Don't tell this to New Yorkers, but baseball wasn't necessarily invented in the city.
Bat-and-ball games go all the way back to ancient Egypt nearly 4,500 years ago, John Thorn writes in his book "Baseball in the Garden of Eden", with a game called seker-hemat, or "batting the ball." In the temple of Hatshepsut, there is a wall relief of Thutmose III holding a ball in one hand and a stick in the other. Thutmose III is regarded as one of the greatest military strategists and warrior pharaohs of all time, but perhaps he was also the Aaron Judge of the Nile.