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.

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.

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.

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, Part I: The first of a two-part exploration of the connection between baseball in Great Britain and the world of work, covering the period 1890—1919 and focusing on the late-Edwardian, blue-collar British Baseball Association.

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 the examples of identifying 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.

Recommended Reading:

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

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.