Little America's Favourite Pastime: A History of Baseball in Britain
Few realise that 'America's favourite pastime' has a history beyond the country's hallowed baseball grounds. While the game has often been relegated to the sidelines of British sporting culture, during the First and Second World Wars it was arguably one of the country's most played - and watched - sports, thanks to the arrival of baseball-loving Americans and Canadians.
Baseball's surprising place in British history stretches back 150 years, when in the summer of 1874, the Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Red Stockings played two exhibition games at Edgehill, the home of Liverpool Cricket Club. The turnout of Liverpudlians was disappointing, but a more generous crowd of 2,000 was to be found at Manchester’s Old Trafford Cricket Ground a few days later. Many were no doubt drawn by curiosity. Baseball was still in its infancy and American promoters felt that the new sport could find a ready audience in this nation of sports lovers, as it had done in Canada, where the first recorded baseball game was played in 1838.
By the time the Red Stockings and Athletics reached the fertile ground of Lord’s, the number of spectators had ballooned to 6,000. The stands were packed with onlookers from all classes, including “a number of ladies in handsome equipages” who added “to the brilliance of the scene”. The Lord’s match was a high-scoring affair, with Boston routing Philadelphia 24-7. The abundance of home runs was attributed to the firm ground, which allowed the balls to escape beyond the grasp of scrambling fielders. Each play was generously applauded by the entertained, if not slightly confused, crowd.
< An illustration in Harper's Weekly depicts crowds watching a baseball game between the Boston Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Athletics at Lord's cricket ground in 1874.
Despite the spectacle of the Lord's game, snide remarks echoed around cricket’s hallowed ground. “The game’s so much like ‘rounders’, you know—could never supersede cricket, you know,” was an-oft repeated remark overheard by a New York Times reporter. The comparison to rounders, a game played in schoolyards since Tudor times, would pervade British discussions of baseball for the next 150 years. The similarities between the two games are hardly surprising. The first references to “baseball” in print can be found in the 1744 children's book A Little Pretty Pocket-Book by English writer John Newberry. Despite using the term baseball, Newberry was in fact referring to rounders.
Baseball maintained a fringe presence in British sporting life throughout the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Many association football teams took up the sport in the summer months to help maintain fitness between seasons. In fact, Aston Villa won England’s professional baseball championship in 1890. It also proved popular with spectators. In February 1914, 30,000 people joined King George at Stamford Bridge to watch the New York Giants face off against the Chicago White Sox. Commentators saw the “threat” posed by “London’s baseball fever” as a sign that cricket was becoming too dull and one-sided.
Cricket’s critics were silenced in July 1914 when first-class matches were suspended on the outbreak of war. However, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Canadian soldiers to Britain heralded a new opportunity for baseball to flourish on army training grounds across the country, where it was played as a recreational pastime. A shortage of equipment became so severe that the American League of Major League Baseball agreed to donate equipment to Canadian forces.
The entry of the United States into the war in April 1917, followed by the arrival of American troops to Britain, only served to increase the game's popularity in the UK.
< Crowds attend a baseball game between US Army and US Navy at Stamford Bridge football ground, 4th July 1918.
The sport also proved to be an important weapon in negotiating Anglo-American relations. In July 1917, Princess Louise and American-born politician Nancy Waldorf Astor co-sponsored a baseball game between the USA and Canada to welcome the first American troops to Britain. 10,000 spectators piled into Lord’s to watch the match, which the British press described as a “merry hullabaloo”.
Excited by this fervour for baseball, a band of American businessmen founded the Anglo-American Baseball League in 1918. Four military teams slugged it out in football grounds around London, with matches being held at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge every Sunday. Red-white-and-blue posters, now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, promoted the league’s games to curious Londoners.
While the Anglo-American League folded with the end of hostilities in November 1918, the appetite for the sport continued throughout the interwar period. In 1935, thousands of fans mobbed baseball star Babe Ruth on his visit to London. The following year the National Baseball Association oversaw the establishment of a professional baseball league in London, and in 1938, the United Kingdom won the inaugural Baseball World Cup, beating the United States by four games to one. But it wasn’t until the arrival of Americans during the Second World War that baseball would extend beyond the cosmopolitan metropolises of London and the North.
Between 1942 and 1945, during the period known as the ‘Friendly Invasion’, an estimated two million Americans passed through Britain. 350,000 of those were stationed at US Army Air Force bases in the east of England, where inter-unit baseball leagues flourished. Duxford, now home to the Imperial War Museum, hosted the 78th Fighter Group during the war. The group’s baseball team, the Thunderbolts, played in the European Theatre of Operations ‘World Series’ in 1943, watched on by thousands of local people.
As well as fostering inter-base pride, baseball was also considered a morale-boosting form of recreation, and an effective way for men to relax and maintain fitness while off-duty. Special Services units at each base issued athletics equipment and marked out baseball diamonds in recreational areas.
< 55th Fighter Group personnel relax with a game of baseball
Base teams were bolstered by the talents of professional baseball players who had swapped their bats for bombers on the United States' entry into the war. In 1943, Monte Weaver, a former Major League player turned Eighth Air Force Air Traffic Controller, was tasked with organising an all-star Eighth Air Force team to take on an Army side at Wembley. Weaver's team won the game and embarked on a 30-day tour of military bases across the United Kingdom. After the finishing the tour with a 29-1 winning record, Eighth Air Force commander Ira Eaker called them "the best baseball team I have ever seen".
Another famous pro-ball player to serve with the Eighth Air Force was Billy Southworth, the son of St Louis Cardinals manager, Billy Southworth Sr. He played minor league baseball for the Toronto Maple Leafs before enlisting in December 1940, becoming the first professional baseball player to sign up. Southworth completed twenty-five missions as a pilot with the 303rd Bomb Group, all flown while wearing his lucky Cardinals baseball cap. Southworth tragically died while conducting a training flight of a B-29 in early 1945. Another casualty of the air war was Elmer Gedeon, a gifted athlete who had played baseball and football at the University of Michigan before joining the Washington Senators. Gedeon flew B-26 Marauders with the 394th Bomb Group, part of the Ninth Air Force. He was shot down on the group's thirteenth mission, becoming one of only two Major League Baseball players to be killed during the Second World War.
Americans weren't the only ones to enjoy baseball during the war. Local children were invited onto bases to watch games, and in some cases, were encouraged to join in. Baseball fans saw the enthusiasm of British children as an opportunity to grow the game at the grassroots level after the war. It was also hoped that the return of 11,000 evacuees from Canada and the United States would bring a legion of young fans to the sport. Ann Vince was one of those British children evacuated to America for their safety. In an interview with the Imperial War Museum, she recalled her enjoyment of baseball during her five years in the States. Ann was disappointed by her reacquaintance with rounders on her return to England: “It wasn’t a patch on baseball”, she lamented.
< English schoolboys visiting an Eighth Air Force base are given an introduction to baseball by USAAF personnel
Despite the optimism of wartime commentators, baseball could not maintain a sizeable foothold in British sporting culture once the bulk of American and Canadian personnel had left after the war. The game was denied a place at the 1948 London Olympics and gradually fell into obscurity as televised British sports competed for the attention of fans. However, the continuing presence of USAF forces in Britain throughout the post-war period has meant that baseball has never strayed far from the 'Fields of Little America'.
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