But Didn't We Have Fun? covers a period in the early days of baseball that even those who think they know everything about the popular American sport do not know. Peter Morris--an indefatigable researcher and brilliant chronicler, and winner of both the Seymour Medal and the Casey Award--is the first historian to cover the years 1843 to 1870. Through the prism of firsthand accounts, the reader is privileged to watch as baseball pioneers adapt an informal, country game to new surroundings. The members of groundbreaking clubs like the Knickerbockers of New York and the Red Stockings of Cincinnati are rescued, by Peter Morris, from the dusty pages of history and emerge as men with genuine joys and sorrows. Consequently, the long-discredited Abner Doubleday-as-the-inventor-of-baseball myth and other misconceptions about the game are supplanted by a story even more intriguing-the story about the beginning of baseball that really happened!