2003 Origins Committee Annual Report

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Written by Mike Ross

Wednesday, 31 December 2003 00:00

We at SABR UK are still digging in the same old pit for more information on UK Europe developments. Nothing much new happens here in the UK and so always our work is buried in the dark distant past with little material available; hence little surfacing upon which we can conclude anything other than conjecture.

We have however expanded our research on Trap Ball at the pub sources available in the South of England (see forthcoming SABR UK Examiner).

The efforts made in the UK amongst entrepreneurs to promote baseball in the 19th and early middle 20th century proved fruitless in all areas, mainly that of commercial success and development of a standard of play with skills that would produce quality ballplayers who could become professionals in America.

There is a ‘class’ resistance to baseball which is inbred in the class system where the power still seems to reside, and this is a subject that is worthy of research consideration. Again, the upper classes do not come out and say what they think of baseball in print. However, in articles written by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Conan Doyle during the Giants-White Sox tour of 1924, it is believable that if it were up to members of the British public such as these gentlemen baseball which they favoured over cricket, according to their articles, would have gained by leaps and bounds. Alas, with my conversations (interviews) with the elite (elitist) members of the MCC at Lords Cricket Grounds, I am certain for my reasoning why the opposite is the case. In searching the files of the MCC library at Lords, the only item available that certifies that the US Army and Navy played a demonstration game at the grounds, is just one photo of British troops and civilians sitting on the grass at Lords as spectators of baseball looking bewildered.

However there have been developments in Holland and Italy where the game is played professionally, and where professional standards have achieved such heights that some players have made it to the big leagues.

The committee wishes that those who applied for membership of the UK committee who we may have failed to acknowledge: would they please write or email again. Now that we are on course — again.

Mike Ross