Early baseball in Britain was sustained by an influx of expatriate players from baseball-playing nations, principally the US and Canada, but not exclusively so; and baseball was not always the reason that had brought these individuals to the UK. These articles endeavour to tell some of their stories.

This series was only made possible by the digitisation of newspaper archives and government records over the past three decades, married with advances in optical character recognition, computer vision, natural language processing, and associated search functionality. In light of this, I would like to dedicate this series to William Morgan (1923—2015), who, forty years ago, pioneered research into the history of baseball in Britain by combing through the archives line by line, page by page.

Washington Makes His Bow: Joe Washington, New Yorker, African American, surgeon, soldier, and forgotten star of 1930s baseball in Great Britain.

Behind the Mask: the story of integrated baseball in Great Britain from the 1880s until the start of the Second World War.

Ace Hurler: Hidezo ‘H’ Nishikawa, Japanese star of 1930s baseball in Great Britain.

Slugger: Merrick Cranstoun, ice hockey player, baseball player and coach, and possible answer to the mystery of how Hidezo ‘H’ Nishikawa came to play baseball at Romford.

Nichiei Yakyu: A survey of encounters between Japan and Great Britain on the baseball diamond from the 1880s until the start of the Second World War.

Typists, Factory Girls, and Clerks: A brief history of women’s baseball in Great Britain in the interwar period as exemplified by the Kodak Company’s Hawk-Eye Baseball Team (HEBT), stars of the game.

Wearing the Flag: In August 1938, England won the first World Amateur Baseball Championship. Here, I present short biographies of the players in the England team.

Intolerance: Abraham Lincoln Sterne and the Civil War between the English and American baseball codes in Liverpool in the late Nineteenth Century.

Health, Friendship, and Baseball: This multi-part series explores the connection between baseball in Great Britain and the world of work from 1880 until 1939.

By Kind Permission of Colonel J.A. Kilian: The worlds of work, baseball, and a despotic U.S. Army officer collide in wartime Britain.

Words and Music: A personal view of how to approach research into early baseball in Great Britain, using as an example the identification of the players known only as ‘Ruggles’ and ‘Carey’, star battery of the 1895 Fuller’s Baseball Team.

Photo Call: Press photos of interest to the study of early baseball in Great Britain.

Resources:

Baseball in Britain, 1870-1939, Family Tree. A chronology of efforts to introduce American baseball into Great Britain prior to the Second World War, including information on some of the major personalities involved, many of whom are discussed in the articles linked to on this page.

Recommended Reading:

Project Cobb, the Project for the Chronicling of British Baseball: https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/

William Morgan’s Baseball Mercury at Project Cobb: https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/mercury.html

Joe Gray, ‘What About the Villa?’ and ‘Nine Aces and a Joker’, Fineleaf Editions, 2010 and 2012, respectively: https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/research.html

Harvey Sahker, ‘The Blokes of Summer’, Free Lance Writing Associates, Inc., 2011: lulu

Josh Chetwynd and Brian A Belton, ‘British Baseball and the West Ham Club’ McFarland and Company, 2007.

Daniel Bloyce, ‘John Moores and the ‘Professional’ Baseball Leagues in 1930s England’, Sport in History, 27:1 (2007), 64-87: https://doi.org/10.1080/17460260701231067

Banner Image: Baseball 1927: (Back Row, Left to Right) Eddie Roundy (Coach), Ralph H. Ayer ’28 (Manager), Durward S. Heal ’28, Meade J. Baldwin ’28, Pierre L. Fourcade ’28 (Asst. Manager), (Middle Row) Joseph Washington ’27, Edward P. Niziolek ’29, Andrew C. Klisik ’30. 1927. Black & white print, 9.6 x 13.8 inches. https://jstor.org/stable/community.351636.