Durex Abrasives was set up in 1929 by a consortium of America’s largest manufacturers of ‘coated abrasives’—sandpaper, emery paper, etc.—to corner the market in exports of their products to territories outside the US. Within a year, however, in the face of tariffs imposed on imports from the US by those territories, the company pivoted to being a manufacturing concern with plants in Canada, Germany, France, and Birmingham, England.[1]

Three years after it went online, the Birmingham plant brought American baseball back to the British Midlands.

Yesterday I was lured to a contest between teams representing the National Baseball Association, Liverpool, and Chipping Norton Baseball Club, played on the sports ground of Durex Abrasives, Ltd., in Kitts Green-road, Stechford. The match had been organised by Mr. D. Kelso, managing director of Durex Abrasives, and about 1,999 other people besides myself attended.[2]

As outlined in part one of this series,[3] the most resilient of the teams formed in the first flush of interest in American baseball in Great Britain in the 1880s was a company team, Derby, the pride and passion of foundry-owner Francis Ley. The Durex baseball team was similarly a company team created and sustained by the dedication of one man, New Yorker Donald Kelso (Albert Donald Kelso (1888–1980)), head of Durex Abrasives’ British operation.

Kelso was a Harvard graduate, a boxing blue, and a speaker of four languages who had trained as a US Navy aviator during World War One and would go on to serve as a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army in World War Two, overseeing munitions production. Having begun his business career with the American Glue Co., a member of the Durex consortium, he started his involvement with Durex as its technical director and vice president, overseeing the pivot from exporter to manufacturer. With the completion of the British plant in Birmingham in 1931, he shifted to serving as its managing director, a role that allowed him to also continue to oversee the company’s expansion into continental Europe.[4]

Kelso was passionate about baseball, both as a fan and a player, something that comes across in early interviews with him in the British press.

Mr Kelso showed the great leather gloves and the hard, lively ball that is used in America’s national game. He ran his hand over the gloves caressingly and said: “It’s a wonderful game—it lights you up.[5]

Hands-on in most everything he did, he would turn out for the Durex team for much of its ten-year existence. So essential was he to its success that the team folded within 18 months of him being called back to the US in December 1942. However, by then, Durex, with Kelso at its head, had established American baseball in Birmingham, and the game would be a feature of the city’s sporting scene for decades after Kelso’s departure. Part and parcel of this was how deeply rooted the game had become in the sports and recreation clubs of the city’s industrial concerns, something, again, in which Kelso and Durex had led the way. Borrowing from the American model, by the mid-1930s, Kelso had created Britain’s only true industrial league, one that, although intended to be an amateur complement to the professional American baseball leagues launched across England in the same period, far outlived the latter.

We were both surprised and pleased to hear that so many teams were playing baseball in the Liverpool area, and that we stand a very good chance of fixing up some matches for this season. Actually, our fellows only started to play baseball a month or so ago, and are playing under 100 per cent American rules, which I gather would coincide with the rules of the National Baseball Association.[6]

We can time quite precisely the founding of the Durex company team to April 1934, thanks to a letter written by someone connected to the club (the secretary H.J. Broome?), a month later. The letter was sent to the newly formed National Baseball Association (NBA) based in Liverpool. The NBA was an old name for a new organisation established and funded by Liverpool sports betting and mail order shopping magnate John Moores. The reference to baseball played under ‘100 per cent American rules’ in the letter was a necessary distinction to make, as Liverpool was the heartland of baseball played under the English code—the story of which I detail elsewhere.[7]

The re-introduction to the city of baseball under the American code (after a brief flourishing of the game under American rules in the city in the 1890s) was the result of John Moores’ Damascene conversion from ambassador for the English code to evangelist for the American code following a trip to the US in the summer of 1933. Although Moores had hoped that the whole of the Liverpool baseball scene would join him in switching from the English to the American code, in practice, only a minority of clubs did so. However, this was still enough to give Moores the makings of two leagues, the first step in rolling out professional American baseball leagues across England, backed by his considerable financial resources.[8]

As can be seen from the above, the founding of the Durex team, which, based on the letter sent to the NBA, was independent of Moores’ efforts, was fortuitously timed: American baseball was on the up and had in John Moores someone who was ready to throw his support behind regional initiatives beyond his Liverpool base. The Durex team was judged too green at this stage to face an established team; however, an exhibition game to be held at the Durex Athletic and Social Club grounds in Stechford, Birmingham, was arranged between a representative Liverpool team and a team from Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. (The story of the Chipping Norton team and its founder, British Baseball Hall of Famer Fred Lewis (1879–1960), unique in baseball in Britain, is a fascinating one, but falls outside the scope of this work; readers are recommended to read the article on the team at Playing Pasts.[9]). The game took place on 2 September 1934, and a crowd of 2000 watched the Liverpool team beat Chipping Norton 17–7.[10]

The event was judged a success, and by January 1935, the NBA had sent one of its officials, H. Holland, to Birmingham to persuade other concerns in the city to follow Durex’s lead as the first step in forming a Birmingham-based amateur league affiliated to the NBA, an offer sweetened by the promise of the donation of equipment. Of particular interest to us here, this effort, in Britain’s most industrialised city, known as the ‘workshop of the world’, was aimed squarely at company sport and recreation clubs. It is worth noting in this respect that Birmingham was host to extensive amateur works leagues for both Association Football and cricket at this time. By March, a tentative list of teams in the new ‘Birmingham Baseball League’ was being publicised, including teams from companies such as Morris Motors, Bourneville, Delta Metals, and British-Timkin.[11]

In a major step forward, in April, a scratch Birmingham team took the field for the first time against established opposition—another representative Liverpool team. Kelso (47 years old at this point) took the field as first baseman for the Birmingham side; however, in a measure of just how quickly things had progressed, the majority of the Birmingham team were not local men, but players, mostly Canadians, recruited from two ice hockey teams. Two of the ice hockey players (Bob Gliddens and Gerry Davey) were from London-based team Streatham, which, at the time, also had a baseball team, playing in the NBA’s amateur West London Baseball League.[12] Four more were from Birmingham-based team Warwickshire (soon to be renamed the Birmingham Maple Leafs): English teenager J.J. Shannon, Ontarian Dean Gee, their captain, Quebecois Basil Tennier, and the star of the team and star of the Birmingham baseball scene for the next six years, Winnipegger Sid Bissett.[13]

Sid Bissett hurled a beautiful game for the winners, allowing only two hits and fanning ten batters. With men on bases, he was invincible, and with a little better luck, would have had a shut-out.[14]

Donald Alexander ‘Sid’ Bissett (1906–1992)—the origin of the nickname is uncertain­—was, despite his later claims to have been born in Scotland, born in Brandon, Manitoba, in 1906 to Ontario native of Scottish descent James Bissett and his American-born wife Elizabeth Bissett née Whitton.[15] By 1926, the Bissett family was living in Winnipeg, and Sid was pitching for the West End team in the junior city baseball league. In July 1926, he turned out for the Enders in a game against a team visiting from Regina, Saskatchewan, co-founded and led by Jack Cranstoun Jr, brother of Merrick Cranstoun, whom Bissett would come up against in England in 1936 (see below). The following season, Bissett moved to the Elmwood Giants and was instrumental in the Giants enjoying an 18-game unbeaten run. Recognised as a great talent, he was scouted by senior league team the Elmwood Elks for the 1928 season. He stayed with the Elks for three seasons and then moved to Norwood and played a further three seasons.[16]

Of equal importance to our story, by the time of the 1928–1929 ice hockey season, Bissett was a regular with the Beavers ice hockey team. The following season, he turned out for Selkirk, and then, for 1930–1931, he made the jump to the all-conquering Elmwood Juniors (AKA the Elmwood Millionaires) for its fourth successive Manitoba Junior championship-winning season. It is arguable that, by this time, ice hockey was his primary focus. It is certainly the game that brought him to England in December 1933.[17]

DOMINION ICE HOCKEY ‘STARS’ JOIN WARWICKSHIRE. […] Bissett, another Winnipeg player, is a real speed merchant of the ice. A tremendously fast skater, he is also a terrific shot and will partner Dennis Blakstad in the first line of attack.[18]

The steady stream of Canadian ice hockey players crossing the pond to join English clubs would, to the chagrin of Canadian team owners, become a torrent in late 1935 with the launch of the English National League (ENL), which was controlled by the national organisation of ice rink owners, the English Ice Hockey Union (EIHU). However, when Sid Bissett joined the Warwickshire Ice Hockey team in early 1934, the game was still under the control of the genteel British Ice Hockey Association (BIHA), which ran its English and Scottish leagues on strict amateur lines.[19]

The Warwickshire team was in existence for only two seasons (1933–1934, 1934–1935), placing in the bottom half of the table of the BIHA’s English league in both. In mid-1935—just as Bissett and his fellow players were turning out for the representative Birmingham baseball team—it metamorphosed into the Birmingham Maple Leafs, with Sid Bissett as its player–manager.[20] At this stage, the Maple Leafs were still associated with the BIHA, which meant that, in theory, they were supposed to be an amateur outfit. That meant the players needed day jobs. This is where Donald Kelso came in.

The recruitment by Kelso of Canadians from the Warwickshire/Maple Leafs in some ways runs contrary to the idea that the Durex team, and by extension, the Birmingham league, were centred on company recreation clubs. However, the hiring of what some would describe as experts to teach the game to locals, and others as ringers to weight the game in their team’s favour, had a long history in industrial leagues. As we saw in part one of this series, this was a feature of Francis Ley’s all-conquering 1890 company team, Derby, and a subject of huge controversy.[21] More than this, and perhaps of greater relevance to us here, it was something that Donald Kelso would be very familiar with from his own time in US industry.

By the second quarter of the twentieth century, company baseball teams were ubiquitous in the US. In 1927, a survey of 430 US companies showed that 233 possessed at least one in-house baseball team, more than any other sport—and more than offered their employees annual picnics—with 153 of those 233 companies having their own baseball diamonds. Many entered teams in industrial and urban leagues, playing against teams from other companies and organisations such as the YMCA. Critically, those companies that dropped baseball from their recreational activities cited the rise of professionalism in such leagues, with the complaint being that companies were employing men for their baseball skills, not their labour, in an attempt to put one over their business rivals.[22]

Kelso was a lover of baseball, a man keen for his British workers to play the game, but he was also a shrewd competitor; he knew what it would take for his team to compete not just within Birmingham but at a national level. He put Bissett and his teammates on the payroll.[23]

Recently, the Birmingham Pirates entertained Durex Abrasives in a National Baseball Association Cup match, at Cotteridge. Unfortunately, the Pirates were rather outclassed by their more experienced opponents, and the game finished at 36–8 against them.[24]

In a four-inning game affected by bad weather, Liverpool beat Birmingham 6–4. Across the next few months, the Durex team played two more friendlies. In the first against an Oxford University side comprising Rhodes scholars, Durex were leading 7–5 going into the final innings, but then conceded 10 runs without a further increase in their own score. In the second, against a returning Chipping Norton side, they emerged victorious, 15–12.[25]

Although this was their first victory against non-local opposition, it was not their first victory overall, as by May 1935, Birmingham had its first league, and Durex was its star team. Although baseball had been taken up by a number of sports and recreation clubs in the Birmingham area, in its first season, the Birmingham and District Baseball League had only five teams; they were Durex, Daytona Sports, New Hudson Sports, Bendix Brakes, and the Birmingham Pirates.[26] Three of the teams were associated with the motor industry: New Hudson was a motorcycle company based in Birmingham and Bendix Brakes was a subdivision of the Bendix company and manufactured, as the name suggests, brake systems; Daytona was a sports club based in Minworth in Birmingham and took its name from Daytona Beach, where Sir Malcolm Campbell set several landspeed records in the 1920s and 1930s. The driving force behind the sports club and baseball team was their organising secretary, Sidney Trimnell.[27]

The obvious outlier here is the final team, the Birmingham Pirates. This was an entirely new entity not associated with an established sports and recreation club. It owed its existence to its founder, secretary, manager, coach, captain, and oldest playing member, ‘Uncle’ Joe Biddle (Joseph Thomas Biddle Jr. (1879–1967)).

The biggest personality in the Birmingham baseball scene, Biddle was the son of one of three Irish brothers, residents of Birmingham, England, who emigrated with their families to Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1880s. Jack, Jim, and Joe Sr. became fixtures in the Alabama business and sports scenes; Jim and Joe Sr. even managed to find time to do some gold prospecting in the Yukon. As a young man, Joe Jr was a phenom, turning out for the Birmingham Athletic Club basketball team the year it won the Southern States Championship (1899) and enjoying success as a boxer, swimmer, and cyclist (solo and tandem).[28]

His introduction to baseball came via his childhood friendship with A.R. ‘Rick’ Woodward, who would go on to own the Birmingham Barons minor league team and build Rickwood Field (currently, the oldest surviving professional baseball stadium in America). Biddle caught games for a number of prominent Birmingham amateur teams in the early 1900s: the Birmingham Athletic Club, the all-conquering Pell City [Manufacturing Company], and the Dwight Company.[29] He moved back to Birmingham, England, with his wife, Bridget, and five children in 1910 and found work as an engine fitter in the city’s burgeoning motor industry.[30]

Joe Biddle and the Pirates became the ambassadors for the sport in the local area. Biddle himself was much in demand as a coach for youth teams, and his involvement in the local scene did much to sustain it through fair weather and foul. Already well into his fifties when he founded the Pirates, he would continue to captain and catch games for the team into his seventies. His contribution to the game in Birmingham was second only to that of Donald Kelso.

BASEBALL CUP DUEL Durex Athletic Club were beaten in the fourth round of the National Baseball Association's Challenge Cup by the New London Club at Kitts Green-road, Stechford, last night. The visitors were more experienced in the American game than Durex, who, however, put up a plucky fight, although beaten by 12–1.[31]

Durex were runaway winners of the inaugural 1935 season of the Birmingham and District League, and comfortably came through the regional playoffs for the NBA Challenge Cup (the English national championship, here, in its second year since its revival). However, they lost 12–1 in the next round to the team that would go on to win the Cup, New London of the West London League.[32] (The New London roster comprised American Mormon missionaries, as did that of the team they beat in the Challenge Cup final, the Rochdale Greys. John Heydler, president of the US National League, presented the winners with the trophy that year, a coup for John Moores and his still-fledgling British NBA.[33])

In a sign of things to come, Sid Bissett found himself recruited into a ‘Rest of England’ team that took on the newly crowned New London team a few days after their Challenge Cup win. Although the New London team was again victorious, Bissett gave them a scare when he was brought on as a relief pitcher and held them to three runs over the final six innings of the game. At this very early stage in the life of the NBA, Bissett was unarguably one of the best pitchers in any of its leagues. The later, much-repeated claim by the Birmingham baseballers that the NBA rated Bissett as the ‘best baseball player in England’ dated from this time.[34]

Nineteen Thirty Five had been a very successful year for both the Durex team and American baseball in Birmingham in general. The NBA demonstrated its confidence in the scene by sending one of its most-experienced boosters, Michigan-born Albert McGraw, to be its local representative. McGraw had managed the Scotland team comprising American and Canadian medical students from Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities that had done so much to promote the American game for Moores in 1933 and 1934, as the NBA was looking to excite interest outside Liverpool (I tell the story of the American medical students elsewhere[35]). A scheme was also introduced to train umpires in the local area. In February 1936, in a meeting attended by John Moores himself, and in line with a reorganisation of the NBA that placed it at the head of local associations, the Birmingham County Baseball Association was formed with Donald Kelso as its first chairman.[36]

Amateur leagues like those in Birmingham were critical to the NBA’s plan for sustaining the game. It recognised that populating its top-tier ‘professional’ leagues with imported American and Canadian players was unsustainable in the long run, both in terms of the financial burden and the recognised reluctance of fans to embrace teams filled with foreign players (especially when coupled with a foreign game). Fans wanted local players to root for, and the NBA needed a more stable pay structure. Thus, to the NBA, the amateur leagues were incubators to nurture future generations of top-tier players. And, certainly, for many of the players in non-company amateur teams, it was the desire to emulate their heroes and one day join them in the top-tier leagues that was a major motivator. However, as I have demonstrated throughout this series, for company teams, the motivations were different: while there undoubtedly were players in the Birmingham amateur industrial leagues who were dreaming of playing professional baseball, for the majority of them, this was, as with other sports and pastimes, about health and friendship, about sharing an interest with workmates and continuing rivalries with other company sports and recreation clubs. This critical difference would have a key impact on what would happen with the Birmingham company teams, and the company teams in the other NBA amateur leagues, as opposed to the non-company teams, a few years in the future.

The Birmingham scene justified the faith shown in it by the NBA by increasing from one league to two for the 1936 season. Although the actual make-up of the leagues would remain in flux up to their May launch, the top-tier Division I would eventually settle down to include all the teams from the 1935 season and two new teams, Northfield A team and Birmingham Trams (aka B.C.T.: Birmingham City Transport). Of interest to us here, Joe Biddle would catch for both the Pirates and the Trams in the 1936 season. Meanwhile, two of his sons, Patrick and Daniel, were now playing for the Pirates B team. Division II was made up of the Pirates B team and a raft of new teams—new to the competitive game, at least—such as O.C. Hawkes, Northfield B team, Constructors, and Vono Sports Club. The emphasis was again on company sports and recreation clubs—Hawkes was a furniture company and Vono a manufacturer of metal products, while Northfield was nicknamed ‘the smoke eaters’, hinting at its heavy industry roots. As stated above, many of these teams would be opening up new fronts in existing rivalries carried over from the Birmingham football works league.  There was even talk (never realised) of a professional baseball league being launched.[37]

It is fair to say, however, that Kelso’s eyes were focused once more on the NBA Challenge Cup. This is evidenced by his leaving key players like Sid Bissett and Basil Tennier off the roster for league games against weak opponents (which, it has to be said, other than perhaps the Northfield A team and Joe Biddle’s Pirates, was every team in the league). In an innovation for the 1936 season, there would be both an open NBA Challenge Cup and an NBA Amateur Challenge Cup for Durex to contest.[38]

It is worth noting that, in connection with Bissett and Tennier and the other ice hockey players in the Durex side (and the Durex company), the Birmingham Maple Leafs ice hockey team folded at the end of the 1935–1936 season as it declined to join the EIHU’s English National League that replaced the BIHA’s English league. However, so stably situated where the Durex contingent in Birmingham that, within a year, they would revive the Maple Leafs as a player-owned concern for exhibition matches, with Basil Tennier as chairman and Sid Bissett as publicity manager.[39]

BISSETT’S BRILLIANCE Sid Bissett, Birmingham Maple ice-hockey manager, won the game for Durex by his brilliant pitching. His work was as perfect as possible. He struck out almost everybody during the first two innings. After the third innings, he went to the shortstop position in order to reserve his arm and strength for the West Ham match on Thursday night.[40]

In mid-July, after beating Oxfordshire amateur club, the Blueboys, 15–3, in a preliminary game, Durex faced West Ham of the newly formed ‘professional’ London Major Baseball League (LMBL)[41] in the first round proper of the Challenge Cup. At first glance, this would be a David and Goliath struggle between an amateur (Durex) and a professional (West Ham) team. However, on closer examination, the teams were more closely matched than this description suggests, as, in practice, both teams drew their key players from Canadian amateur leagues. Durex had Sid Bissett, Basil Tennier, William Lane, and Brian Thompson, while the West Ham team, led by Quebecois pro player Roland Gladu, was built around a solid core of three players from the Quebec amateur leagues, Jerry Strong, George Etheze, and Pamphile Yvon.[42]

The game took place on 16 July 1936, at Moorlands in Birmingham, and was unquestionably the best game that had been seen in the city to that date. Sid Bissett was predictably the MVP for Durex, striking out 13 West Ham players; however, the whole team shouldered the work of scoring runs. After scoring 5 runs in the third inning, by the end of the fourth inning, Durex led 8–4, but then, West Ham rallied, scoring two runs in the sixth and two more in the eighth to level the score at 8–8. The Hammers added one more run to their tally in the final inning, making the score 9–8 in their favour when Durex went in to bat. Durex had two men out and two men on bases when Bissett went up to the plate. Bissett hit a single, bringing home Brian Thompson, to level the scores once more. Then, in what may have been the highlight of his career as a ball player, Kelso himself came to the plate and scored a hit, bringing home Basil Tennier and winning the game for Durex 10–8.[43]

It was a mighty achievement, albeit one born of Donald Kelso’s calculated hiring of Sid Bissett et al., coupled with his curating of the roster to ensure that his best players remained game fit for when it really mattered. Alas, there was to be no repeat, as two weeks later, in the second round of the Challenge Cup, Durex were on the receiving end of a shut-out courtesy of Merrick Cranstoun, the brilliant, but erratic, pitcher for LMBL team the Romford Wasps. The Wasps won the game, played at their home ground, 6–0. Cranstoun was another Canadian hockey player and amateur baseballer—I tell his story elsewhere—and the Wasps were another team built around a core of Canadian players.[44]

Still, Durex’s run in the Challenge Cup marked it as the best amateur team in the country; something it confirmed when it won the NBA Amateur Challenge Cup final in September. In a game dominated by Sid Bissett, who pitched a two-hit, no-run shutout game, Durex beat Liverpool Caledonians, 9–0, at Liverpool. Notably, Caledonians were without the services of Everton FC and England footballer Dixie Dean, who was a regular in the side.[45]

Durex’s win in the NBA Amateur Cup was the cap to a dominant season, in which they lost only one game (the Romford game). Along the way, on top of the BNA Amateur Cup, they also won the Birmingham League championship, the Birmingham Jubilee Cup, and the Midlands District Cup.[46]

Baseball is making headway in the Midlands. In 1934, there was but one organised baseball team in Birmingham […] In 1935, there were four teams, and last season the number had grown to 14. This summer, over 50 teams, both senior and junior, are in existence.[47]

The Birmingham Baseball Association expanded to three leagues for the 1937 season: the Birmingham and District League, the Birmingham Combination League, and the Birmingham Suburban League. As ever, the overwhelming majority of clubs were company teams, with notable additions including Dunlop Tyres and the Wolseley Motor Company (soon to become the Morris Motor Company). Durex had by this time sufficient players in its baseball section to field a second team, Durex B. Added to this, the best of its local players were now sufficiently experienced to score regular games with the first team. Although the first team would continue to be built on a core of Canadian players like Bissett, Tennier, and Lane, there were now regular first-team places for English-born players like E. Brown, H. Parker, B. Turner, and J. Dilworth.[48]

In other recruitment news, Joe Biddle’s Pirates signed a new player, pitcher J. Bailey, who was described as having ‘played a lot of first-class baseball in Japan. When out East, he competed against one of the big touring American League teams’. Alas, I have been unable to find out anything about this intriguing player. He would go on to be a key player for the Pirates for at least the next three years.[49]

The 1937 season would prove to be another dominant season for Durex locally, and they would once more make it to the final of the NBA Amateur Challenge Cup. However, in a bizarre turn of events, Durex would fail to turn up for the final against Bradford-based team, the Thornbury Trojans, after receiving a telegram, purporting to be from Albert McGraw but later revealed to be a hoax, telling the Durex team that the match had been called off. The game was initially awarded to Thornbury due to Durex’s no-show, but then, when the circumstances became known, plans were made for a rematch early in the 1938 season. In a final twist, Durex were later awarded the Cup by default because the Thornbury Trojans disbanded before the rematch could be played.[50]

This incident may hint that the domination of Durex, which could be classed as an amateur team with a professional roster, was the source of some resentment within the amateur game. However, at this remove, it is impossible to judge the motives of whoever sent the hoax message.

Nineteen Thirty Seven also marked the high-water mark for the Moores American baseball leagues. That year, the NBA ran top-tier ‘professional’ leagues in Yorkshire, Lancashire (the North of England League, including Liverpool and Manchester), and London, and amateur leagues in all those places plus Birmingham and Oxfordshire. There were so many fixtures expected for the 1938 season that the NBA Amateur Challenge Cup competition was cancelled as being too logistically difficult to organise. However, in practice, for the ‘professional’ game, at least, the tide had already begun to turn. The simple fact was that the games were not drawing enough fans (i.e., earning enough revenue). The reasons for this have been much discussed, and are not relevant to us here. The London Major Baseball League folded at the end of the 1937 season, and the Yorkshire and Lancashire (North of England) Leagues were combined into one. In a further change, the new combined league would be semi-pro in that a cap was placed on the number of professional players a club could field (two). Jumping ahead: alas, this did not halt the decline (indeed, some have argued since that it accelerated it); although the combined Yorkshire–Lancashire league would continue into the 1939 season, the onset of the Second World War would finish it off. It was a mercy killing.[51]

Away from this setback, the Birmingham Baseball Association, like other amateur associations across the country, continued in the 1938 season to run a full schedule across its three leagues. New to the leagues for the 1938 season was Allens Cross, a team that would, within a year, come to rival Durex in strength. It had grown out of the defunct Northfield teams and featured in its opening roster South African bantamweight boxer Johnny Holt, who had played for the Wembley Pirates in the London Senior Amateur League.[52]

Although necessarily more inwardly focused than in previous seasons, the association did continue with its now annual Durex versus Oxford University game, which went to ten innings, Durex eventually winning 3–2.[53] Significantly, the Birmingham baseballers also took over from the NBA the mission to extend interest in American baseball to new areas, playing four games in Coventry, including two regular Birmingham and District League games.[54]

More particularly, Sid Bissett received an England call-up.

Bissett’s Share In England Baseball Win. On Saturday, the American baseball team, who had come to England in order to popularise the game in this country, were beaten in the first of five tests with England by three to nil. At Hull last night, England became two up as the result of a win by eight to six. Birmingham player Syd Bissett of Durex had a big share in the victory.[55]

In July 1938, the venue of the 1940 Summer Olympics, initially awarded to Tokyo, was changed to Helsinki as part of the continuing fallout from Japan’s invasion of Northern China the previous year. For the second successive Games, baseball was to be an exhibition event. In the same month that Tokyo was removed as the venue, the US selected the team of non-professional baseballers that would represent it at the Games and sent it on a goodwill tour of Europe. The team, managed by Leslie Mann, secretary of the International Baseball Federation, landed in England in August 1938 and embarked on a five-game test series that would later be dubbed the ‘first Amateur World Series’. To the joy of John Moores and the NBA, still reeling from the collapse of its professional leagues, England emerged victorious, winning the series 4–1. The US team was more successful in games against regional opposition (including a London team that featured Hidezo ‘H’ Nishikawa[56]). It departed at the end of August for a tour of continental Europe. The 1940 Summer Olympics ultimately fell victim to the outbreak of the Second World War and were cancelled in December 1939.[57]

The NBA drew the bulk of the England team from players in its surviving semi-pro Yorkshire–Lancashire League, and, despite the name, almost all the players were Canadian. The team’s undoubted star was British Baseball Hall of Famer Ross Kendrick (1909–1975), the ace hurler for the Oldham Greyhounds, who pitched two shutout games, game 1 at Liverpool in front of a crowd of 10,000 (the largest of the series by quite some margin), and game 4 in front of 5000 of his home fans. Kendrick would remain a fixture of the American game in Britain for decades to come—even playing alongside Durex regulars Bill Lane and Brian Thompson in a team dubbed the ‘Rover Canadians’ or ‘Midlands Canadians' in matches against other Midlands teams during the Second World War. He took up residence in Birmingham and, post-war, turned to coaching local teams (first, the Beavers, which he also founded, and then, Bromsgrove) and umpiring; he died in Birmingham in 1976.[58]

In fact, the series was characterised by the dominant performances of England’s pitchers. In game 2, played at Hull, a crowd of 5000 watched Jerry Strong (Gerald Keith Strong (1913–1958)), the former West Ham player, take to the mound and strike out 12 players (this was again, in front of his home crowd, as Strong had moved to Hull after the collapse of the LMBL at the end of the 1937 season). Strong was at the time probably the second- or third-best pitcher in England behind Ross Kendrick and perhaps American Max ‘Lefty Wilson (1916–1977). (Wilson is another British Baseball Hall of Famer.). Strong had got his start in the Montreal City Junior Amateur League and was considered a phenom. In the 1935 season of the Montreal City Senior Amateur League, his last before relocating to England, he pitched the Royals to victory and won the Dave Kerr Trophy, which was awarded to the best amateur player in Montreal.[59]

Sid Bissett took to the mound for game 3. The game took place at Rochdale in uncertain weather and in front of the lowest attendance of the series, with only 1000 local fans turning out for a game that did not feature any of its local heroes (it will be remembered that the Rochdale Greys was a team of American Mormon missionaries). These proved to be ill omens, as England were handed their only defeat of the series by a steadily improving American side. Bissett struck out three US players versus the seven England players struck out by the American pitcher Clyde Dean in a shut-out game. The result, while reflecting Bissett’s status as a pitcher of great skill but not of the same level as Kendrick or Strong, was also the product of a lackluster performance by the rest of the England team, who may have been resting on their laurels, as indicated by the decision to start Bissett, the relief pitcher. In response to this setback, England brought Kendrick back for game 4 and clinched the series.[60]

The final game of the series at Leeds, which attracted a crowd of 3000–4000, ended after six innings due to rain and poor light. Strong pitched the first four innings, striking out two, and Kendrick the final two innings, striking out three, in a 5–3 England victory.[61]

It is worth acknowledging here that the successes of England’s pitchers would not have been possible without the efforts of catcher Irving ‘Snooker’ Ruvinsky (1908–1956), like Strong, a former LMBL player who got his start in the Montreal senior leagues. He and Strong had been teammates in the all-conquering 1935 Royals team.[62]

MARSTON GREEN BASEBALL The District Cup final at baseball between Durex Sports and Allen’s Cross was played at Bickenhill Road, Marston Green, on Sunday on the Durex Sports Ground. Durex was without S. Bissett, its pitcher, and his services were very much missed. Although H. Fellows tried hard to rally his men, they suffered defeat by 16 runs to one. It was the first time Durex had been beaten by a local team, and Allen’s Cross have been trying hard during the past two years to accomplish this feat.[63]

Durex suffered its first-ever defeat at the hands of a local team in the last week of peace in Europe. Without Bissett on the mound, Durex fell victim to the pitching of another Canadian, former Saskatoon amateur league player Lee Desaulnier, who struck out 21 Durex players. Desaulnier had spent the previous two seasons playing for Leeds Oaks in, first, the Yorkshire League, and then, the Yorkshire–Lancashire League. Desaulnier was one of a raft of Oaks players from the Saskatoon leagues, several of whom moved to Birmingham for the 1939 season: Homer Vallee was his battery mate at Allens Cross; meanwhile, his brother, Clare Desaulnier, became the pitcher for the Turner Bros. team.[64]

Kelso had finally been beaten at his own game. It did not help that Durex was without the services of originals Basil Tennier, Bill Lane, and Brian Thompson for the 1939 season.[65] Also of interest for this final season before the outbreak of war was that two teams from R.A.F. Cosford Camp joined the Birmingham leagues. I wrote about American baseball in the R.A.F. in the previous part of this series on baseball in Cardiff. It is worth noting here that there were also two R.A.F. teams in the American baseball league in Cardiff and their opposition were also sports and recreation clubs.[66]

The 1939 season was something of a watershed, although not for the reason that might be expected. All across the country, the 1939 season was the last season of baseball until the return to peace in 1945—for the Moores leagues and the NBA, it was the last season, full stop. However, in Birmingham, it was different. As the ‘workshop for the world’, Birmingham’s industrial concerns were vital to the war effort. The Birmingham leagues, based so solidly on company sports and recreation clubs, although stripped of a good number of players and teams, survived due to so many of its players being judged to be involved in essential war work. There would be games every year of the war except 1941. However, this part of the Birmingham leagues’ story I have told elsewhere, involving as it does the most controversial character in the history of baseball in Britain, US Army Colonel James A. Killian.[67] No, the reason that the 1939 season was a watershed was because it was Sid Bissett’s last in the Birmingham leagues.

Sid Bissett, a former Winnipegger, is trying out for the blue line. He spent seven years in England and played in the British Ice League while in the Old Land.[68]

Sid Bissett’s duties as an employee of Durex’s Birmingham plant took him to other Durex plants in Europe. While on a visit to Durex’s plant in Düsseldorf, he was taken on a tour of the Krupp Steelworks in Essen. A few years later, he remembered how proud the Germans were of their armaments industry. He left England in June 1940, shortly after the Dunkirk evacuation, to take up a role at Durex’s Canadian plant at Brantford, Ontario. There, he continued to play both baseball and ice hockey. He also took to coaching youth teams, including girls’ softball. In 1947, he emigrated to the USA, joining his older brother, Hugh, in Van Nuys, California, where he became a chicken-feed salesman. He turned out for the company team. The finest player of American baseball in England in 1935, he was eclipsed on the national stage by the arrival of a raft of Canadian and American players as the Moores leagues expanded in 1936. However, he remained the greatest asset the Birmingham leagues had [after Donald Kelso], a player whose skills with ball and bat inspired others to want to be even half as good. He deserves more credit than he is given for that, if for nothing else. He died in Van Nuys in 1992.[69]

Designated as the Army speaker to make the official presentation of the ‘E’ is Lieutenant Colonel Albert Donald Kelso, chief of the industrial division of the Philadelphia Ordnance District, and who is responsible for the administration of the eight regional offices of this district, covering seven States from South New Jersey to Georgia.[70]

In 1942, it was Donald Kelso’s turn to go. The US Army recruited him to bring his production expertise to munitions production. He returned to the US in January 1943 and was made a major and assigned to the Philadelphia Ordnance Board. He ended the war as a Lieutenant Colonel. In the immediate post-war period, he became president of Durex Abrasives. However, in 1951, the company was ordered dissolved and its foreign assets sold when it lost an antitrust lawsuit brought by the US government. The Durex plant in Birmingham was sold to one of the trust’s parent companies, 3M. Meanwhile, Kelso transferred to another of the trust’s parent companies, Behr-Manning, becoming head of its overseas division, rising eventually to head the whole company under its new name Norton International. It was his industrious drive and love of the game of baseball that brought it back to the Midlands in the 1930s. If he had a fault, he was arguably a touch too competitive, creating in Durex a team that was professional in all but name and dominating the local game. However, in doing so, he brought it and its star player, Sid Bissett, to national prominence. His status as a game-builder deserves wider recognition. He died in 1980.[71]

B’ham baseball pioneer dies. Mr. Joe Biddle, who has died at the age of 87 at Benton Road, Sparkhill, Birmingham, played baseball until he was nearly 70, despite a limp caused by a fractured knee. He was one of the founders of baseball in Birmingham and for many years catcher with the Birmingham Pirates club following the formation of a league in the city.[72]

Uncle Joe Biddle kept on catching games all through the war and beyond, in the process shepherding the Birmingham leagues into the post-war era. Player–coaches like Ross Kendrick would keep the game alive in the city into the 1950s and 1960s, by which time, it was the city itself that was in decline: between the mid-1960s and 2006, Birmingham lost 80% of its manufacturing jobs.[73]

However, this post-war decline should not be allowed to detract from the achievements of the Birmingham baseballers from the 1930s until the 1960s, keeping the game alive as other efforts all around them faltered, even in the face of the outbreak of the Second World War. Donald Kelso, Sid Bissett, Uncle Jo Biddle, Sidney Trimnell, and a hundred other men who gave of their time and their talents deserve to be recognised for what they contributed to the game in Britain in founding, nurturing, and sustaining the Birmingham leagues through thick and thin.

At the same time, as I hope I have demonstrated here, these stalwarts were greatly aided, and indeed, arguably, their achievements were only made possible, by the fact that the leagues were formed largely of company teams born of the city’s many sports and recreation clubs. As the Birmingham leagues’ continued growth after 1938, when the NBA’s own efforts began their decline, showed, like all company sports, they were sustained by internal drivers, organisational cultures built on the provision of recreational facilities and activities for employees—alongside, it has to be acknowledged, healthy rivalries between companies in the same industries. They didn’t need to draw a crowd; they just needed to give their players a game.

Jamie Barras, July 2025.

Notes

[1] This, highly abbreviated, account of the founding of Durex Abrasives is extracted from the 1947 legal case brought by the US government against the company under anti-trust laws: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/92/947/1803422/, accessed 24 July 2025. The US government contended that Durex had always intended to pivot from the perfectly legal business of consolidating exports to the illegal business of manufacturing abroad to maximise profits for the consortium at the expense of their competitors. It should go without saying that, despite what has been written since, Durex Abrasives was in no way connected with the Durex brand of prophylactics, which was a product of the London Rubber Company.

[2] ‘Knocking Em’ Cold’, Birmingham Gazette, 3 September 1934.

[3] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-health-friendship-and-baseball-part-i, accessed 26 July 2025.

[4] Kelso biography taken from: ‘Ordnance Chiefs Visit Rheem Plant’, Danville News, 29 March 1945. Boxing at Harvard: ‘Matches Evenly Divided’, Harvard Crimson, 15 March 1919.

[5] ‘American Game For Britons’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 25 January 1935.

[6] ‘Bee’s Notes on Sport: Baseball in Birmingham’, Liverpool Echo, 30 May 1934.

[7] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-intolerance, accessed 26 July 2025.

[8] I cover John Moores’ ‘conversion’ in the previous part of this series: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-health-friendship-and-baseball-part-iii, accessed 26 July 2025.

[9] Archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250318034736/https://www.playingpasts.co.uk/articles/team-sports/were-they-the-champions-the-fascinating-story-of-chipping-norton-baseball-club/, accessed 26 July 2025.

[10] See Note 2 above.

[11] ‘Bid for Baseball League’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 23 January 1935. Birmingham Works League, Association Football: ‘Birmingham Works League’, Sports Argus, 3 February 1934; cricket: ‘Birmingham Works League’, Sports Argus, 12 May 1934. Tentative list of teams: ‘Growth of Baseball’, Birmingham Gazette, 9 March 1935.

[12] ‘Big Development in Streatham Sport’, Streatham News, 12 Apil 1935.

[13] Kelso and ice hockey stars in Birmingham team: ‘Baseball: Liverpool to visit Birmingham’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 20 April 1935. Basil Tennier: ‘Pen Pictures of Men Who Will Aid Maple Leafs’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 19 October 1935; entry for Basil Tennier, 1931 Canada Census, Kenogami, Quebec, ancestry.co.uk. Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 26 July 2025.

[14] ‘Elmwood Giants Win Eighteenth Straight’, Free Press Evening Bulletin (Winnipeg, Man.), 12 August 1927.

[15] This information can be assembled from genealogical records and published accounts, see, for example, 1916 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta entry for James Bissett and family, Brandon, Manitoba; California, Death Index, 1940-1997, for Donald Alexander Bissett, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 12 July 2025. For Donald Alexander being Sid Bissett’s real names: 1) Bissett is listed as ‘D A (Sid) Bissett’ in the Durex roster here: ‘Baseball Match with Dark Blues’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 4 June 1936; and 2) there was a Donald A Bissett working for an emery paper manufacturer (i.e., Durex Abrasives) living in Birmingham in 1939, who was born on Christmas Day 1906 in Canada: entry for Donald A. Bissett, Birmingham Borough, 1939 England and Wales Register, ancestry.co.uk. Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 12 July 2025.

[16] Regina game: ‘Local Juniors Defeat Visitors’, Free Press Evening Bulletin (Winnipeg, Man.), 31 July 1926; Elmwood Giants, see Note 11 above; Elks in the Senior League: ‘Heavy Hitting Wins for Elks’, Winnipeg Tribune, 28 June 1928. Joins Norwood: ‘Tigers Swamp Norwood Nine in First Tilt’, Winnipeg Tribune, 4 September 1931. Still with Norwood: ‘Elks Break Even in Two Senior Ball Games’, Winnipeg Tribune, 15 June 1933.

[17] With Beavers: ‘Columbus Club Qualify for Junior Play-Down’, Winnipeg Tribune, 13 February 1929; Selkirk: ‘Intermediate Hockey League Race Tightens, Winnipeg Tribune, 31 December 1939; Millionaires: ‘Selkirk Evens Hockey Series, Winnipeg Tribune, 21 February 1931. Millionaires four straight wins: ‘Elmwood Manitoba Junior Champions’, Vancouver Sun, 6 March 1931. Bissett leaving for England: ‘Winnipeggers Leaving For Overseas’, Winnipeg Tribune, 9 December 1933.

[18] ‘Dominion Ice Hockey ‘Stars’ Join Warwickshire’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 11 January 1934.

[19] The rise of the English National League, disapproval of Canadian team owners, and ‘shamateurism’: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-slugger, accessed 26 July 2025, and references therein. For an academic treatment, see: Daryl Leeworthy, ‘Skating on the Border: Hockey, Class, and Commercialism in Interwar Britain’, Histoire sociale / Social History, 2015, 48, no. 96, 193–213. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/his.2015.0005, accessed 26 July 2025.

[20] ‘Ice Hockey in Birmingham’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 26 October 1935.

[21] See Note 3 above.

[22] ‘Outdoor Recreation for Industrial Employees’, Monthly Labor Review, 1927, 24, no. 5, 1–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41860473, accessed 8 June 2025.

[23] For proof Bissett was on the Durex payroll, see Note 12 above, reference for 1939 England and Wales Register.

[24] ‘Baseball Slang’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 26 June 1935.

[25] Birmingham–Liverpool: ‘With the Pitcher and the Batter on the Diamond’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 23 April 1935; Durex–Oxford: ‘Baseball Thrills’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 17 June 1935;

[26] Birmingham District [Baseball] League: ‘Birmingham and Distict League’, Liverpool Evening Express, 25 May 1935; list of teams: ‘Baseball Drive in Birmingham and Midlands’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 18 October 1935.

[27]New Hudson: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/New_Hudson_Cycle_Co; Bendix Brakes: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Bendix; Wolseley: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Wolseley, accessed 27 July 2025. Sidney Trimnell: ‘Three Killed in Birmingham Aircrash’, Birmingham Gazette, 10 December 1934; ‘Miscellaneous’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 16 June 1937.

[28] The Joe Biddle story is assembled from commentary added to three letters that he sent to a friend back in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1940, 1943, and 1944, published in the ‘Dusting ‘Em Off’ column of the Birmingham News (Birmingham, AL): Zipp Newman, ‘Dusting Em’ Off’, Birmingham News (Birmingham, AL), 3 March 1940, 17 September 1943, and 25 July 1944. Joe Biddle Sr., gold prospector: ‘To Land of Ice and Gold’, Birmingham Post-Herald (Birmingham, AL), 11 January 1898. It has to be acknowledged that the evidence that the Biddles lived in Birmingham, England, before moving to Birmingham, Alabama, come only from stories that they told. For example, Joe Jr was born in Dublin, and within a couple of years of his birth, his family had emigrated to the US.

[29] Joe Biddle’s Birmingham Alabama baseball career is discussed here: ‘Sports Log: Baseball Personality’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 1 August 1936. The article includes a photo of Biddle in his Pirates uniform. This account can be corroborated with press cuttings from Birmingham newspapers: catcher for Birmingham Athletic Club: ‘Other Games’, Birmingham Post-Herald (Birmingham, AL), 11 June 1905; catcher for Pell City: ‘Other Games’, Birmingham Post-Herald (Birmingham, AL), 6 May 1907; catcher for Dwight team: ‘Other Games’, Birmingham Post-Herald (Birmingham, AL), 9 June 1907. His friendship with Rick Woodward: See Note 28 above. Rick Woodward: Allen Barra, ‘Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark’, excerpt here: https://www.al.com/birmingham-buzz/2010/05/the_old_ball_game_celebrating_the_rickwood_field_centennial.html, accessed 27 July 2025.

[30] Joe Jr of Irish extraction and family back in England: entry for Joseph J Biddle, Aston district, 1911 England Census, ancestry.co.uk. Ancestry.com Inc. Operations. That the latter 'Joseph J Biddle’ is our Joseph T. Biddle can be determined from the names and places of birth (Birminham, Alabama) of his children, which can be cross-referenced with the letters above. The year of the family’s move to the Uk is given here: ‘Sparkhill Resident’s Links with Two Birminhams’, Birmingham Mail, 27 January 1951. The ‘T’ initial comes from his official registration of death, accessed through https://www.freebmd.org.uk/, 27 July 2025.

[31] ‘Baseball Cup Duel’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 20 August 1935.

[32] See Note 31 above.

[33] New London Mormon missionaries and John Heydler: ‘Baseball Boom May Menace County Cricket’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 5 September 1935. Rochdale Greys Mormon missionaries:  ‘Baseball-Star Missionaries’, Daily Mirror, 2 September 1936.

[34] ‘London’s Baseball Triumph’, Daily News (London), 9 September 1935. Bissett described as best baseball player in England: see Note 28 above, first reference.

[35] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-washington-makes-his-bow, accessed 27 July 2025.

[36] McGraw in Birmingham: see Note 26, above, second reference. Moores in Birmingham: ‘Baseball Meeting’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 22 February 1935.

[37] Teams: ‘Do You Want to Play Baseball?’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 22 May 1936. Joe Biddle catching for both Pirates and Trams: ‘Baseball: Pirates Recovery and Win’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 12 May 1936; ‘Baseball: Two Unbeaten Clubs’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 26 May 1936. Two sons in Pirates B team: ‘Baseball Cup’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 22 August 1936. Vono: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Vono; O.C. Hawkes: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/O._C._Hawkes. Talk of professional league: ‘Baseball’s Future’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 8 May 1936.

[38] Kelso resting players: ‘Baseball Duels’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 9 May 1936.

[39] ‘Maple Leafs Revived’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 1 October 1937.

[40] ‘Baseball Cup Duel’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 20 August 1935.

[41] For LMBL, see: Josh Chetwynd and Brian A Belton, ‘British Baseball and the West Ham Club’ (London: McFarland and Company, 2007).

[42] Chetwynd and Belton, Note 39 above, pages 71–72.

[43] This account is taken from: ‘Durex Shock West Ham’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 17 July 1936.

[44] ‘Durex Beaten in National Baseball Cup’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 3 August 1936. Cranstoun’s story: Note 1 above, first reference.

[45] ‘Baseball: Amateur Cup For Durex’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 14 September 1936. Dixie Dean in Caledonians: ‘Baseball FInal’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 11 September 1936.

[46] wins: ‘Sports Log: Not Bad!’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 29 October 1936.

[47] ‘Baseball in making headway in the Midlands’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 8 June 1937.

[48] Three leagues: ‘Baseball: League and Cup Duels’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 8 June 1937. Durex players: ‘Durex Defending National Amateur Baseball Cup’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 27 August 1937.

[49] ‘Pirates Meet Durex To-Morrow’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 5 June 1937. Bailey is in the team list for the Pirates, May 1940. ‘Baseball Again This Weekend’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 3 May 1940. He also turns out for the ‘Midlands’ team in a Midlands vs Canadians game, August 1940, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 3 August 1940.

[50] ‘Baseball Cup Final Mystery’, Birmingham Weekly Mercury, 29 August 1937; ‘Baseball Final: New Date To Be Fixed For Amateur Cup Test’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 1 September 1937; ‘Baseball: Durex Amateur Champions’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 4 March 1938.

[51] For the NBA’s problems and demise, see Chetwynd and Belton, Note 39 above, and Daniel Bloyce, ‘John Moores and the ‘Professional’ Baseball Leagues in 1930s England’, Sport in History, 2007, 27:1, 64-87; and Harvey Sahker, ‘The Blokes of Summer’, (Free Lance Writing Associates, Inc., 2011).

[52] ‘Exhibition Baseball’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 25 March 1938.

[53] ‘Durex Snatches Baseball Victory in Extra Time’, Daily Express, 30 May 1938.

[54] ‘Baseball In Coventry’, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 25 May 1938.

[55] ‘Bissett’s Share In England Baseball Win’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 16 August 1938.

[56] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-ace-hurler, accessed 28 July 1938.

[57] This summary is derived from: Ian Smyth, ‘Baseball Put to the Test And England Emerge Victorious’, Baseball Research Journal, 1995, 24, 131–133.

[58] Kendrick: https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Ross_Kendrick, accessed 28 July 2025. Turning out for Canadians: ‘Baseball: Midlands v. Canadians’, Birmingham Daily Gazette, 3 August 1940. Post-war career: Interview with Ross Kendrick conducted by William Morgan, 25 October 1973; transcript here: https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/artefacts/1971-interviews.pdf, accessed 28 July 2025.

[59] Biographical information on Strong: passsenger lists, SS Acquitania arriving New York, 31 August 1937, which helpfully lists Strong’s occupation as ‘baseball’; Roland Gladu and George Etheze were also onboard, New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957; entry for Gerald K Strong, 1939 England and Wales Register, Wembley district. Obituary: ‘Funeral Rites for Gerry Strong’, Whitehorse Daily Star (Whitehorse, AK), 15 March 1956. Max Wilson: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wilsoma01.shtml, accessed 28 July 2025. Strong pitching Royals to victory: ‘Royals Win Title by Beating M.A.A.A.’, Montreal Gazette, 14 October 1935.

[60] See Note 55 above, and ‘Test Match: America Secures Their First Win’, Rochdale Observer, 17 August 1938.

[61] ‘England Win The Baseball Test in Leeds’, Leeds Mercury, 20 August 1938; ‘Fourth Success: England’s Baseball Win at Headingley’, Bradford Observer, 20 August 1938.

[62] Ruvinsky: Harvey Sahker, ‘‘Snooker’ Ruvinsky: World Champ from the YMHA’, Journal of Canadian Baseball, 2022, 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.22329/jcb.v1i1.7697.

[63] ‘Marston Green: Baseball’, Coventry Standard, 2 September 1939.

[64] Desaulnier 21 strike outs: ‘Baseball Cup Defeat For Weakened Durex’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 28 August 1939. Saskatoon players in Leeds Oaks team: Walt Riddell, ‘On The Sport Spot’, Star-phoenix (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), 12 June 1937. Saskatoon players in Birrmingham teams: ‘Baseball Season Opens’, Evening Dispatch (Birmingham), 28 April 1939.

[65] See Note 62 above, final reference.

[66] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-health-friendship-and-baseball-part-iii, accessed 28 July 2025.

[67] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-by-kind-permission-of-colonel-ja-kilian, accessed 28 July 2025.

[68] ‘Intermediate Club Improves; Krieger Rejoins Mates’, Expositor (Brantford ON), 11 November 1940.

[69] Bissett leaving UK: entry for Donald Bissett, 28 June 1940, passenger lists for SS Duchess of Richmond, UK and Ireland, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 12 July 2025.. Touring Germany, working for Durex in Brantford, playing baseball and ice hockey in Brantford, coaching youth teams: ‘S. Bissett Would Aid Youngsters’, Expositor (Brantford ON), 26 December 1942. The 1947 move to Van Nuys: ‘Bissett Binds Bakers as Seeders Cop Win’ Van Nuys News and Valley News Sheet, 1 May 1947. Living with brother Hugh: Entry for Donald A Bissett in 1950 US Federal Census, Van Nuys district; year of death: entry for Donald Alexander Bissett, 1 July 1967, California, Death Index, 1940-1997, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. Operations, accessed 12 July 2025.

[70] ‘Coplay Cement Army-Navy ‘E’ Award…’, Morning Call (Allentown PA), 21 January 1945.

[71] Durex dissolved, Kelso joins Behr-Manning: ‘Watervliet Firm Forms Subsidary’, Troy Record (Troy, NY), 14 February 1951; president of Norton International: ‘ ‘Swell’ Boss Feted’, Expositor (Brantford ON), 7 September 1963. Durex Birmingham becomes 3M Birmingham: ‘Bentley’s Four’, Sports Argus, 8 September 1951.

[72] ‘B’ham baseball pioneer dies’, Birmingham Evening Mail, 10 October 1967.

[73] Birmingham’s Transformation and Future Prospects, Birmingham City Council, 2006: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/3064/birminghams_transformation_and_future_prospects.pdf, accessed 28 July 2025.