In the first part of this series,[1] I looked at the origin of the connection between baseball and the world of work and the role that baseball played in efforts to promote physical recreation amongst the working classes in Great Britain in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, with particular attention on the Edwardian blue-collar British Baseball Association. I also advanced the argument that the reason why company teams and teams associated with institutions that promoted physical recreation were able to survive the wax and wane of public interest in the game in Great Britain was because they existed to serve organisational cultures centred on promoting health and fellowship, not to draw a crowd.

In the fourth, and concluding, part, my main focus will be on the ‘golden age’ of the adoption of American baseball by company recreation societies in Great Britain: the 1920s and 1930s. However, first, I want to follow up on one of the strands introduced in the first part: the adoption of baseball by the university settlement movement, which was born of the movement’s take on the late-Victorian idea of ‘Muscular Christianity’.

In Part I, my focus was on the baseball team of Fairbourne House, the boys’ club associated with the Mansfield House University Settlement in Canning Town, East London, and the role it played in the British Baseball Association. Across the next two parts of the series, I want to look at Splott US, the baseball team that grew out of the Splott University Settlement in Cardiff, South Wales. More than simply a repeat of the Fairbourne House experience, Splott US serves as a case study in the spread of the ‘Muscular Christianity’ of the university settlement movement from its Anglican base to the Nonconformists and faith-based organisations like the Y.M.C.A.; in the former instance, giving rise to what church historian Hugh McLeod has termed ‘Chapel Sport’, something that, as we will see, was critical to the growth of baseball in South Wales.[2]

This piece will take that story from 1904 until the end of the First World War; the next will pick up the story and take it up to the start of the Second World War.

Many of Cardiff’s pubs and clubs hold regular quiz sessions and one regular question invariably stumps many participants. It is: “Splott US were a famous Cardiff baseball team, but what was the meaning of US in the title?” The answer is that the US stood for University Settlement, not United States or United Services, as many people think. The Settlement was founded at the turn of the century by people with University connections such as Professor Burrows.[3]

The Splott University Settlement was the last of the settlements to be founded, in 1901 (nearly ten years after the establishment of Mansfield House, for example). It was the initiative of staff and alumni of University College Cardiff (UCC, now part of Cardiff University[4]).[5] One key difference between the Splott settlement and settlements elsewhere is that it did not offer accommodation. This was of critical importance to its future development, as this accommodation, when available, was only for men, and thus, many other settlements were focused heavily on the health and welfare of the working man. Splott, in contrast, from its earliest days, also provided support to women, particularly working women, thanks to the active participation in its administration by women like Una Burrows, wife of the settlement’s first warden, and Lillan Howell, of the famous Cardiff Howell family, founders of the city’s leading department stores. This aligned it with the Chapel Sport movement and would eventually lead to the involvement of the settlement in the promotion of women’s sports, including baseball.[6]

When discussing ‘baseball’ and Splott US, first, it is important to understand that we are talking about the game (known in Welsh as ‘Pêl Fas’[7]) as played, not under the American code, but under the English code As we will see, the American code would eventually take root in Cardiff in the 1930s, but before and since, even up to now, the predominant form was that played under the English code. Elsewhere, I have detailed the origins of the English code, which arose from an attempt in the 1880s to develop the old pastime of rounders into a competitive team sport, and the conflict in the 1890s between rival supporters of the two codes in Britain.[8] There, I also detail the key differences between the two codes, which can be summarised as differences in equipment and the English code representing a version of the game that, by removing the three-out-all-out rule and making adjustments to scoring, created opportunities for extended periods of uninterrupted play and ‘large’ scores, both of which brought the game closer to cricket in play and spectacle; thereby making it feel more familiar and more ‘British’ to its supporters than the pure American code/game.

Although the English code did not achieve national popularity, it did develop a strong local following in its birthplace, Liverpool, and in South Wales, even seeing off an aggressive attempt in 1893 to replace it in South Wales with the American code.[9] Equally important, it was a grassroots movement, as, unlike the American code, it did not benefit from investment and promotion by vested interests (e.g., sports equipment manufacturers looking to open up new markets). In this latter respect, as we will see, it aligned with the ethos of the Chapel Sport movement, which was entirely driven by the efforts and interests of individual chapels and their congregations and not the prescriptions of a central body. Thus, in terms of summer sport, in South Wales, chapels threw their support behind baseball; in Lancashire, behind cricket. Elsewhere, some chapels denounced all sport as an activity that took time away from worship and promoted gambling. The response was organic.[10]

Several people have asked me questions concerning 'Welsh' baseball. As far as I am concerned this is an incorrect description which has even crept into reputable books of reference. I describe it as English baseball. I give a brief account of its origin below.[11]

British Baseball Hall of Famer William Morgan (1923–2015),[12] chronicler of baseball in Britain and its first significant historian, grew up in Cardiff. It was his interest in telling the story of baseball as it was played in his hometown that prompted him to search the archives and for those connected to it to open their records to him, which became the basis for a series of articles in Morgan’s Baseball Mercury in the mid-1980s.[13] The first part of this account draws from those articles and contemporary news reports. The redoubtable Morgan will make a further appearance in the next part of this series.

Although baseball under the English code—still known at the time as ‘rounders’—spread from Liverpool to South Wales in the late 1880s, and flourished there in the early and mid-1890s, as in Liverpool, it experienced a dip in interest in the late 1890s before re-emerging in the middle of the first decade of the Twentieth Century, whereafter, it experienced explosive (at a local level) growth that was interrupted only by the First World War.

Interestingly, the barren years around the turn of the century appear to have led to a severing of the connections between the sport in Liverpool and the sport in South Wales, or, perhaps, more particularly, between the bodies running the sport in those two places, the English Baseball Association (EBA) and South Wales and Monmouthshire Baseball Association, which, by 1907, had renamed itself to the Welsh Baseball Association (WBA). This was most obvious in differences in play styles visible at the first ‘Baseball International’ between all-star teams from the Liverpool/EBA and Welsh/WBA associations, which took place in Cardiff in 1908, where it was observed that Liverpool players still batted one-handed, whereas, Welsh players had adopted a two-handed grip as far back as the 1890s (the game was played with the heavier bat that the Welsh game adopted around the same time, making a one-handed grip particularly incongruous).[14]

Splott University Settlement v. Channel Mills. At Splott Park. Splott took first innings, and thanks to fine “off” driving by Messrs A. and T. Mitchell, J.K. Merritt, who made respectively 25, 22, and 19, the innings realised 97. Channel Mills feebly responded with 15 and 19.[15]

Splott University Settlement makes its first appearance under that name as a team in a June 1907 report in the South Wales Daily News detailing a match against the Channel Mills team (Cardiff and Channel Mills was a local flour mill, a subsidiary of the famous Spillers Flour Mills Company[16]).[17]  However, we can be sure that the team had been in existence since 1904, playing under the name ‘Splott’, based on the officers (e.g., Ted Diment (Henry Edwin Diment (1878–1927)) and players, notably the team captain, W.H. Williams, that the teams had in common. Diment, who was works manager for Messrs Tuck and Co., a rubber goods manufacturer with premises in Bute Docks, would eventually rise to become chairman of the sports governing body.[18]

The settlement founded the team to keep the players in its football team together in the summer. Contemporary minutes show that the settlement administration originally wanted to form a cricket team for this purpose; however, the members voted to form a baseball team instead. The minutes rather sniffingly state, ‘We are surprised by the local support for the American sport of baseball, but having viewed the local converted cabbage patch called Splott Park, we can understand that cricket would be difficult to play there’.[19]

By 1907, the league, operating under the auspices of the newly renamed Welsh Baseball Association (WBA), had no less than four divisions containing at least 36 teams. This was up from three divisions and 30 teams the previous year, and just 10 teams and a single division the year before that—although it should be noted that these numbers represent only the teams entered in the league, not the sum of teams playing in South Wales.[20]

One incident of note during the 1905 season was the playing of a game between the Canton team and a team formed of performers of the ‘American Lads in Blue’ company. ‘American Lads in Blue’ was the touring version of a vaudeville act called ‘Our Boys in Blue’ put together in America by Leo Kronau, who was (supposedly) a former Austrian army officer. Kronau specialised in creating theatrical entertainment centred on soldiers or former soldiers performing military drill and military-themed musical numbers; the members of the ‘American Lads’ company were said to be former members of the Indiana State Militia. On match day, they took to the field with, as a local newspaper report put it, ‘gloves on the size of a football’—baseball gloves were not a feature of the game under the English code. The game was played under the English code, and the Canton team won by 8 runs.[21]

The explosion in growth between 1905 and 1906 under what was at the time known as the South Wales and Monmouthshire Baseball Association was accompanied by the offering of a new trophy for the winner of the first division championship, the Dewar Shield. This was the gift of distiller Sir Thomas Dewar, the sponsor of many such trophies in many sports, and represents a connection between the ‘English’ game in Wales and the American game in London, as Dewar was a prominent supporter of the London Baseball Association (LBA) of the 1890s, which played under the American code.[22]

Intriguingly, as detailed in part one of this series, 1906 was also the year that the British Baseball Association (BBA), playing under the American code, launched in London (with two leagues and 12 teams). However, these two events (explosion in growth of English game in Cardiff, relaunch of American game in London) appear to be unconnected. One feature of the launch of the BBA was the rapidity of its development, with the first public meeting to decide its founding being held at the Charterhouse Hotel in London on 9 April 1906 and the league launching just two months later. In contrast, by March of 1906, the South Wales and Monmouthshire Baseball Association already had the 30 teams that had applied to compete that year organised into three divisions. Although there were undoubtedly meetings behind closed doors in the run-up to the public launch of the BBA, it is improbable that the South Wales association had any knowledge of these meetings; even if it did, it was unlikely to be influenced by the nebulous threat represented by the rebirth of its ‘competitor’ 150 miles away in London.[23] (That said, see below for an incident in 1907 in which this threat solidified—briefly.)

The teams taking part in the 1907 season ranged from the settlement teams (Splott US, University Settlement) and company teams (Channel Mills, Cardiff Rope Works, Post Office), through political clubs (Roath Conservatives, Grange Liberal Institute) and church teams (Caerphilly English Congregationalist (E.C.), St Peter’s RC Church, Roath, St Saviour’s Anglican Church, Splott, St German’s Anglican Church, Roath) to pub teams (London Style). Many of the teams not associated with a specific institution were connected to local sports clubs already fielding, for example, rugby and association football teams. (It is worth stating here that many of the South Wales baseballers were men known locally primarily for their careers in other sports, most notably rugby football, with their participation—see, for example, the case of Jack Wetter, below.)[24]

The list represents the full breadth of organisations involved in the period in the promotion of physical recreation amongst working men, faith-based and secular. The former is strongly represented, and not coincidentally, faith-based organisations would be a feature of baseball played under the English code in both its centres, South Wales and Liverpool—Liverpool even had a Church baseball league in this period (The Liverpool and District Church Baseball League[25]). This reflects both the sheer number of faith-based organisations in the working class areas of Britain’s cities—and it is noticeable in this respect that both Liverpool and Cardiff were port cities—and the extent to which, in the wake of the rise of ‘Muscular Christianity’, sport was adopted by these faith-based organisations as a means to further their mission, something that is discussed in detail below.

New to the league in the 1907 season was Penylan, a club that had been in existence since at least 1905; Penylan would go on to be one of the dominant teams in the league and remain in existence for over 70 years.[26] The 1907 season also marked the first appearance of another of the league’s dominant teams, Grange Albion(s), which survived all the way up to 2018. Of interest to us here, the Albion was formed from members of the Penarth-Road Methodist team of the previous season.[27]

To the latter and the aforementioned Caerphilly English Congregationalist teams, we can add Splott Wesleyans and Roath Wesleyans as early baseball teams in Cardiff that grew out of the Chapel Sport movement. The Baptists would become involved within a few years, too. It is also worth mentioning in this context that many of the working men who were members of the Splott University Settlement were ‘Nonconformists and Liberals’. This description can unquestionably be extended to cover the members of the many local sports clubs that fielded baseball teams.[28]

Chapel Sport was an offshoot of ‘Muscular Christianity’, but one that placed much less emphasis on the promotion of ‘masculinity’ than the Anglican original, focusing instead on the promotion of health and fellowship, something that, for example, would prove more amenable to the development of women sports (which is not to say that all chapelgoers gave women’s sports an easy ride, of course). Hugh McLeod, who coined the term, described its development as passing through five stages: 1) The spontaneous founding of sports teams for the purposes of fellowship; 2) a recognition that these teams represented a way to keep teenagers too old for bible class within the chapel community; 3) the further exploitation of these team as a way to increase chapel membership and promote healthy living; 4) the extension of the latter idea to a doctrine that playing sports was vital to leading a good life; and finally, 5) a view that sports provision was an essential part of a chapel’s activities[29].

What is interesting about this progression is the extent to which it mirrors the development of rounders, the sport that would become English Baseball, in Liverpool in the 1870s and 1880s, with a period of spontaneous adoption and growth (McLeod Step 1), followed by regulation and promotion of the sport as a form of physical recreation ideal for the working man (McLeod Steps 3 & 4). The parallels are even stronger when we consider the origin and spread of the role of sport within faith-based organisations like the University Settlements, and, most especially, the Y.M.C.A. In the case of the latter, famously, in the USA, the ‘Y’ became synonymous with gym culture (McLeod Step 5), to the point that, as McLeod puts it, ‘a Y without a gym seemed a contradiction in terms’.[30]

Even in the UK, Y.M.C.A. branches made much of the provision of a gym when trying to attract new members: in 1898, the Leicester Y.M.C.A. boasted that its new gymnasium was ‘…one of the best in the provinces. A competent instructor is engaged, and nightly many young men participate in the pleasures of organised muscular exercise.’[31] This argument can also be extended to the Y.W.C.A.; however, as McLeod points out, the involvement of the Y.W.C.A. branches in sport was historically under-reported.[32]

It should come as no surprise that by 1911, Y.M.C.A.-based teams were also a feature of the WBA.[33] However, before discussing the further development of the WBA, we need first to return to the 1907 season.

BASEBALL CHAMPIONS. GRANGE TEAM’S VICTORY OVER NEWPORT. The famous Grangetown baseball team again won the Welsh championship on Saturday by defeating Newport. No one can deny that the win was not thoroughly deserved, for in every phase of the game the Usksiders were outclassed.[34]

The 1907 WBA season ended in victory for Grange (aka Grangetown) in the first division. The team received their prize, the Dewar Shield, in a ceremony in November.[35] In a sign of things to come, Penylan and Grange Albion were tied for first place in the second division (the championship was decided in a playoff match the following May; Grange Albion won, the first of many championship victories for them[36]). Both Penylan and the Albion were promoted to the first division for the following season.

However, the most remarkable incident of the 1907 WBA season was outside of its regular competition, and came in the form of a brief renewal of the conflict between the English and American codes in South Wales.

Mr Nelson P. Cook’s visit to Morriston has resulted in success, for it has been decided to form a team to play the American game […] It is also likely that a baseball team will be formed at Llanelly. Mr Cook is at Neath to-day, and is confident that in a few weeks there will be many teams in this part of Wales. He is certain also that the American game will be played.[37]

Nelson Pingrey Cook (1864–1928) was the co-founder of the British Baseball Association (BBA), which, since 1906, had been operating two leagues playing under the American code in London. I tell the story of the BBA in the first part of this series.[38] A Vermont native long resident in Britain, Cook had been the first organising secretary of the LBA in London back in the 1890s. As part of his role as the organising secretary of the BBA, Cook undertook tours of Britain promoting the American code. In the summer of 1906, his destination had been Scotland, in the winter, Birmingham;[39] now, in the summer of 1907 (early June), he was in South Wales. Here, as in Scotland and Birmingham (and indeed, London), his focus was on interesting local Association Football clubs in adopting baseball under the American code as a close-season complement to football.

Cook was greatly aided in his efforts by the decision in May 1907 by the Danygraig Football Club of Swansea to form a baseball team to play the game under the American code. This would be the first baseball club in Swansea under either code, so this was both a coup and a unique opportunity for Cook, as, unlike elsewhere in South Wales, here, the thirst for the game was not already being met by teams playing under the English code. However, the WBA was not going to give up without a fight, and arranged to play an exhibition game under the English code at the Danygraig ground, scheduled for late June, to convince baseball enthusiasts in Swansea of the superiority of the local game. Initially, it was hoped that this would be between picked Cardiff and Swansea teams, but ultimately, due to the lack of suitable players in Swansea, it was decided to instead send picked Newport and Cardiff teams (playing under the names ‘East’ and ‘West’, respectively).[40]

Cook moved quickly to raise the stakes: offering to run a weeklong training camp at Swansea in early July for anyone interested in the American game, with himself as the [star] instructor. Local newspaper headlines asked ‘WELSH OR AMERICAN? WHICH STYLE OF BASEBALL WILL SWANSEA ADOPT?’ The competition was on.

The WBA teams played their exhibition game on Saturday, 29 June, before an interested (if unknowledgeable) crowd, with the West team (Cardiff) winning by four runs.[41] Preparations were then made to welcome back Cook the following week for the start of his training camp.

But Cook never showed. Interested players gathered at the Danygraig ground on Monday, 8 July 1907, and waited…and waited…but nothing, no Cook, no telegram to explain his absence; nothing. Danygraig’s enthusiasm for the American game evaporated in the face of the humiliation heaped upon it by Cook’s failure to appear. In a newspaper report that did little to disguise the hurt this slight had caused, it was said that ‘The absence of Mr Cook had altered things considerably, and now it is extremely doubtful if baseball will “go” at all this summer.’ And the Danygraig team was now ‘…thinking more of football than anything else’.[42]

It was an extraordinary own goal from Cook (with apologies for the mixed metaphor); with this one act, Cook had set back the cause of the American game not just in Swansea but in the whole of South Wales, ultimately, by decades. In December, it was announced that he would return to South Wales (Cardiff, not Swansea) in the New Year. However, there is no reference to the Swansea incident in reports of this planned visit, and it seems ultimately not to have taken place. Truth be told, by January 1908, the BBA had more pressing problems: the 1907 season in London had been a financial failure, exacerbated by bad press at home and abroad, and the major Association Football clubs that had backed the BBA at launch were on the brink of withdrawing, as was Cook’s partner in the founding of the BBA, John A McWeeney. The chance to plant the American game in South Wales had passed.[43]

What was behind this affair—a lapse of memory, a loss of interest? With Cook, it is impossible to tell. He was a complicated character; on the one hand, he put in the years—and the miles—as organising secretary for first the LBA and then the BBA, but, on the other, he was a flim-flam man, a failed journalist turned travelling salesman with a tendency to spin tall tales to passing journalists. After his falling out with the co-founder of the BBA, McWeeney (himsself a journalist), he gave an interview to an American newspaper in which he wrote McWeeney out of the story completely, an extraordinary slight that demonstrates that it would not have been out of character for him to consciously fail to honour his agreement with the Danygraig club. At the end of the 1909 season, it was his turn to exit the BBA (he returned to America with his British wife and children). On balance, whatever he contributed to the game in earlier years, by 1909, the American game in Britain was better off without him.[44]

INTERNATIONAL BASEBALL. England and Wales met for the first time in an international encounter at Cardiff yesterday. The English team was composed practically of Liverpool players, while that of Wales was drawn from the Cardiff and Newport clubs. Wales batted first, and mainly owing to fine scores by Lewis and Wreford, who each made 18, they scored 102. England responded with 56, Williams, Barron, and Ramsay (10) being the highest scores. Following on with a deficit of 47, England scored 61, leaving Wales 17 to get to win, which they did for the loss of four men. Wales winning by seven men to bat.[45]

The highlight of the 1908 WBA season was undoubtedly the match between picked Liverpool and South Wales teams, billed as the England vs. Wales Baseball International, which, as the quote above from the Edinburgh Evening News demonstrates, made national news. This was the first of what, by the start of the Second World War, would be 22 such encounters, Wales winning 14 (9 home, 5 away) and England 8 (6 home, 2 away).[46] However, of more interest to us here is the churn of teams in the WBA league, with as many old teams leaving/folding as new teams joining, something that would be a feature of the league for the whole of its existence.[47]

Joining the newly promoted Penylan and Grange Albion in the first division would be returning teams Splott US, Grange Barbarians, Roath Conservatives, Newport, the champions Grange, and new teams Grange Temperance Institute and Barry Conservatives.[48]

The Channel Mills team dropped to the second division and Caerphilly to the third. The second division also included a team new to the league, but not a new team, the Pill Harriers. The Pill Harriers were a Newport-based team that grew out of the provision of sporting facilities for dockworkers and coaltrimmers in the Pill district of the city. They had been playing baseball since at least 1899, and would go on to become another stalwart of the game in South Wales.[49]

Of interest to us here, the 1908 season would also include a team from the Cardiff Gas Works, who played in the third division. At season’s end, Grange were once again the winners of the Dewar Shield.[50]

Having heard a rousing speech from Captain Masterman, the following signified their intention of joining the Sports' Company for active service:—Messrs. W. Jenkins, Gus Lewis, Dan Callan, Mike Honrhan, Dick Williams, J.S. Carter, A. Hodinott, E. Brooke, Rhys Davies, and A. Hales. Mr T. Martin, a baseball player, also joined. Mr. R. W. John announced that no less than 89 players from eleven clubs in the Cardiff District [Rugby] League had enlisted.[51]

Splott US won their first ever league championship in the 1911 season, which, as stated above, was also the season that saw Y.M.C.A. teams play in the league for the first time. Splott would go on to win the Dewar Shield a further five times, placing it in the top 5 of teams with the most wins, albeit far behind the team at number one, Grange Albions, with 25 wins by 1984.[52]

However, this period of the game in South Wales would be dominated by the effects of the outbreak of the First World War, which resulted in the suspension of regular league games. This is not to say that there was no baseball played in South Wales between September 1914 and November 1918, however, far from it; as we will see, players from the WBA would mount charity matches and, more than this, the American code would finally establish a substantial presence in the area thanks to the arrival of US Armed Forces in the form of the US Navy and American Expeditionary Force (AEF).

I hope you and all the baseball boys are all right, as it leaves me at present. I am at our base for the time being, as I have just come out of hospital. I have been ‘gassed.’ My word, it is terrible. No doubt you have heard of our regiment being cut up. We had an awful time of it, and we had to leave a lot of our wounded in the trenches.[53]

The story of Welsh baseballers in the First World War deserves a work of its own. Here, I will focus on a single episode. The 1st Battalion of the Monmouthshire Regiment, a territorial force raised in Newport, set sail for France in February 1915. By May of that year, it had been decimated, suffering horrendous losses at the Second Battle of Ypres.[54] As the account above, from a letter written by Private Frank Halford to the secretary of the Newport Baseball Club (Halford had played for the Newport second team before joining up), makes clear, a number of its men were taken prisoner as allied units retreated. Halford’s letter reached the club in mid-June. In response, the club decided to stage a charity game to raise funds to send relief parcels to the men of the Monmouthshire Regiment taken prisoner.

That match took place in July 1915 between a scratch team put together by 23-year-old Newport captain Edmund Wetter (1892–1983) and a team formed of soldiers of the Monmouthshire Regiment.[55] Edmund’s older brother, and fellow Newport player, Jack (John James Wetter (1888–1967), was himself serving in the South Wales Borderers by this time, which would have given the game added poinancy for the Newport captain. Jack Wetter was a Welsh military rugby international and would go on to win a DCM in 1917. In November 1916, his family received word via a letter from a comrade that he had been killed at Salonika. This fortunately proved incorrect, but this must have been a hard time for the family.[56]

One of the Monmouthshire Regiment players, Rifleman William J. Coombes, may have had even more cause to reflect, as one of the Monmouthshire Regiment soldiers killed at the Second Battle of Ypres was a relative, Arthur James Coombes (died 8 May 1915).[57]

One outcome of note of the charity match was the decision by the Newport club to donate some of its baseball kit to the Monmouthshire Regiment. The gift was acknowledged in a letter to the newspapers sent by Cpl. Lamprey of the 3/1st Monmouthshire Regiment. At the same time, but separately, a local manufacturer sent a Welsh Brigade Royal Field Artillery Unit some baseball equipment in response to a request made through the newspapers back in May. The playing of baseball under the English code in the British Army in this period is a story still waiting to be told.[58]

Another outcome was the playing of a second game for the same cause between Newport and Pill Harrier players in late August. One thing to note about the latter game is that, in the long list of Monmouthshire baseball players who had joined up published in the South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser on 22 May, it was reported that one of the Pill Harriers’ club’s officials, A. Woods, was also killed at the Second Battle of Ypres while serving in the South Wales Borderers. (Later in the war, the Pill Harriers’ former captain and Welsh International (1914), W. Prosser, would die of wounds sustained in battle.)[59]

This episode set the precedent, and further games for charity, usually in aid of local hospitals or prisoner relief packages, would be played by scratch teams for the rest of the war. Notably, in this regard, in July 1916, the Caerphilly Military Hospital Baseball Team was established to raise funds for the local Red Cross Hospital; and that same month, two teams formed mostly of munitions workers played a baseball game at Cardiff Arms Park in aid of ‘starving British prisoners’.[60]

And then, the Americans arrived.

BASEBALL AT NEWPORT. A large number of spectators assembled at Pill Harriers’ Grounds, Newport, Saturday, to witness an exhibition baseball match played by teams of Americans in aid of funds for war invalids.[61]

As I stated at the end of part one of this series, the many games of baseball played by Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) and American Expeditionary Force (AEF) units in the London area, Essex, and Kent, and the league that grew out of these games (the Anglo-American Baseball League, AABL), fall outside the scope of this work.[62] However, military baseball played in South Wales remains of interest to us because of its intersection with the local game. We know that some of the games had local involvement; more than this, they were watched by knowledgeable local baseball fans and, critically, players and officials. As I will later show, seeing the game played under the American code would impact how the latter would play the game under the English code in the post-war period.

The first thing to acknowledge with this topic is that, in terms of games recorded, we are talking about only a handful compared to the hundreds of games played across the South-East of England. This is, as might be summised, because there were many fewer AEF units stationed in Wales, and, as far as I am aware, the only CEF units stationed in Wales were those unlucky enough to be assigned to the infamous Kimmel Camp at the war’s end as a prelude to being shipped home.[63] The second thing to acknowledge, which is connected to the first, is that local observers saw too little of AEF units to grow familiar with AEF unit designations, resulting in reports such as that quoted above, from September 1917, where the players are simply referred to as ‘Americans’.

The two biggest games of American baseball played in South Wales were both played in the summer of 1918, one at Swansea in May 1918, and the other at Cardiff in July 1918. They are, in some respects, a study in contrasts, as the Swansea game involved both Canadian and US players, and we know quite a lot about both teams—both of which came from outside the area—while the Cardiff game involved local US players, specifically US Navy players, only, and we know next to nothing about the teams for certain.

The Swansea game was part of a series of games played across the UK and Ireland that were billed as ‘Canada vs. America’, organised by a veteran of the BBA, John Gibson Lee, whom we met in part one of this series. Despite its billing as an ‘Army and Navy team’, the American team was a civilian team, the London Americans, organised and usually led by Lee, who, although British, had spent his formative years in America (New York State). The identity of the American team can be devined from the names of the players, for example, Lecrone, Van Dyne, and Hayes, all of whom were Americans resident in London (Lecrone had played with Lee in the BBA). There was at least one current serving officer playing, however, a Lieutenant Nims. The Canadian team was billed as the Taplow team, winner of the [Canadian] Military Base and Hospital League the previous summer and one of the teams in the soon-to-be-launched AABL. However, it may have been a scratch team drawn from the Military Base and Hospital League teams. Former major leaguer and London Americans regular Arlie Latham was the game umpire. The Canadians won 15–3.[64]

The Cardiff game was a 4 July game played at Cardiff Arms Park in the presence of the Lord Mayor of Cardiff and other local dignitaries. The visitors were represented by the US Consul in Cardiff, Lorin Lathrop, and Commander Jeffers, USN. The teams were described as ‘crews of American vessels’, but no other information was given.[65]

However, we can identify ‘Commander Jeffers’. He was Commander William N. Jeffers, the representative in Cardiff of Rear Admiral Henry B. Wilson, commander of Patrol Forces, Atlantic Fleet in France. Jeffers’ primary job was commanding the small fleet of US Navy colliers whose job it was to transport coal from the South Wales coalfields for use by the US Army in France. It is telling in this regard that alongside the baseball match, one of the other 4 July celebrations attended by Lathrop and Jeffers was a lunch hosted by coal exporter H. Rees Jones, and it was Rees Jones who handled the proceeds of the baseball game, suggesting that he was also involved in its organisation.[66]

This is tantalising information, because one of those colliers was the USS Nero, and we have photographic proof that the USS Nero had its own baseball team in this period. However, at the same time, it must be acknowledged that most US Navy ships did, and there were a number of colliers operating not only out of Cardiff but also Barry. In this respect, it is worth mentioning that it seems likely that the ‘Americans’ who played a game in aid of war invalids in Newport back in September 1917 were also from the US Navy forces based at Cardiff and Barry (the only US forces in the area this early in America’s involvement in the conflict). However, the teams could not have included sailors from the USS Nero, as it did not arrive in the area until October 1917.[67]

In a baseball game at Barry, a U.S. transport team defeated a similar team from Cardiff by six runs to one run.[68]

‘Transport team’ here is ambiguous to say the least. However, once again, this April 1918 game was likely played between US Navy teams from the colliers, which were officially attached to the Army Transport Service (ATS) and, as stated above, operated out of Barry as well as Cardiff.[69] Thus, the balance of probabilities, based on the games we have analysed to date, suggests that games played in South Wales ascribed to US Navy teams were played between teams from the colliers based at the South Wales ports. We can apply this line of thinking to the two instances when we can identify local and American teams playing baseball at the same occasion—although, alas, at only one occasion, was this against each other.

A Glamorgan team meeting Uncle Sam's bluejackets in a baseball match at Cardiff Arms Park on Saturday were defeated by 19 to 4.[70]

Two days after the 4 July game between two American teams at Cardiff Arms Park, a game took place between a US Navy team and a local team. Based on the score, we can safely assume that it was played under the American code. This is the only instance I can find of a report of a game between a local and an American team. The proximity to the 4 July game strongly suggests the ‘bluejackets’ were one of the teams that played on 4 July, and, by extension, likely a team from one of the colliers. We can add to this short series of games at Cardiff Arms Park, the 1 June 1918 game in which Splott US played a charity game against a team drawn from the rest of the South Wales league at Cardiff Arms Park. Before the game, ‘two teams of American seamen delighted the audience with an exhibition of the game as they play it’. This trial run of the 4 July game again likely involved collier teams, perhaps even the same teams as the 4 July game. In mid-May 1918, teams of ‘representatives of United States vessels’ played a match at Newport, again probably the collier teams. We can extend this argument further to a game that took place on 5 August 1918 at Bynmawr, Ebbw Vale, around 26 miles from Cardiff. The game was advertised as being a ‘Great Exhibition of BASE-BALL (as played in America). By American Officers and Sailors. This is the FIRST VISIT of the AMERICAN FIGHTING NAVY to the Valleys.’ Its proximity to Cardiff again makes it likely that it was a game between the collier crews..[71]

The fact that all the above games involved sailors makes this identification tentative but logical. However, for the games in Cardiff in May 1918, for which the only descriptions we have are ‘American teams’, we can only fall back on the balance of probabilities. Similarly, the game in Newport in June 1918 between ‘American teams representing Cardiff and Newport’, although this game is, like the Barry vs. Cardiff game, suggestive of teams drawn from US ships using the ports.[72]

The above presents only the games reported in the local press; there may have been more games that simply went unreported, particularly after the American Y.M.C.A. became established in Cardiff in the autumn of 1918. However, taken together, they represent a small but significant number of opportunities for local baseball fans and players to see games played under the American code. Only time would tell what impact that would have.

In the next part of this series, I will pick up the story at the end of the First World War, as the local game revives and reorganises, and then follow it as baseball in South Wales enters its golden age of the 1920s and 1930s. One major development of this period and a legacy of changes in local society brought on by the First World War was the emergence of the women’s game. I will show how the embrace of baseball in South Wales of the women’s game stands in contrast to the treatment of women’s football in England in this period. The story of chapel, factory, and settlement continues in part III of Health, Friendship, and Baseball.

Jamie Barras, July 2025.

Notes

[1] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-health-friendship-and-baseball-part-i, accessed 15 July 2025.

[2] The works of Hugh McLeod are central to understanding both of these movements. Y.M.C.A. and sport:  Hugh McLeod, ‘The YMCA and the Rise of Modern Sport’, https://ymcaheritage.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/The-Rise-of-Modern-Sport-YMCA-Oral-Histories-and-Stories-v.2.pdf, accessed 16 July 2025 ; ‘Chapel Sport’: Hugh McLeod, ‘”Thews and Sinews”: Nonconformity and Sport,’ in Modern Christianity and Cultural Aspirations, ed. David Bebbington and Timothy Larsen (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 22–46. See also: Nick Watson, Stewart Weir, and Stephen Friend, ‘The Development of Muscular Christianity in Victorian Britain and Beyond’, Journal of Religion & Society, 2005, 7, 1–18.

[3] ‘How Well Do You Know the City of Cardiff?’, Cardiff Post, 18 April 1996.

[4] https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/about/our-profile/history, accessed 16 July 2025.

[5] Assessment for Listing, Old College Building, Courtney Road, Splott, Cardiff, https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-01/160307atisn10172doc1.pdf, accessed 16 July 2025.

[6] Lucinda Matthew-Jones, ‘How Women from all Classes Came Together in the Splott Settlement’, https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/how-women-classes-came-together-12596684, accessed 15 July 2025.

[7] https://glosbe.com/cy/en/p%C3%AAl%20fas, accessed 17 July 2025.

[8] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-intolerance, accessed 16 July 2025.

[9] The case against the English code was made in April 1893 in a letter to the Western Mail, written by J.F. Appleton, the man sent by supporters of the American code to supplant the English code in South Wales. The attempt failed. Letter: ‘Local Sport’, Western Mail, 20 April 1893; attempt voted down at meeting of baseball supporters in Cardiff: ‘Athletic Notes’, South Wales Argus, 2 May 1893. I tell the full story here: Note 7 above.

[10] Dennis O'Keefe, ‘Church Cricket and Community in Halifax and the Calder Valley 1860-c.1920’, 2013, Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield. It should be acknowledged here that this varied reaction to sport was general to all Christian denominations in the Victorian era; one particular concern that never went away was the connection between sport and gambling: Hugh McLeod, ‘Religion and the Rise of Sport In England’, (Oxford University Press, 2022), 2.

[11] William Morgan, ‘The E.B.A. Game’, Baseball Mercury, Issue 27, May 1981.

[12] https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/bbhof/index.html; https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/William_Morgan_(Britain), accessed 16 July 2025.

[13] Surviving issues of Baseball Mercury are available to download and view at Project Cobb: https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/mercury.html, accessed 16 July 2025. For a more academic take on the subject, see: Martin Johnes, “‘Poor Man’s Cricket’: Baseball, Class and Community in South Wales c.1880–1950.” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 2000, 17 (4), 153–166. doi:10.1080/09523360008714152.

[14] Two-handed grip adopted: see Note 10 above; incongruous play at first international: William Morgan, ‘The E.B.A. Game (2)’, Baseball Mercury, Issue 29, February 1982.

[15] ‘Splott University Settlement v. Channel Mills.’, South Wales Daily News, 26 June 1907.

[16] https://canfod.glamarchives.gov.uk/en/records/D684, accessed 16 July 2025.

[17] ‘Baseball’, South Wales Daily News, 26 August 1907.

[18] Splott baseball team of 1904: ‘Baseball’, Western Mail, 8 August 1904; roster for Splott 1905 with W.H. Williams, etc. ‘Baseball’, South Wales Daily News, 7 August 1905—cf roster in Note 15, above; Splott US listed as Splott, based on roster: ‘Baseball’, South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 7 September 1907. H.E Diment, treasurer of Splott Baseball Club: ‘Splott Baseball Club’, South Wales Daily News, 24 March 1904. His later career and biographical details: Cardiff Baseball Pioneer’, Western Mail, 8 June 1927. His UK death registration is the source of his given names. Messrs Tuck and Co.: http://messybeast.com/1892-bristol-channel/1892-bristol-channel.htm, accessed 16 July 2025.

[19] This story of the founding of the baseball club is assembled from later accounts: See Note 3 above; ‘A Splott on the Landscape’, South Wales Echo, 7 May 1986; ‘Work Schemes of the Past Nurtured Sporting Greats’, Cardiff Post, 12 June 1997.

[20] Number of teams in 1907 league: ‘Baseball: Allocation of Teams’, Western Mail, 9 April 1907. 1906 South Wales season with three divisions and 30 teams: ‘Baseball’, Western Mail, 19 March 1906. 10 teams in compeition in 1905: ‘Baseball’, South Wales Daily News, 28 April 1905.

[21] ‘Baseball: American Lads Defeated by Canton’, Western Mail, 27 July 1905. Kronau and ‘Our Boys in Blue’: ‘Entertainments’, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 8 November 1904. ‘American Lads in Blue’ at the Cardiff Empire: ‘From the Provinces: Cardiff’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 21 July 1905.

[22] Dewar Shield offered as a prize: Western Mail, 6 March 1906; Thomas Dewar and the LBA: R G Knowles and Richard Morton, ‘Baseball’ (London: George Routledge and Sons, London, 1896), 64–65. Free to download from archive.org: https://archive.org/download/baseball_202409/Baseball.pdf, accessed 9 January 2025. The shield can be seen in the photo here: http://www.grangetowncardiff.co.uk/grangesport.htm, accessed 16 July 2025. See also: William Morgan, ‘Welsh Trophies’, Baseball Mercury, Issue 34, November 1983.

[23] Founding of the BBA: ‘Baseball: British Association Formed’, Sporting Life, 10 April 1906. 1906 South Wales season with three divisions and 30 teams already organised by March: see Note 19 above, second reference.

[24] List of teams: see Note 19 above, first reference. London Style Pub: Brian Lee, Cardiff Memories: Grangetown’, https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/brian-lee-cardiff-memories-grangetowns-2016592, accessed 17 July 2025.

[25] ‘Liverpool and District Church Baseball League’, Liverpool Evening Express, 10 June 1905.

[26] Penylan is described as a ‘new addition’ to the league here: ‘Baseball in South Wales’, South Wales Daily News, 4 May 1907. Mention in 1905: ‘Baseball: Penylan v. Scratch Team’, South Wales Daily News, 2 August 1905. William Morgan credits 1903 as the year of the team’s founding: William Morgan, ‘A Visit to Cardiff’, Baseball Mercury, Issue 33, July 1983.

[27] ‘Welsh Baseball Association’, South Wales Daily News, 26 April 1907. Elizabeth Thomas, ‘When Baseball was one of the Biggest Sports in Cardiff and the Fight to Keep it Going’, https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/cardiff-baseball-league-teams-grangetown-23250070, accessed 17 July 2025. End of Grange Albion: http://www.grangetowncardiff.co.uk/grangesport.htm, accessed 21 July 2025.

[28] Caerphilly Congregational Institute: ‘Baseballer’s Funeral’, South Wales Daily News, 12 July 1906; Splott Wesleyans: ‘Baseball’, South Wales Daily News, 8 June 1905. Roath Wesleyans: ‘Baseball’, Western Mail, 22 August 1907. Splott US ‘Nonconformists and Liberals’: ‘Splott Election and the University Settlement’, South Wales Daily News, 3 November 1904. The piece concerns reports that the settlement had somehow influenced its members to vote for the Liberal candidate in a local election. The response of the settlement was that many of its members were already Liberal supporters and did not need influencing.

[29] McLeod, “Thews and Sinews”, Note 2 above, second reference, pages 28–32.

[30] McLeod, Sport and the Y.M.C.A., Note 2 above, first reference, page 6

[31] Quoted by McLeod, Sport and the Y.M.C.A., Note 2 above, first reference, page 6.

[32] McLeod, Sport and the Y.M.C.A., Note 2 above, first reference, page 7.

[33] ‘Baseball’, South Wales Daily News, 22 May 1911.

[34] ‘Baseball Champions’, Western Mail, 9 September 1907.

[35] Grange awarded Dewar Shield: ‘Baseball in South Wales’, Western Mail, 8 November 1907.

[36] ‘Baseball’, Western Mail, 4 May 1908.

[37] ‘Baseball Champions’, Western Mail, 9 September 1907.

[38] Note 1 above.

[39] Cook in Scotland: ‘Baseball In Scotland’, Dundee Evening Telegraph, 13 July 1906; in Birmingham: ‘Football and Baseball’, Northern Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1906.

[40] Danygraig FC adopting American code for its baseball team: ‘First Swansea Baseball Team’, South Wales Daily Post, 15 May 1907; WBA opts to send team to play Swansea team: ‘Baseball: Welsh Association’, South Wales Daily Post, 15 May 1907; Ultimately, it is picked Cardiff and Newport teams: ‘Exhibition Game at Swansea’, South Wales Daily News, 15 June 1907.

[41] Cook’s offer to coach players for one week: ‘Baseball Begins at Swansea’, South Wales Daily Post, 29 June 1907; headlines: ‘Welsh or American?’, South Wales Daily Post, 18 June 1907; East vs West game: ‘Baseball: East v. West’, South Wales Daily News, 1 July 1907; ‘Baseball: East v. West Match Played at Swansea’, Western Mail, 1 July 1907.

[42] ‘Sports & Pastimes’, South Wales Daily Post, 10 July 1907.

[43] Cook returning to South Wales: ‘Yankee Baseball For Cardiff’, Western Mail, 27 December 1907; the story of the 1907 BBA season and its aftermath: Note 1, above.

[44] Note 1 above.

[45] ‘International Baseball’, Edinburgh Evening News, 4 August 1908.

[46] Note 13 above, second reference.

[47] For the churn of teams in the South Wales’ league: Note 25, final reference.

[48] Assembled from results in: ‘Baseball’, Western Mail, 4 May 1908; ‘Baseball’, Western Mail, 10 August 1908; ‘Baseball’, Western Mail, 24 August 1908.

[49] ‘Pill Harriers Baseball Club’, South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 2 May 1908; ‘Pill Harriers Football Club’, Star of Gwent, 18 May 1900.

[50] Gasworks team: ‘Baseball’, Western Mail, 31 August 1908; Grange win Dewar Shield: ‘Baseball’, South Wales Daily News, 7 September 1908.

[51] ‘Names of Athletes for Active Service’, Western Mail, 5 September 1914.

[52] Splott win 1911 championship: Sporting Life, 6 November 1911; Top 5 teams: Note 21 above, final reference.

[53] ‘Names of Athletes for Active Service’, Western Mail, 5 September 1914.

[54] https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/regiments-and-corps/the-british-infantry-regiments-of-1914-1918/monmouthshire-regiment/, accessed 17 July 2025.

[55] ‘Baseball for Charity’, South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 3 July 1915.

[56] Jack Wetter Military Rugby international: ‘Example to the Onlookers’, Western Mail, 17 April 1915; Winning DCM: ‘Newport D.C.M.’, Western Mail, 20 June 1917. Incorrect report of death: ‘Rank & File: Killed’, Western Mail, 27 November 1916.

[57] William J Coombes’ service: https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/lifestory/943624; Death of Arthur James Coombes: https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/lifestory/942488, accessed 17 July 1915. Alas, the Coombes family were so numerous in the area that it has to date proved impossible to determine how closely realted William and Arthur Coombes were.

[58] Equipment for Soldiers: ‘Baseball for Soldiers: Gift of the Newport Club’, South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 10 July 1915; Gift acknowledged: ‘Baseball for Soldiers’, South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 10 July 1915. Request for equipment from RFA: ‘Dromio’, ‘Baseball for Soldiers: Appeal for Equipment’, South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 8 May 1915.

[59] Second game: ‘Dromio’, ‘Exciting Baseball: Sport that Helps Soldiers’, South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 28 August 1915. List of baseball players who have volunteered: ‘Baseball Soldiers’, South Wales Weekly Argus and Monmouthshire Advertiser, 10 July 1915. Death of W. Prosser: ‘Died of Wounds’, Western Mail, 24 July 1917.

[60] ‘Caerphilly Notes’, Caerphilly Journal, 24 August 1916. ‘For Starving British Prisoners’, Western Mail, 31 July 1916.

[61] ‘Baseball at Newport’, Western Mail, 24 September 1917.

[62] Readers are directed to the work of Stephen Dame (CEF baseball), Jim Leeke (AEF baseball), and Andrew Taylor (CEF, AEF, and AABL baseball) for a chronicle of military baseball in Britain and Europe during the First World War.

[63] Edward Butts and Tabitha de Bruin, ‘Kimmel Park Riot’, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/kinmel-park-riot, access 17 July 2025.

[64] The Swansea game is described here: ‘Thirteen to Three: The Baseball Match’, South Wales Daily Post, 6 May 1918. The players name is the latter report can be compared to the team list for the London Americans (billed as ‘America’) here: Sergeant L. Fuerot, ‘Baseball—and a Goat’, Daily Express, 30 July 1917. Andrew Taylor provides the background to the series: Andrew Taylor, ‘Did Canada Save British Baseball?’, Journal of Canadian Baseball, 2022, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.22329/jcb.v1i1.7699

[65] ‘Crews of American vesels’ ‘Public Notices’ Western Mail, 4 July 1918; Commander Jeffers and Lorin Lathrop, Amerian Consul: ‘Celebration in Wales’, Western Mail, 5 July 1918.

[66] William N Jeffers at Cardiff: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/publications/documentary-histories/wwi/august-1918/vice-admiral-william-2.html, accessed 17 July 1918. Rees Jones hosting lunch: Note 65 above, second reference. Rees Jones handing over the proceeds from the basebal game: ‘District News’, Western Mail, 14 August 1918.

[67] USS Nero: https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-n/ac17.htm, accessed 17 July 2025. Photograph of USS Nero baseball team circa 1918: author’s own collection. Story of the Queenstown destroyers: Joseph K. Taussig, William N. Still (ed.): The Queenstown patrol, 1917. The diary of commander Joseph Knefler Taussig, U.S. Navy, (Newport: Naval War College Press, 1996).

[68] Western Mail, 2 April 1918.

[69] See note 66 above, first reference. For ATS ships travelling to and from France and Barry, see: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/u/us-navy-world-war-i-redirect.html, accessed 17 July 2025. For example ‘30 June [1918]: The cargo ship Hilton (ID-1574) sails from Brest, France, for Barry, Wales.[vii]’. The Hilton was another collier: https://www.shipscribe.com/usnaux/ww1/ships/hilton.htm, accessed 17 July 2025.

[70] ‘District News’, Western Mail, 8 August 1918.

[71] ‘Baseball at Cardiff’, South Wales Argus, 3 June 1918; May Newport game: ‘Baseball at Newport’, South Wales Argus, 17 May 1918;; Brynmawr: ‘Public Notices’, South Wales Gazette, 2 August 1918.

[72] Cardiff game: ‘District News’, Western Mail, 16 May 1918; June Newport game: ‘Baseball: Match at Newport’, South Wales Argus, 24 June 1918.