Koppett’s Observation
A simple story, however inaccurate or misleading, is preferred to a complicated explanation, however true.
This law comes from Leonard Koppett’s book, A Concise History of Baseball 1996. For many years, most baseball fans preferred to believe the simple myth that the rules for the national pastime sprang full-blown from the brow of Abner Doubleday, a boy from rural Cooperstown N.Y. who went on to become a Civil War general. In truth, however, the game evolved in New York City in the early 1840s from cricket, rounders and what was variously known as town ball, Boston Ball or the Massachusetts game.
Of course the psychological tropism toward simple stories or explanations is not always misplaced; see Ockham’s Razor.
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