life Behind the Baseball Legend'' by Monica Nucciarone credits Cartwright as one of the game's pioneers but not its sole founder.<ref name=Dueling>{{cite magazine|last=Bailey|first=James|title=Dueling Cartwright biographies offer differing views of his contributions|url=http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/majors/book-guide/2009/269193.html|magazine=[[Baseball America]]|access-date=August 28, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Nucciarone|first1=Monica|title=Alexander Cartwright: The Life Behind the Baseball Legend|page=229|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|location=Lincoln, Nebraska|year=2009|isbn=978-0-8032-3353-9|access-date=August 7, 2016|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1HGAKf203p8C&q=%22i+feel+alexander+cartwright+deserves+to+be+honored+as+one+of+baseball%27s+pioneers%22&pg=PA229}}</ref> The 2004 discovery of a newspaper interview with fellow Knickerbocker founder [[William R. Wheaton]] cast doubt on Cartwright's role. Wheaton stated that most of the rules long attributed to Cartwright and the Knickerbockers had in fact been developed by the older Gotham Club before the Knickerbockers' founding.<ref name=thorn />

In 1938, Makiki Field in Honolulu was renamed Cartwright Field.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Nucciarone|first1=Monica|title=Alexander Cartwright: The Life Behind the Baseball Legend|page=218|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|location=Lincoln, Nebraska|year=2009|isbn=978-0-8032-3353-9|access-date=August 7, 2016|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1HGAKf203p8C&q=%22makiki+park+became+cartwright+park%22&pg=PA218}}</ref>
The Cartwright Cup is awarded to the Hawaii state high school baseball champions each year.<ref name=Cup>{{cite news|title=Cartwright Cup for state baseball champ unveiled today|url=http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/May/06/br/br2768304195.html|access-date=August 28, 2013|newspaper=[[The Honolulu Advertiser]]|date=May 6, 2007}}</ref>