THE REAL THING! Popcorn and Peanuts for Baseball Patrons. The International Baseball League are highly gratified with the attendance at last Sunday's matches at Stamford Bridge, which included a large number of American sailors. For to-morrow's (Sunday) big match between Canada and America, which begins at 3 p.m., a very large crowd is expected, and the proceedings will be enlivened by the Paramount Jazz Band from the Frolics Club, Warwick-street, whilst further to "Americanise" the environment, there will be peanuts, popcorn, chewing gum, candy, ice-cream cones, and, of course, “plenty of noise." So far, the form has exceeded expectations, especially among the English-born players. As for the Canadians, they have an "all Star" outfield in Blakely, Brown, and Strebel, the last-named being a wonderful catcher. It is requested that Englishmen wishing to take part in the League should write to the Secretary, at 6, Dansey-yard, Wardour-street, W.1.[1]

Nineteen Twenty-Two was an important year in the story of American baseball in Britain. It marked the point at which the organised game,[2] which had all but disappeared from the nation’s capital after the failure of the Anglo American Baseball League (AABL) in 1919, began to reassert its presence once more, initially—and not coincidentally, as we will see—as something akin to a resurrected AABL, but, by year’s end, reshaped into the form that would take it into the golden age of American baseball in Britain in the mid 1930s.

At the heart of the story of that year are two men. The first is someone we’ve already met in connection with the AABL: its managing director, former rolling skate salesman, Howard E. Booker.[3] The second is a man who served in the US Navy, played in the AABL, and later worked for Booker. His name was Art Strebel.

This connection did not do us the least bit of harm at the Cosmo Club (35 Wardour Street) which is managed by Shorty Strebel, an Irishman in spite of his name, who formerly was a ball player in the state and knew Eppa Jeptha [Rixey]. He got us a ringside table and plenty of service.[4]

Arthur Charles Strebel (1893–1980), known as ‘Shorty’ to his intimates (he was 5 feet 4), was in fact of Swiss and German American heritage, but it is no surprise that he claimed otherwise in the years immediately following the First World War. Born in Chicago in 1893, the son of a shipping clerk,[5] it was military service that would bring him to Britain, but as regards his movements and activities in the years leading up to his enlistment in the US Navy Aviation Corps in 1917, he himself gave three different accounts at three different times:

1.     He ‘left the University of Indiana nine to play center field for the St Louis Cardinals in 1914’.[6]

2.     He ‘played professional baseball for a few years after leaving the University of Indiana in 1910’.[7]

3.     He ‘took up small boat navigation on the Great Lakes, and along the east coast to Florida’.[8]

There is no record of Strebel attending the University of Indiana,[9] and, of course, he was only 17 in 1910. We can place him in Indiana in 1917, however, not least because this is where he enrolled in the US Navy. Similarly, there is no record of him ever being on the roster of the St. Louis Cardinals; however, there is some evidence of him, as the quote above shows, making the acquaintance of Hall-of-Fame inductee Eppa Rixey while playing baseball in Virginia or Georgia. Something else of interest to us here is that, as Andrew Taylor of the Folkestone Baseball Chronicle Facebook page has pointed out, in 1914, the St Louis Cardinals comducted their spring training in St. Augustine, Florida.[10]

Recognising that Georgia, Virginia, and Florida are all on the US’s eastern seaboard, and allowing, as Andrew Taylor also suggests, that Strebel could have been a ‘yannigan’, a rookie or non-roster player playing in the Cardinal second team during training,[11] we can perhaps combine all three of these accounts into something at least plausible and consistent. It could be that Strebel left home in 1910, aged 17, and went to sea, working his way down the eastern seaboard, playing baseball as the opportunities presented themselves, fetching up in Florida in the spring of 1914. There, he joined the Cardinals for spring training at St. Augustine, but, alas, this did not lead to a contract. Instead, he started working his way back to Chicago overland, getting as far as Indiana, where, for a time, he worked as a caretaker for holiday cottages in Ravenwood, north of Indianapolis. He may also have worked as a cartoonist for an Indianapolis newspaper—a profession he would intermittently follow later in life—before deciding to enroll in the US Navy Aviation Corps, signing his papers in Lawrence, Indiana, on 10 April 1917, just three days after the USA declared war on Germany.[12]

We are on safer ground with Strebel’s career in the US Navy Air Service. He received his training at Pensacola, Florida, in the summer and autumn of 1917, narrowly surviving an accident in which a backfiring engine set fire to the aircraft in which he was flying, causing it to crash. Fortunately, the aircraft was over the sea at the time, and when the plane struck the water, it extinguished the flames. Strebel and the plane’s pilot, another Indiana enrollee, Al Crossland, were pulled from the water, burnt, bruised, and shaken up, but alive. They reported back for duty within a few weeks.[13]

For his war service, Strebel served in naval aero squadrons operating out of Dunkirk and St. Englevert, being particularly adept at aerial reconnaissance—putting his artistic skills to good use (drawing maps). At war’s end, by which time he had reached the rank of Ensign, he transferred to the US Naval Headquarters in London. According to his own account, he was employed in the motion picture unit there, making films about US Navy operations in the European theatre and the American-led Belgian Relief Effort. There is evidence to suggest that he also studied at King’s College London (KCL), taking advantage of a programme offered by the US Government at war’s end for US servicemen to study at British universities.[14]

The same evidence suggests he turned out for the KCL baseball team in the 1919 inter-varsity league (formed of teams of US servicemen at British universities). We are more certain that he played for the US Navy team in the second and final season of the AABL—and it is worth saying that two of his fellow players in that team, Fierros and Donovan, were also in the KCL team, supporting that former supposition. Subsequent events, detailed below, would strongly suggest that he made the acquaintance of Howard E. Booker at this time, who was, of course, in day-to-day charge of the AABL. It is also very likely that this was when he first made the acquaintance of future associates Arlie Latham and Charlie Muirhead, of whom more below.[15]

In the autumn of 1919, Strebel was demobilised, but, rather than return to the US, he decided to stay in England. In a job possibly secured for him by Howard Booker, he went to work for Robert West Hunter (1879-1924), the American managing director of the European sales office of the Plymouth Cordage Company of Massachusetts. For the next two years, he travelled all over Europe, probably selling rope, but also possibly in relation to Hunter’s other business interests, which, by 1922, would include dance halls, cinemas, and nightclubs.[16]

We can place December 1922 as the latest date by which Hunter had gone into the entertainment industry, because that was the month that he and Howard Booker and two other partners incorporated the Grafton Galleries Club to handle the partners’ shared interests in nightclubs, dance halls, and cinemas.[17]

This was a few months after Booker ended his previous partnership with Frank Mitchell, a former seller of correspondence courses on telepathy and magnetic healing. Given the business relationship between Hunter and Booker and the fact that Booker had been in the same business since the War, it seems to me reasonable to assume that Booker and Strebel met while both were involved in the AABL, and when Strebel left the US Navy, it was to Booker he turned for employment, who then recommended him to Hunter. Although Booker’s principal partner at this time was Mitchell, it is also possible that Hunter was a minor partner or investor in the Mitchell–Booker concern, which included palais de danse and nightclubs in London and Paris, prime among them the Hammersmith Palais in London and Apollo Theater in Paris.[18]

Just as significantly for our story, by the time that the Grafton Galleries Club company was formed, Strebel had begun to work as a dance hall and nightclub manager for Booker and associates—a role he would perform for several years. It is useful for later purposes to note that, as well as the titular Grafton Galleries Club in Mayfair, Booker and Hunter and partners owned the Frolics and Cosmo Clubs in Soho, the latter on Wardour Street, the former on Warwick Street. These were the businesses that Booker had retained when his partnership with Frank Mitchell ended in July 1922—Mitchell kept the rest.[19]

After a time managing the Grafton Galleries Club, Strebel moved to the Cosmo Club, staying there until 1926, at which time he left Booker’s employ (Hunter died in the US in 1924) and, after a period managing Blanchard’s Club, returned to the US. However, we will return to Strebel’s post-1922 life later.[20]

As we have already noted, 1922 was also the year that organised American baseball began to reassert its presence in London. If Art Strebel is to be believed, he was the man who made it happen.

Shorty, who has been managing a palais-de-dance here, since the war, was looking for an umpire to take spiritual charge of a league of six ball teams that he had organized in London. And Artie said sure […] The teams that Shorty got together were the London Canadians, the American Y.M.C.A., the United States Shipping Board, the American Legion, the American Universities Club, and the London Irish […].[21]

It would be incorrect to say that there was no organised baseball in London between 1919 and 1922. There was the annual 4th of July ballgame at Stamford Bridge. The 1920 game, which actually took place in mid-July after being postponed due to rain, was between a US Navy team and a team from the American Legion London Post No. 1. Arlie Latham, veteran ballplayer and umpire for the AABL in 1918 and 1919, was again on umpire duties. The game was organised by Colonel Oscar N. Solbert (1885–1958), the US Military attache in London, and head of the American Legion London Post No. 1.[22]

The American Legion organisation of military veterans was just over a year old at this point. Formed in Paris in March 1919 to improve the lot of veterans who might otherwise, through dissatisfaction, follow the example of their German and Russian counterparts and embrace left-wing revolutionary politics, the Legion had expanded rapidly. One of the attendees of the meeting in Paris that led to the Legion’s foundation was Walter H.A. Coleman, a US Navy veteran who had seen service with the destroyer flotilla based at Queenstown in Ireland. On his demobilisation, Coleman entered service with the US State Department at the US Embassy in London. Coleman returned to London from the Paris meeting and founded the American Legion London Post No.1, making it one of the oldest American Legion posts; he also became the post’s first adjutant under Oscar Solbert, not coincidentally, also employed at the US Embassy.[23]

The American Legion Post No. 1, as we will see, would be a key player in baseball in London in the early 1920s. Even the 1921 4th of July game, which was between a team from the USS Pittsburgh and a team from the US Army of the Rhine, was to raise funds to build a clubhouse for American Legion members in London. As stated above, Oscar Solbert, the US Military Attache and head of the London Post, organised the 1920 4th of July game. Solbert would even become personally involved in at least one baseball game in 1922, and would also play a role in the 1922 season's later stages.[24]

One additional point of interest of the 4 July 1921 game was that Arlie Latham was again on umpiring duty. A few months earlier, an American visiting London had been surprised to discover Latham operating a coat-check (cloakroom) concession in a London nightclub. This made headline news in America, with no less a person than Damon Runyon reporting on it. This was Rector’s Nightclub on Tottenham Court Road, and the significance of this event to our story is that at the time, Rector’s was owned by Howard E. Booker and his then partner, Frank Mitchell. Jumping ahead a few years, although we cannot be sure about the situation in 1922, by 1926, Charlie Muirhead, who played in both the AABL and the 1922 league, was using the Cosmo Club, another Howard Booker business—and managed by Strebel at the time—as a correspondence address; something he continued to do until at least 1930.[25]

The picture that emerges is one of some of the old AABL crowd, men like Art Strebel and Arlie Latham and possibly Charlie Muirhead, too, being employed by or making a living from businesses owned by Howard E. Booker. In the spring of 1922, these same men launched the International Baseball League (IBL).

BASEBALL SEASON OPENS. Two Games to be Played at Stamford Bridge To-morrow. Mr. Wilson Cross, who has done so much in the past in providing American boys with facilities for playing baseball, and who is honorary president of the newly-formed league, will open the season to-morrow at 2,30 by throwing the first ball in the game at Stamford Bridge.[26]

The fact that the creator of the AABL, Wilson Cross, was the honorary president of the IBL must also be seen as significant. Remembering that Howard Booker was on the board of the AABL, and, therefore, the most likely man amongst the old AABL crowd connected to the Mitchell–Booker empire to be in contact with Wilson Cross in 1922, is this evidence that the IBL, rather than being Strebel’s baby, was a Howard Booker initiative?

That is a hard question to answer with the limited information that we have. We can certainly point to Booker and his partners giving support beyond employment to Strebel, Latham, and others. It will be remembered that the Frolics Club was owned by Booker and partners—and note, at this stage, prior to July 1922, we are still talking about the Mitchell–Booker concern, which may have included Hunter as a minor partner/investor. As can be seen from the quote that opened this piece, the Paramount Jazz Band, then appearing at the Frolics Club, played at least one of the IBL’s early games. We can also point to the headquarters of the League, 6 Dansey Yard, Wardour Street, being just around the corner from a second Mitchell–Booker club, the Cosmo  Club—the club that Art Strebel later ran and Charlie Muirhead used as a correspondence address. Finally, it is worth noting that Strebel was a follower—he worked for other people his whole life. This doesn’t exclude the possibility that the IBL was his idea, of course. It’s just that there’s little evidence in the rest of his life of him being entrepreneurial.

Is this enough to say that Booker was behind the IBL? Not alone. However, as we now proceed to seeing how the 1922 baseball season in London played out, there is a final piece of information that might be relevant to us.

SUNDAY BASEBALL. There are so many Americans in London at present that interest in baseball here is rapidly increasing. Between 3,000 and 4,000 people, for instance, saw a match at Stamford Bridge last week. […] The London Americans, who occupy second place in the league, will be opposed by the United States Shipping Board, the leaders.[27]

The International Baseball League, which played its games on a Sunday, launched with great fanfare in May 1922. As we have seen, it comprised six teams, five of which were North American in foundation. In the September 1922 newspaper report quoted above, in which Art Strebel claimed credit for founding the league, one of the teams was described as the ‘American Legion’; in the event, this team took over the name of the team that John Gibson Lee, pioneer of the wartime military baseball leagues, had created in 1915, the London Americans. The final team, described in that same newspaper report as the ‘London Irish’, was in all other sources I have seen described as the ‘All England Team’, and based on this description, would seem to have been a team of British nationals new to the game. In this regard, it is worth pointing out that Ireland was still British at this time, the Irish Free State not coming into existence until December 1922. This is pure speculation, but it is possible that it was a team formed of the British Legion players to whom Oscar Solbert taught baseball in April 1922.[28]

Arlie Latham was back as the ‘official umpire’ and scattered throughout the teams were players from the various attempts to popularise the game in London in the past two decades. Alongside old AABL and/or wartime military league players like Art Strebel, Charlie Muirhead, and Carl Blackader, there were even older players, prime among them two players who had been playing baseball in London since the Edwardian era and had gone on to be members of John Gibson Lee’s original London Americans team in the wartime military leagues: Bob Le Cron, an American physiotherapist who was also one of the original backers of the AABL—yet another AABL connection—and John Gibson Lee’s brother Louis Smetham Lee (1885–1940).[29]

There were also new players who would go on to be associated with the game in the capital for the rest of the decade and beyond, prime amongst them Charles Burl Brooks (1888–1936) and Bertram George Gildersleeve (1895–1982).

Charlie Brooks was a former professional ballplayer from Georgia who quit the game in 1917 to become a tableware salesman. He made several extended sales trips to Europe across the 1920s, playing baseball in London whenever he was in town for the season. He was possibly the best player active in the game in London in the 1920s. Andrew Taylor of the Folkestone Baseball Chronicle is researching his career. In 1922, he turned out for the London Americans and the US Shipping Board, and much was made of the fact that he was a former pro player.[30]

Bert Gildersleeve, as he preferred to be called for perhaps obvious reasons, was born in Sacramento and, as a youth, was a member of the Brothers College Baseball Team that became the first baseball team to go into Folsom Prison to play against the Folsom Prison convict baseball team. On the US’s entry into the First World War, Gildersleeve joined up and was assigned a clerical role and posted to first France, and then, after the Armistice, to the American Army of the Rhine. While serving in France, he married a French national, Paule Chanaud; however, the marriage seems to have foundered within a few years. By 1920, Gildersleeve had become a clerk in the office of the Military Attache in the American Embassy in London—Oscar Solbert’s office.[31]

Gildersleeve would remain a clerk at the American Embassy in London for the next 20 years, and for most of that time, he would be an active part of the London baseball scene—as late as 1936, aged over 40, he was playing the game at the highest level in the capital, turning out for the Streatham and Mitcham Giants in the professional London Major Baseball League. In the 1922 International Baseball League, he pitched for the US Shipping Board team—the number one team in the league.[32]

The fact that an army clerk from the American Embassy turned out for the civilian US Shipping Board team is of note. It was certainly the case that there could be some odd pairings of team and player—Art Strebel, for example, turned out at different times for both the London Americans and the London Canadians. And we have already noted, Charlie Brooks turned out for both the London Americans and the US Shipping Board.[33] However, it has to be said that we have very little information on the makeup of the teams in the IBL. As far as I am aware, there are no full rosters available, only mentions of key players in newspaper reports.

It had been hoped that the traditional 4 July game would be between representative teams from the London league and the league in Paris, which, like the London league, included an American Legion team. However, in the event, it was played between a London league team and a team from the USS Utah, effectively a rerun of a game that had taken place in early June.[34] More particularly, it was the last game of the International Baseball League.

There were no games on 9 July, the Sunday following the 4th of July—at least no games reported (but see below). And when the following Sunday rolled around, with it came an announcement to the press, which I will quote in full here because of the information it contains.

BASEBALL IN LONDON. A baseball game will be played to-day (Sunday) at Stamford Bridge Sports Ground, Fulham-Road, S.W.6. The competing teams are the United States Shipping Board and the American University Club, and the game will be played under the auspices of the American Legion, London Post No.1 The game will be called at 3 p.m. The low price of admission of 1s. to the grounds (6d. for boys) enables everyone to see an exhibition of America’s national game

The whole baseball situation in London has been taken over by the London Post of the American Legion; four good teams have been formed, and besides the exhibition game to-day at Stamford Bridge it is hoped that a series of league games can also be played on Saturday afternoons on other grounds. The league will be called the London Baseball League

The American Ambassador has consented to be honorary patron, and the honorary officers of the league are Mr. Wilson Cross, president; Colonel O.N. Solbert, vice-president; Mr. W.E. Hitchcock, treasurer; and Capt. D.A. Smith, secretary. A good brand of baseball will be given to the public, and any profit arising from the game will be used by the American Legion in fostering baseball in Great Britain.[35]

The following week, a league table was published that provided the names of the four teams and presented, what it claimed, were the results of the season so far.[36]

                                                            W        L          D

American University Club             5          4          0

London Canadians                        4          4          0

American Y.M.C.A.                           4          4          0

U.S. Shipping Board                        4          5          0

Remembering that the game the previous week had been between the American University Club and the US Shipping Board, we can immediately see that, before that game was played—which was evidently won by the American University Club—if this league table were to be believed, after 8 weeks of competition, the four teams had all won as often as they had lost. This seems improbable. However, even if it were to be believed, before 16 July, there were six teams in the league, only four of which played on any given Sunday, so how could each of the teams have played eight games between 22 May, the start of the season, and 16 July, the date of the American University Club and US Shipping Board game? It is instead safe to assume that someone simply counted the number of Sundays since the season started and divided it by two to determine how many wins and losses the teams would need to each have a .500 P.C. going into the rest of the season.

What had happened? Alas, we can only speculate. However, the fact that Wilson Cross remained as honorary president and, as subsequent events would show, the likes of Strebel, Latham, and Muirhead all remained involved, points to this being a reorganisation rather than a hostile takeover.

In regards to the loss of two teams, it seems reasonable to speculate that, at some point in early July, it became difficult to find enough players to continue to run six teams. We can further speculate that the ‘All England’ team, hopelessly outclassed as it obviously was from the one result we have, its 9–3 drubbing with an inning to spare at the hands of the US Shipping Board, withdrew.[37]

Meanwhile, there is evidence for the problem the other teams had in putting together teams in the number of players who played for more than one team, as we have already noted. In this light, the loss of the London Americans, rather than suggesting a team withdrawing as with the All England team, was likely simply to allow its team members to be distributed among the other teams (most obviously the US Shipping Board team, but also probably the London Canadians, too).

However, while the above speculation points to why there may have been a reorganisation of the teams in the league, it does not explain the assertion that the American Legion London Post No.1 had taken over control of the game in London. Taken over control from whom? To answer that question, I believe we must return to the question we posed earlier: was Howard Booker behind the creation of the International Baseball League? This is because, as we’ve already seen, July 1922, the month these events occurred, had a particular significance for Howard Booker: it was the month that his partnership with Frank Mitchell was dissolved and the two divided up their entertainment empire between them.

It seems to me that if we suppose that, yes, Howard Booker was behind the creation of the International Baseball League, then his preoccupation with dissolving his partnership with Mitchell would have left the IBL rudderless, just as it was suffering a crisis of falling numbers of players. In this light, it would be natural for Oscar Solbert and the American Legion to step in to save the season, particularly given that American Legion members, and, yes, even one of Solbert’s own clerks (Gildersleeve) were so active in the league. Subsequent seasons would show that Art Strebel was prominent among the baseball-playing legionnaires, so we may even go so far as to speculate that Strebel asked Solbert to step in, perhaps at Booker’s direction, or at least, with his blessing.

Result: All Star Legionnaires, 12; S.S. Leviathan, 7. Teams: All Star Legionnaires: Cabbage (left field), O’Brien (first base), Strebel (centre field), Gildersleeve (pitcher). Baker (third base), Muirhead (catcher), Blackader (right field), (second base), Edmack (short slop). S.S. Leviathan: Karser (left field), Singleton (first base), Hennesy (centre field), Hamer (pitcher), Coyle (third base), Thawley (catcher), Barnes (right field), Allen (second base), Jones (short stop). Umpire: Arlie Latham.[38]

The 1922 baseball season in London ended with another game against a team from the USS Utah. The 1923 season, the first full season under the control of the American Legion London Post No.1, brought with it a new team, the All Star Legionnaires, which, as the quote above shows, was formed of the AABL old guard, teamed with the best of the new players, Gildersleeve prime among them. Art Strebel was in there—indeed, he would captain the Legionnaires in at least 1924, also possibly 1923.[39]

Although the Oxford Rhodes Scholars (successor to the American University Club team) and the U.S. Shipping Board would return for the 1923 season, the American Y.M.C.A. and the London Canadians would not. The Legionnaires would dominate the season, which, in a sign of things to come, would feature games against Americans visiting London in the form of the crews of ships, Navy and civilian, and, somewhat bizarrely, Yale and Harvard students spending their summer working on an American passenger liner (the SS Leviathan, which was to supply teams for games in London for the next decade).[40]

In another sign of things to come, the season would also feature a ‘burlesque game’, a game played for laughs, in this case, largely at the expense of a team formed of the African American performers of the ‘Dover Street to Dixie’ revue.[41] (To be fair to the Legionnaires, they could not control the reactions of the crowd and press to the spectacle, and the fact that they loaned the revue team a pitcher and catcher suggests, as Andrew Taylor has pointed out, that they wanted to make a game of it[42]). Such games would become an annual event with African Americans the butt of the joke, at least as far as the press was concerned, on at least one other occasion. (This was, of course, in keeping with attitudes towards African American people prevalent at the time.)

If the burlesque game was the nadir of the 1923 season, its acme was the journey the Legionnaires made to Paris in July to take on the baseball team of the Paris Post of the American Legion. With their 12–6 victory, they returned to England as the All-Star Champions of Europe.[43]

While the Legionnaires were in Paris, back in London, a reconstituted London Americans team (a Legionnaires ‘B’ team, a league best-of-the-rest?) played a game of nearly equal significance against the Chipping Norton Baseball Club.[44] The adoption of baseball as a summer sport by the Oxfordshire town of Chipping Norton through the efforts of local scoutmaster Frederick ‘Fred’ Lewis (1879-1960) is one of the most remarkable in the history of baseball in Britain. It has, however, been told by others;[45] for our story, all we need to focus on is that the debut of the Chipping Norton team in London in 1923 was to be followed by several years of fruitful collaboration between Lewis and the London baseball scene that would advance the game in Chipping Norton greatly, but, as we will discuss below, would also expose the gap between British views of how to develop the game in Britain and those of the North Americans who dominated the London scene.

BASEBALL SEASON. The 1924 baseball season in London will be again this year under the auspices of the London Post of the American Legion. The first game will be at Stamford Bridge Sports Ground on May 11th, when the All Star Champions of Europe in 1923 will play against Oxford University, the Oxford team being made up from the American and Canadian Rhodes scholars. The games on succeeding Sundays will be with the U.S. Cruiser "Raleigh." the S.S. "Leviathan," the U.S. Cruiser "Pittsburg," Harvard University, Yale University, the U.S. Olympic team, the U.S. Midshipmen's Training Squadron, Paris Post of the Legion for the championship of Europe, the Wembley Rodeo, and other strong teams.[46]

The 1924 season was in many ways a cut-and-paste of the previous season. However, it was to be the last season in which the American Legion London Post was in charge of the game in London. Not coincidentally, just as the season opened, Oscar Solbert left his role as Military Attache and head of the London Legion Post to return to the US to become a presidential aide to Calvin Coolidge. A few years later, he would join the Kodak company, where he would remain for the rest of his career.[47] This, of course, also reflected the general reduction in the number of US military personnel—active and veteran—in England now that the end of the war was six years in the past.

The highlight of baseball in Britain in that year was probably the late-in-the-year arrival of the Chicago White Sox and New York Giants, who played five games, alas to diminishing returns in terms of attracting interest. However, their first game at Stamford Bridge in October drew a large crowd, due, it has to be said, in part to the attendance of the Duke and Duchess of York (the future King George VI and Queen Mary). Both teams would later be presented to King George V. Walter Comiskey of the White Sox took the opportunity presented by the tour to renew his acquaintance with Arlie Latham, who was, by this time, working in a London hotel.[48]

However, the highlight of the official season was the two-game European Championship between the London and Paris legion teams, although, alas, the Paris Legion team, coached by Paris-based African American bandleader Louis Mitchell, won both games.[49] Of significance to our story, we can point to Art Strobel being the captain of the All-Star Legionnaires this season (he may also have been the captain the previous season, but this information is not available to us). Whatever the truth or otherwise of his claim to have created the International Baseball League back in 1922, he was demonstrably a key player, in both senses of the word, in baseball in London in these years. This was to continue as the game in the capital moved into its next phase.

An Anglo-American Baseball Association has been formed in Loudon, and the members are hopeful of popularising the game in this country. At present there are four teams proposed under the association—Chelsea, Brentford, London Lions, and American Legion.[50]

Andrew Taylor has written extensively about the Anglo-American Baseball Association (AABA). It was to fly the flag for American baseball in London for a decade, laying the foundations that would see London become one of the centres of the game in Britain in its golden age of the mid-to-late 1930s. Its driving force was someone we have met in passing several times already in this piece, its organising secretary, Charles Frederick Muirhead (1890–1949).[51]

A Toronto native, Muirhead had worked as a salesman and possibly played baseball and ice hockey in East Toronto before he joined the Canadian Army in 1914. Wounded in action, by 1916, he was in England, assigned to the Canadian Army Pay and Record Office in London and playing baseball in the wartime military leagues. In 1918 and 1919, he turned out for the Record Office baseball team in the AABL. [52] As we have already discussed, this was the likely start of a relationship between Muirhead and Strebel and probably Muirhead and Booker, too.

It has been reasonably proposed that, given Muirhead’s recorded involvement in the organising of the AABA, and his involvement as a player in the International Baseball League and London Baseball League in 1922 and two subsequent seasons of the game under the American Legion London Post, he was also involved in the organising of the latter. As we have already discussed, there is tentative evidence that Muirhead was another of the former AABL players in the Mitchell–Booker orbit in 1922 when the IBL came into being. We are on firmer ground when pointing to the friendship between Muirhead and Strebel, which continued into the early years of the AABA. More significantly for our story, we can point to evidence of Strebel also playing a role in the running of the AABA.

Baseball time here is approaching. Where are you players of yesteryear—Robert Armstrong of “Iz Zat So”; Ernie Stanton and all the rest of you erstwhile Londoners? We want you at Stamford Bridge. “Shorty” Strebel and Charlie Muirhead are sizing up Ben Blue, Ed. Lowry, and Hal Sherman as possibilities.[53]

LONDON BASEBALL SEASON. The first baseball game of the London season will be played at Stamford Bridge on Sunday afternoon, when a team from Oxford University will meet a team representing the London Americans. Gildersleeve and Brooke, of the London team, can throw a baseball or a cricket ball one hundred yards from a standing position, while Strebel the captain of the London team, is an expert catcher of “skiers”.[54]

Strebel’s captaincy of the London Americans, by this time, the AABA’s flagship team, extended into 1928, his last year in London. As we have already discussed, Muirhead was, by 1926, using the Cosmo Club, the club that Strebel managed, as a correspondence address. Thus, there is a case to be made, it seems to me, for Art Strebel being ‘second-in-command’ of the AABA from 1926 to 1928, a role overshadowed by that of Muirhead as both the organising secretary of the AABA and the public face of baseball in London. Strebel’s captaincy of the London Americans, and the All-Star Legionnaires before it, is further support for the idea that he played a leading role, at least on the day-to-day level, in the running of the International Baseball League in 1922, with or without the guiding hand of Howard Booker. (As an aside, it is worth pointing out that a comparison of rosters shows that the London Americans team of the early AABA years was basically the All-Star Legionnaires team of the American Legion years.[55])

Shorty Strebel is not now managing the Cosmo Club, going over to Blanchard’s. His successor at the Cosmo is none other than the famous Jesse Jacobson. Hedges Bros. & Jacobson as an act began in the rathskellers in the old days, and now Jessie is back in practically the same environment. Strange old world![56]

These were years of change in the life of Art Strebel. In 1923, he married Catherine Stenson Learmouth, but just three years later, tragedy struck when Catherine died of a heart attack as a side effect of the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic during a medical procedure. To add to the tragedy, the procedure was in connection with a miscarriage. Catherine was just 26 years old at the time of her death.[57]

This was also the period when Strebel left Booker’s employ and went to work for Jack May, owner of Blanchard’s Nightclub. It is not known if, while there, he became involved in a scandal centred on the bribing of a police officer called George Goddard. Some of the eye-watering sum of £12,341—an absolute fortune for the time—found in Goddard’s possession was traced back to Jack May. Goddard was sent down for 18 months, a sentence so light as to invite a suggestion of an attempt to keep him quiet about who else was on the take.[58]

Goddard was arrested in November 1928, but the police had received a report on his activities back in September. As Strebel left the UK in August 1928, it would be tempting to say that he saw the writing on the wall and made a hurried exit. However, although we can safely say he would have been well aware of police corruption in connection with the licensing of nightclubs in Soho and was likely involved in it, who amongst the Soho nightclub crowd could claim that their hands were clean? Instead, the more prosaic explanation is that, through contacts made while working at Blanchard’s, Strebel received an offer to work as a cartoonist at a Hollywood studio, an opportunity he was not likely to pass up. Although he made a brief return in 1934, his time in England was at an end.[59]

The Hollywood job was not to last. Instead, Strebel, who remarried in 1929, settled into a period working as a wine steward on passenger liners before taking up a job as a manager as a restaurant in Poughkeepsie, New York, his home for most of the rest of his working life, barring his World War Two service, which took him back to Pensacola and then on to North Africa. He died at his home in Rhode Island in 1980, aged 86.[60]

The umpire at the baseball games at Stamford Bridge and Griffin Park, whose decisions are giving satisfaction to the players and whose voice is heard with interest by British spectators—especially in, " Str-r-ike one!"—is Mr. Arlie Latham, a former player and coach to the famous New York Giants.[61]

In 1924, the American Legion held a testimonial game for Arlie Latham, who continued to umpire games in London until the following year, at which time, he returned to the US and opened a delicatessen in New York. In later years, he would steward the press box at the Polo Grounds in New York.[62] A giant of the game, if only for his personality and longevity, although this is not to dismiss his genuine skill as a ballplayer and coach, Latham’s England sojourn has given rise to more legends than facts, but, then, that was the story of his life.

After Stebel’s return to the US in 1928, Charlie Muirhead and the AABA soldiered on. With an ever-decreasing number of visits by US warships, increasingly the AABA began to rely on North American entertainers playing in London’s theatres and nightclubs for its pool of players. This meant that, arguably, in its later years, the annual burlesque game overshadowed its more serious baseball activities. Performance even crept into other elements of the season, with the casting of celebrity umpires and the use of chorus girls dressed in men’s baseball uniforms to promote the opening game.[63]

One consequence of this shift was a falling out with Fred Lewis and the Chipping Norton Baseball Club. In 1930, Variety published an article on Charlie Muirhead and the AABA in which the writer described the Chipping Norton baseball team as ‘the world’s lousiest’; this view, almost certainly originating with Charlie Muirhead, was a terrible slap in the face for the Chipping Norton club after the years of collaboration with the AABA. A few years later, in outtakes from a Fox Movietone newsreel featuring the Chipping Norton Baseball Club, Fred Lewis would describe attempts to popularise baseball in London as ‘spoiled by overpricing the price of admission and commercialising the game before the sporting side of it was properly understood and appreciated by the London people’. It is not clear what came first: Lewis’s disenchantment with the AABA or the Variety article.[64]

However, we should not let this aspect of the AABA’s approach to promoting the game detract from its achievements, which went far beyond simply keeping the game alive in London in lean times. The AABA, precisely because it worked so hard to maintain a high profile, was a beacon and connecting thread for other groups interested in playing and enjoying the American game in and around the capital, of whom we can cite Chipping Norton, St Joseph’s College, and the Goodyear, Firestone, and Kodak Companies. Kodak, in particular, based out of its British base at Harrow, north of London, benefited from the assistance that the AABA gave to both its men’s and women’s teams. The Kodak baseball section would grow to be one of the biggest groups of amateur players of American baseball in England in the interwar period.[65]

The role that Art Strebel played in stewarding the AABA’s early years alongside Charlie Muirhead, and before that, the role he played in organising the International Baseball League of 1922 and two seasons of American Legion-run ball, we are only now beginning to grasp, albeit imperfectly. If nothing else, what little we know shows that there is reason for delving deeper into this little-recorded period of the American game in Britain. Research is continuing. I am confident that fresh surprises await.

Acknowledgments: Thanks go to Andrew Taylor of the Folkestone Baseball Chronicle Facebook page for his insightful comments and suggestions, without which this piece could not have been written.

Jamie Barras, October 2025.

 Back to Diamond Lives

Notes

[1] ‘The Real Thing!’, Daily Herald, 27 May 1922.

[2] The emphasis here is on ‘organised’, as, of course, North Americans living in London continued to play baseball for relaxation and physical exercise with as much fervour as ever.

[3] I tell Howard E. Booker’s story here: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-never-falter-never-flag, accessed 18 October 2025. For the full story of the AABL and the wartime leagues that preceded it, see: Andrew Taylor: https://www.facebook.com/FolkestoneBaseball#, accessed 3 October 2025. Stephen Dame: Stephen Dame, Coloured Diamonds: Integrated Baseball in the Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1918. Journal of Canadian Baseball, 2022, 1. 10.22329/jcb.v1i1.7696. Jim Leeke: Jim Leeke, Chapter 3: the Anglo-American Baseball League and Chapter Four: Opening Day, ‘Nine Innings for the King’, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2015).

[4] ‘Old Masters Liked Ladies Too Husky for Keeler’, Atlanta Journal (Atlanta, GA), 2 June 1926.

[5] The best single source for Art Strebel’s heritage and birth is the entry for his father Albert Strebel in the 1900 US Federal Census, Worth Township, Cook County, Illinois. This can be cross-referenced with Strebel’s enrollment papers of 12 April, 1917, Indiana, World War I, Enrollment Cards, 1917; ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 10 October 2025. His height is given in his 1920 US passport application: Arthur C. Strebel, 4 May 1920, U.S., Passport Applications, 1792–1925; ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 10 October 2025.

[6] ‘Old Giants Coach Star Boy in British Baseball Circles’, Butte Miner (Butte, MT), 17 September 1922.

[7] ‘Baseball in England’, Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, MA), 18 June 1931.

[8] ‘Strebel is Commissioned Navy Reserve Lieutenant’, Poughkeepsie Eagle News, 7 November 1941.

[9] I base this statement on a search for ‘Strebel’/‘Stroebel’ in copies of Arbutus, the University of Indiana yearbook, from 1909 to 1919, accessed at archive.org, 16 October 2025.

[10] For Strebel knowing Eppa Rxey, see Note 4 above. Thanks go to Andrew Taylor for useful discussions and his insightful suggestions regarding the Cardinals and their yannigans.

[11] ‘Yannigan’: https://sabr.org/journal/article/spring-training-in-georgia-the-yannigans-are-coming/, accessed 18 October 2025.

[12] Caretaker: ‘Howard County Loss $300,000’, Indianapolis Star, 15 March 1917. Claim to have been a cartoonist for Indianapolis newspaper: ‘Sales Manager of the Pilot Motor Car’, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, IN), 19 October 1919. Later career as cartoonist: Note 8 above; for one of his newspaper cartoons, see ‘Ski Jumping on Borax at Rosendale Sunday’, Daily Freeman (Kingston, NY), 17 July 1937. Enrollment: Note 5 above, final reference.

[13] ‘Interesting: Letter from Al Crossland, Former Bedford Boy Now in Aviation Corps’, Bedford Daily Mail (Bedford, IN), 8 October 1917.For a history of US Navy aviation in World War One, see Adrian O. Van Wyen, ‘Naval Aviation in World War I’, (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1969), https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/histories/naval-aviation/naval-aviation-in-world-war-i/pdfs/naval-aviation-in-wwi.pdf, accessed 18 October 2025.

[14] US Military records place Strebel at US Navy Headquarters in London in 1919: entry for Arthur C. Strebel, Navy Directory, 1919, U.S. Navy and Marine Corp Registries, 1814–1992, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 10 October 2025. For his service during the war, we are mostly reliant on his own account, although this at least remained consistent through the years: See Note 8 and Note 12, second reference, above. King’s College London: ‘Baseball’, Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette, 13 June 1919.

[15] For KCL team including ‘Stroebel’, Fierros, and Donovan, see Note 14 above, final reference. For US Navy team in AABL featuring Strebel, Fierros, and Donovan, see: ‘Baseball’ Weekly Dispatch (London), 6 June 1919—these two games were only one week apart. The US Navy’s team’s opponents in that game were the Canadian Army Pay and Record Office, the team that Charlie Muirhead played for: ‘Baseball’, Referee, 10 June 1917.

[16] Strebel records his employment by a ‘R.W. Hunter’ in his 1941 account of his life—Note 8 above. We can identify this as being Robert West Hunter of the Plymouth Cordage Company by a comparison of Robert West Hunter’s signature in his 1918 US passport application with that of the ‘Robert W. Hunter’ in Strebel’s 1920 US passport application, which was filed in London (Hunter confirmed Strebel’s status as a US citizen): see Note 5 above, final reference. Robert West Hunter’s year of birth, also 1918 passport application; year of death: Death Certificate for Robert West Hunter, Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1638-1927; ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 10 October 2025.

[17] ‘Grafton Galleries Club’, Kinematograph Weekly, 21 December 1922.

[18] Mitchell and Booker’s entertainment empire: Gary Chapman, ‘Dancing World Magazine’, https://www.jazzageclub.com/dancing-world-magazine/5288/ , accessed 3 October 2025.

[19] List of clubs owned by Hunter, Booker, and partners: See Note 8 above. We can also point to Booker having a run in with the courts over after-hours drinking at the Frolics Club as supporting evidence: ‘Night Club Fined’, Daily Herald, 20 May 1922. For the full story of the Mitchell–Booker business split, see Note 18 above.

[20] Strebel manager of Grafton Galleries Club: his 1923 US Passport application: U.S., Passport Applications, 1792–1925; ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 10 October 2025. Manager of Cosmo club then Blanchards: Frank O’Connell, Special Correspondent, Vaudeville News and New York Star (New York, NY), 11 December 1926. Strebel return to US, Note 8 above, and entry for Arthur C. Strebel, passenger lists for SS American Shipper, arrived New York, 6 August 1928, New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 10 October 2025.

[21] See Note 6 above.

[22] 1920 game between American Legion London Post No.1 and US Navy: ‘Baseball in London’, Daily Mirror, 3 July 1920. Postponed and Arlie Latham umpiring: Daily Telegraph, 15 July 1920. Latham’s name is rendered ‘Harry Lathom’ in the latter, but from the description, we can be sure this is Latham. Oscar N. Solbert: Oscar Solbert Dies at Eastman House’, Democrat and Chronicle (Washington, DC), 17 April 1958. Solbert’s role in 1920 game: ‘Rivals in Novel Baseball Challenge’, Daily Mirror, 17 April 1922.

[23] Coleman’s career and role in founding the American Legion London Post No. 1: ‘One of the Legion’s Founders’, Pittsburgh Sun, 27 March 1921; ‘Walter H.A. Coleman Dies; State Department Veteran’, Evening Star (Washington, DC), 11 October 1945.

[24] ‘Baseball In London: All-Star Match for American Legion Funds’, Daily News (London), 30 June 1921. ‘Col. and Mrs Harvey See Navy–Army Baseball Game’, New-York Tribune, 4 July 1921. Solbert getting personally involved in baseball: see Note 22 above, final reference.

[25] Latham umpiring 4 July 1921 game: ‘Baseball at Chelsea’, Daily Mirror, 10 June 1922. Damon Runyon writing about Latham at Rector’s Club: ‘Arlie Latham is Discovered Checking Coats in London, Times-Herald (Washington, DC), 23 April 1921. Mitchell and Booker owning Rector’s: see Note 18 above and: ‘The Palais de Danse’, Kensington News and West London Times, 31 October 1919. Muirhead using Cosmo Club as correspondence address: ‘Baseball “Takes On” Throughout Old Land’, Toronto Star, 22 November 1926; ‘Anglo-American Baseball Association’, The Era, 16 July 1930.

[26] ‘Baseball Season Opens’, Evening News (London), 20 May 1922.

[27] ‘Sunday Baseball’, Western Mail, 17 June 1922.

[28] List of teams inc. ‘London Irish’: Note 6 above. ‘All England’ team: see, for example, ‘Sunday Baseball’, Daily News (London), 6 June 1922. Oscar Solbert teaching British Legion members baseball: see Note 22 above, final reference.

[29] Bob Le Cron in the IBL: ‘Baseball at Stamford Bridge’, Reynold’s Newspaper, 25 June 1922. It should be acknowledged here that the identification of Louis S. Lee in the IBL in 1922 is based mainly on a photograph of the London Americans’ captain who bears a strong resemblance to Lee. For Lee and Le Cron’s involvement in baseball since the Edwardian era, see: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-health-friendship-and-baseball-part-i, accessed 19 October 2025.

[30] See Note 29 above, first reference, for Brooks ‘former professional’ playing for the London Americans.  For Brooks playing for the US Shipping Board, see: ‘Baseball’, Birmingham Gazette, 17 June 1922. For Brooks quitting baseball to become a salesman for the Oneida Community Tableware Company, see: ‘Charley Brooks Quits Baseball’, Elmira Star-Gazette (Elmira, NY), 27 June 1917. For Charlie Brooks in London in 1922, see US passport application, Charles Burl Brooks, 18 January 1924, which records his presence in the UK from February 1922 to December 1923; we can also point to his wife having acquired a passport to accompany him in 1922, application for Kathleen Burch Brooks, 28 February 1922, U.S., Passport Applications, 1792–1925; ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 18 October 2025. Thanks are due to Andrew Taylor for useful discussions.

[31] Details of Bertram George Gildersleeve’s life taken from: https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/LVGB-F1D, accessed 19 October 2025. In Brothers College team at Folsom Prison game: https://delivery.library.ca.gov:8443/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE258439, accessed 19 October 2025.. Details of his movements in Europe, marriage to Paule Chanaud, posting to US Embassy London: US passport application, Paule Chanaud Gildersleeve, 22 November 1920, U.S., Passport Applications, 1792–1925; ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 12 October 2025.

[32] Gildersleeve still at US Embassy, 1939: entry from Bert G. Gildersleeve, 1939 England Register, Mayfair (US Embassy), ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 12 October 2025. In Streatham and Mitcham Giants: ‘Nepia at Baseball’, Daily News (London), 7 May 1936. Pitching for US Shipping Board, 1922: see Note 30, second reference.

[33] See Note 1 above.

[34] Hope for a game against Paris Americans: ‘baseball at Chelsea’, Daily News (London), 17 May 1922. Paris Baseball League, 1922: ‘Paris Baseball League’, Pall Mall Gazette, 6 March 1922. 4 July game against USS Utah: ‘Independence Day’, Guardian, 5 July 1922. Earlier USS Utah game: ‘London Baseball Match’, Evening News (London), 3 June 1922.

[35] ‘Baseball in London’, Observer, 16 July 1924.

[36] ‘London Baseball’, Pall Mall Gazette, 22 July 1922.

[37] ‘Sunday Baseball’, Daily News (London), 5 June 1922.

[38] ‘Baseball: Leviathan v. All Star Legionnaires’, Hampshire Advertiser, 1 September 1923.

[39] Kill Him Cowboy’ Shields Daily News, 8 July 1924; ‘Baseball in London’, Southern Daily Echo, 4 August 1924

[40] 1923 season dominated by Legionnaires and games against Yale and Harvard students of Leviathan, etc: Note 38 above, and: ‘Where to Go Tomorrow: Baseball Fixture at Stamford Bridge’, Evening News London), 21 July 1923; ‘Baseball in London’, Halifax Evening Courier, 16 July 1923.

[41] Burlesque game: ‘Darkies at the Base’, Westminster Gazette, 18 June 1923. The headline says it all. I cover the story of the African American players in this game and others like it here: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-behind-the-mask, accessed 20 October 2025.

[42] See Note 41 above, final reference.

[43] Paris Game: ‘At Stamford Bridge…’, London Daily Chronicle, 30 July 1923.

[44] Chipping Norton game: See Note 42 above, and ‘The baseball game at Stamford Bridge tomorrow…’, The Sportsman, 28 July 1923.

[45] The best account of the Chipping Norton baseball story is probably that by Bill Williams: Bill Williams, ‘Were They the Champions: The Fascinating Story of the Chipping Norton Baseball Club’, https://www.playingpasts.co.uk/articles/team-sports/were-they-the-champions-the-fascinating-story-of-chipping-norton-baseball-club/, accessed 20 October 2025.

[46] ‘Baseball Season’, West London Observer, 9 May 1924.

[47] ‘Dinners: Major Oscar Solbert’, Daily Telegraph, 10 May 1924, and Note 22 above, third reference.

[48] White Sox and Giants at Stamford Bridge, 1924: ‘Baseball Stars’, Sheffield Independent, 25 October 1924; rest of tour:  https://ibwaa.substack.com/p/dublins-croke-park-no-luck-with-the, accessed 20 October 2025. Comiskey and Latham: ‘Karpe’s Comment’, Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), 11 May 1925.

[49] Louis Mitchell’s association with baseball in Paris: Brett A. Berliner, ‘Syncopated Hits: The Clef Club Negro Baseball Team in Jazz-Age Paris’, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, 2011, 19, no. 2, 44-52. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/nin.2011.0009. Championship games: Berliner article and ‘Humour of Baseball’, Belfast Telegraph, 28 July 1924.

[50] ‘Baseball: Attempt to Popularise Game in This Country’, West London Observer, 8 May 1925.

[51] https://www.wbsc.org/en/news/british-baseball-hall-of-fame-announces-class-of-2023, accessed 20 October 2025.

[52] The evidence or Muirhead playing baseball and ice hockey in East Toronto is based on there being a ‘C. Muirhead’ in the East Toronto Baseball team and East Toronto Blues Ice Hockey Team, and East Toronto (Kingston Road) being where ‘our’ Muirhead was living when he enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1914: ‘St Joseph Beat East Toronto’, Toronto Star, 27 April 1908; ‘East Toronto League’, Toronto Star, 8 May 1911; ‘Beach Success Beaten’, Toronto Star, 25 February 1908.  Muirhead attestation papers: https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=pffww&id=206283&lang=eng&ecopy=509722a, accessed 20 October 2025. Muirhead in wartime leagues, see, for example: ‘Baseball Canadians at Lord’s’, The Referee, 10 June 1917. Playing for Record Office in 1918: ‘Canadian’s Long Jump’, Toronto Star, 27 July 1918.

[53] Frank O’Connell, Special Correspondent, Vaudeville News and New York Star (New York, NY), 7 May 1927.

[54] ‘London Baseball Season’, Daily Express, 21 May 1926.

[55] Compare the Legionnaires’ roster in Note 38 above to the London Americans’ roster here: ‘Baseball’, West London Observer, 20 May 1927.

[56] Frank O’Connell, Special Correspondent, Vaudeville News and New York Star (New York, NY), 11 December 1926.

[57] Marriage: search of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, Arthur C Strebel, 1923, https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl, accessed 20 October 2025. Death of Catherine Strebel: Frank O’Connell, Special Correspondent, Vaudeville News and New York Star (New York, NY), 25 December 1926. Cause of death: Catherine Stenson Strebel, death certificate, registered 14 December 1926, digital image obtained from General Register Office, October 2025.

[58] Goddard case: Robert Jarossi, ‘Sgt Goddard and corruption in 1920s' London’, https://www.personsunknown.net/p/sgt-goddard-and-corruption-in-1920s, accessed 20 October 2025. Jack May’s involvement: ‘Magistrate at a Nightclub’, Daily Herald, 6 December 1929.

[59] Timing of Goddard case: ‘Dismissed Police Sergeant’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 27 November 1928, and Note 57 above, first reference. Strebel’s departure from UK and job as a cartoonist in Hollywood: Note 8 above and Note 20 above, final reference.

[60] Note 8 above and ‘Arthur Strebel’, Poughkeepsie Journal, 3 September 1980.

[61] Frank O’Connell, Special Correspondent, Vaudeville News and New York Star (New York, NY), 11 December 1926.

[62] Ralph Berger’s SABR article on Latham gives the year of his return to New York as 1923: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Arlie-Latham/, accessed 20 October 2025. However, we can point to press reports of Latham umpiring games in London as late as 1925: Olympian, ‘Fender and Baseball’, Evening Standard, 5 May 1925. Testimonial game, 1924: ‘Famous Baseball Player’, Evening News (London), 29 August 1924.

[63] I cover this aspect of the AABA here: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-typists-factory-girls-and-clerks, accessed 20 October 2025.

[64] Variety article: ‘7th Inning Stretch for Tea at Am. Baseball Games in London’, Variety, 30 July 1930. Fox Movietone newsreel outtakes: Fox Movietone News Story 23-173, filmed 25 September 1924, available to view at: https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/637, accessed 20 October 2025.

[65] The Kodak baseball section story I tell here: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-health-friendship-and-baseball-part-v, accessed 20 October 2025.