Limelight and Cornstalks.
Jamie Barras.
The role that entertainers played in the early history of baseball in Britain and her empire.
Part I: Seeds
Charles B. Hicks, Harry Musgrove, and the early history of baseball in Australia and New Zealand. How two enterprising managers turned their experience of wrangling entertainment troupes from one side of the world to the other into baseball diplomacy.
Part II: Leaves
Canadian comedian R.G. Knowles and the origins and growth of the London Baseball Association of the 1890s. Knowles sets out to create a scene that is as multinational, multiethnic, and egalitarian as the entertainment scene he was familiar with.
Part III: Roots
The London Baseball Association continues to grow. However, the flaws in the Knowles approach soon become apparent as the scene spreads far and wide but fails to put down deep roots.
Back to Diamond Lives
Clown Cricketers, Sketch Magazine, 9 October 1895. Image created by the British Library Board. No known copyright holder.
Charles B. Hicks. Harvard Theatre Collection. Public domain.
Harry Musgrove. wikicommons. Public domain.
Melbourne Punch, 27 May 1897. Image created by Trove. Public domain.
R.G. Knowles. Ogden's cigarette card. Author's own collection.
Teams of the 1895 London Baseball Association season and the Derby Baseball Team, Windsor Magazine, November 1895. Author's own collection.