When I reached New York in 1933, I had no idea of returning to England to promote American baseball in this country. A chance meeting with Mr. [Heydler] in a New York Hotel led to a discussion on Baseball. He had come to New York to see one of the big games which was being played on the following day and he asked me if I was interested in Baseball. I replied that I had never seen the game of American Baseball played and was persuaded by him to attend the game on the next day. This I did and there was no doubt that the game gripped me. I had seen the so-called game of Baseball, as played in England at the time, and considered that there was no comparison between the two games.[1]

Contrary to the impression that John Moores gave in the above account, written in 1936, he had done more than just seen the ‘game of Baseball, as played in England at the time’ when he made that fateful trip to the US in 1933; he was in fact a patron of it, and one of the reasons for his trip was to act as an ambassador for it. With this piece, I hope to separate myth from reality in the story of John Moores’ 1933 journey from ambassador for baseball under the English code to evangelist for baseball under the American code.[2]

Since the challenge was originally given, the National Rounders Association has changed its name to “The English Baseball Association”, although still playing the old game of rounders. I am glad to state, however, that the matches referred to will be played according to the genuine or regular baseball rules.[3]

The ‘game of Baseball, as played in England at the time’ that Moores referred to had begun its life as ‘rounders’. This is to say that, from the mid-1806s until the mid-1870s, a competitive sport for adults derived from the children’s pastime of rounders took shape in Liverpool (Moores’ hometown), in the Northwest of England. The sport was heavily influenced by the rise of baseball in the USA two decades earlier; indeed, when the Liverpool Rounders Association, forerunner of the National Rounders Association, published its first set of rules in 1883, it was explicit in stating that these rules were based on those of the American game of baseball.

Sir,—May I trespass on your space to bring under the notice of your very numerous readers a revival of an old school game, viz., Rounders, under a new form, governed and ruled by laws as to bowling, batting, &c., as in cricket, these laws being mainly founded on a very popular American game called Base Ball?[4]

The transformation of this competitive version of rounders into what was known as ‘English baseball’ was one driven in large part by the reaction of the British press and public to the arrival of American baseball in Britain, in that the American game was invariably referred to being a more scientific form of the children’s game of rounders.[5] This view of rounders as a game for children was felt by the National Rounders Association to be the main reason behind its inability to spread beyond its heartlands in the Northwest of England and the South of Wales, and it said as such.

The great prejudice against it being its name—people when they heard that men were going to play a game of “Rounders” thought of the schoolboy game, and had no idea how that had been improved, and that it was now played on scientific principles.[6]

As we have seen, this led, in 1892, to the National Rounders Association rebranding itself as the English Baseball Association (EBA) and its sport as English baseball, to the understandable chagrin of those involved in promoting American baseball in Britain at the time.

As to the differences between the two codes, these have been discussed in detail by others.[7] For our purposes here, it is enough to know that when the rounders/English baseball enthusiasts adapted the rules of the American game to form the rules of their own, they jettisoned 1) three-out-all-out, 2) striking out (as opposed to catching or putting out) the batsman, and 3) the presence of a foul line. They also kept underarm bowling. They did this to create a game in which all players on a team got a chance to bat and there were higher scores/more frequent run-scoring and fewer changeovers. To the proponents of the English code, this made for a more fluid and eventful game. It is worth mentioning in this context that the principal objections of British spectators to American baseball were related to the frequent stops and restarts occasioned by the three-out-all-out rule and low scores and long periods of no scoring arising from pitchers striking out batters. In short, it was a code shaped by English prejudices toward the American original.[8] (As an aside: this English version of the game was only marginally more successful at winning British fans than the American version, and even then, only in particular locations, which may call into doubt the significance of British spectators’ dislike of the three-out-all-out rule, etc., in their ultimate rejection of the sport.)

As I have discussed elsewhere, after an abortive attempt to reconcile their differences, followed by a brief but eventful civil war, the two codes settled into a peaceful coexistence as different versions of a sport that, truth be told, never developed more than a small but dedicated fanbase in any part of the country, despite repeated attempts to turn it into a popular summer pastime.[9] This brings us to the 1920s and the events that led to John Moores becoming involved with baseball under the English code.

The American Legion has invited the English and Welsh baseball teams, who are playing at Stratford on Saturday, out to see the game at Stamford Bridge, when American baseball will be shown at its best and can be compared with the Welsh game.[10]

The 1920s and 1930s were the Golden Age of baseball under the English code. Although still largely confined to its heartlands of Liverpool and South Wales, select teams from each region did annual battle with each other as ‘England’ and ‘Wales’ in ‘baseball internationals’. In 1926, 12,000 people turned out to watch Wales beat England at Cardiff Arms Park. However, it has to be said that the year before, just 5000 watched the 1925 game at Fairfield in Liverpool. For the 1924 game in Cardiff and the 1923 game in Liverpool, the attendances were 10,000 and 6000, respectively. (As a comparison, the ‘equivalent’ five-game 1938 England vs America test series under the American code attracted attendances of 10,000, 5000, 1000, 5000, and 4000[11]). It is not too much to say, based on the differences in attendances between the Liverpool and South Wales internationals, that the game in South Wales enjoyed roughly twice the support of that in Liverpool, despite Liverpool having nearly three times the population of Cardiff and Newport combined (1921 Census: Cardiff, population, 200,000; Newport, 92,000; Liverpool, 802,000).[12]

This disparity, of course, reflected the diversity of the population of Liverpool, a city of many peoples and faiths, and the integration of the wider Liverpool sport scene with that of the rest of England; the conditions simply did not exist there, as they did in South Wales, with its much more homogeneous population (largely Welsh, largely Nonconformist) and strong national identity, for a single sport to corner the market.

One consequence of baseball under the English code being such a niche sport in Liverpool was that, even in the heady days of the 1920s and 1930s, when it was enjoying its greatest period of success, the EBA subjected itself to much more introspection than the Welsh association did as it searched for a way to put itself on a firmer footing. And not always to good effect.

The officials concerned themselves with important changes in the laws of the English Baseball Association. A salient feature was the desire to reduce the numerical strength of that body to what is considered a more workmanlike figure […] The changes suggested are certainly far-reaching and would alter the present laws governing the constitution of the English Baseball Association.[13]

Trouble began in October 1931 when the current leadership of the EBA, in response to conflict over whether to continue efforts to expand the game beyond its Merseyside heartland or concentrate on shoring up support locally, introduced a rule that would reduce the number of officers of the association. This, not coincidentally, would concentrate power in the hands of the men at the top of the organisation, long-standing chairman A.J. Bailey and secretary H. Deakin. At the association’s annual meeting, held just after this rule change, Bailey and Deakin, expecting to assert their new authority, instead found themselves failing to be re-elected for a further term. They were replaced at the top of the association by H. Kennard and G.A. Cannell, organisers, under the auspices of the EBA, of the Liverpool and English leagues, respectively. Within weeks, Kennard and Cannell were themselves ousted from their posts following a vote of no confidence. In response, Kennard and Cannell and their reformist supporters resigned from the EBA and, in the New Year, launched a competing association, the English Baseball Union (EBU), populated with some of the strongest teams in the EBA leagues.[14]

Liverpool businessman and head of the Littlewoods Group, John Moores, who had made his fortune in sports betting and then diversified into mail order shopping, became the patron of the breakaway EBU.[15]

NEW BASEBALL TROPHIES. The Lancashire Baseball Challenge Cup (E.B.U.), won by Liverpool, will be presented by the donor, Mr. John Moores, along with the medals, at to-night’s prize distribution at the Gainsborough Café, Dale-street.[16]

Whatever the true extent of Moores’ role in the EBU, beyond sponsoring cup competitions, when he announced in the early months of 1933 that he planned to travel to the US on business (probably but not definitely related to his new mail order catalogue enterprise), he also announced that he intended to use the trip to further the cause of the EBU in the US.

Mr. John Moores, the popular Liverpool sportsman and patron of the English Baseball Union, sails from Southampton on the Aquitania, to-morrow (Wednesday), for New York. He is keenly interested in the possibilities of a closer baseball relationship between the two countries, and, although at present, the two countries play under slightly different rules, the main principle is the same. He will meet and discuss with the leading baseball lights of America the possibilities of international games with England, Ireland and America.[17]

News of Moores’ trip even made the US papers.

As if major league baseball wasn't having a tough enough time nowadays, what with so many domestic problems to solve, it seems that John Moores, "patron" of the English Baseball Union, is about to interview the leaders of the American organized game with a view to promoting international relations, good-will and, most fearsome item of all, competition.[18]

These American reports made clear that the reports in British newspapers before his departure were drawing on the text of a letter that Moores was carrying from the EBU to the heads of the National and American Leagues—John Heydler and John Harridge, respectively.[19] They also leave little room for doubt that Moores’ status as ambassador for the EBU would have been known by Heydler in advance of any meeting, accidental or otherwise.

The reference in the letter to the two countries playing under different codes ‘at present’ is ambiguous, suggesting that this may not always be the case. However, we can be certain, given subsequent events, that it was not the EBU’s intention to suggest that it would be willing to abandon the English code. Regardless, this letter and these reports, issued before Moores had left England, make plain that the version of his encounter with Heydler that Moores later gave was Moores’ being highly selective in his recall, if not downright economical with the truth.

It is true that getting to experience a game under the American code at the scale at which the American game could mount it, with all the accompanying spectacle (and revenue), was transformative for Moores. He unquestionably returned from his US trip an evangelist for the American game. He just chose to forget that he had embarked on the trip as an ambassador for the English game.

The announcement that Mr. John Moores, the well-known Liverpool businessman, desires to develop American baseball in his country has reverberated throughout the baseball sphere. As one might expect, the proposal has aroused animated discussion on all sides, and though the suggestion to introduce the American form has been mooted before, this must be chronicled as the first serious attempt to do so.[20]

On Moores’ return to Liverpool in the summer of 1933, he organised a meeting with representatives of both the EBU and the EBA, and there, told them that he was ‘all out for 100 per cent. American baseball, and that if they decided to form a league, he would give them every support’.[21]

The language makes plain that this was Moores acting on his own initiative, not following through on any proposal that the EBU had asked him to take to America—they had expected him to come back with a proposal to add an international series to their sporting calendar, not rip it up and replace it with a new game. This is also evident from the fact that Moores failed to win over either organisation and had to instead launch his own, the National Baseball Association, to promote the American game. However, beyond saying that enough Liverpool clubs switched to the American game to form the nucleus of Moores’ enterprise, and give him at least a hope of success, I do not intend to explore this aspect of the story here, not least because it is well-known and not contested.[22]

Instead, the final thing to say is that Moores’ involvement with English baseball in Liverpool has not been totally forgotten; however, it has survived only in a garbled form. For example, William Morgan, the pioneer of studies of the early game in Britain, in notes surviving from his research, describes Moores as the ‘head of the English Baseball Association, which runs the game (English rules) in Wales and Liverpool’, and writes ‘…Moores went on a round the world cruise and reached New York where he “fell among baseball men” who wanted to know why he was “using the name (of baseball) but not the…game”’.[23]

As Morgan’s notes make clear, what has been forgotten is that Moores’ encounter with the ‘baseball men’ of America was not accidental; it was simply the result that was unexpected.

Jamie Barras, September 2025.

Notes

[1] Reproduced from the 1936 NBA Challenge Cup final programme by William Morgan in the first issue of Baseball Mercury, October 1972. https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/misc/mercury/issue_1.pdf, accessed 9 September 2025. The same text appeared in the 1937 NBA Challenge Cup final between Hull and Romford Wasps, 14 August 1937, and can be viewed here: https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/artefacts/1937-Challenge-Cup-2022-08-14.pdf, accessed 20 July 2025.

[2] I cover the background to the events recounted here in the following pieces:

1.        The story of the civil war between the English and American baseball codes in the late nineteenth century: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-intolerance

2.        The split in English baseball in Liverpool and the role of John Moores, which is one element of the following: https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-health-friendship-and-baseball-part-iii

[3] Newton Crane, President of the National Baseball Association, letter to the Liverpool Mercury, 23 June 1892. Crane’s biography: ‘Robert Newton Crane is Dead in London’, Ashbury Park Press (Ashbury Park, NJ), 6 May 1927.

[4] W.H. Hivey, Hon. Sec. Rounders’ Association, letter to the Manchester Courier, 6 June 1883. W.H. Hivey was a Liverpool businessman whose firm sold mats, bags, and dunnage (package material); see, for example, advert, Sporting Gazette, 13 August 1887.

[5] See, for example, ‘Base-ball […] is a sort of improved form of rounders’, ‘Base-Ball’, The Queen, 26 May 1888; ‘Scientific Rounders has been decidedly the sensation of the week’: ‘English Cricket versus American Baseball,’ Shepton Mallet Journal, 22 March 1889. For a comprehensive study of English reactions to these tours, see Daniel Bloyce, ‘That’s Your Way of Playing Rounders, Isn’t It? The Response of the English Press to American Baseball Tours to England 1874— 1924’, Sporting Traditions, 2005, 22, 81–98.

[6] ‘Baseball’, South Wales Echo, 10 April 1893.

[7] The differences between ‘British/Welsh Baseball’—the successor sport to the Liverpool Rounders Association—and American Baseball are explained succinctly here: https://www.rbiwales.com/british-welsh-baseball-vs-north-american-baseball-softball, accessed 18 May 2025.

[8] Daniel Bloyce and Patrick Murphy, Baseball in England: A Case of Prolonged Cultural Resistance. Journal of Historical Sociology, 2008, 21(1), 120–142. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6443.2008.00332.x

[9] See Note 2 above, first reference.

[10] ‘American Baseball’, Evening News (London), 5 June 1924.

[11] For a summary of the 1938 England v America series, see: Ian Smyth, ‘Baseball Put to the Test And England Emerge Victorious’, Baseball Research Journal, 1995, 24, 131–133. For specifically the final game, see: ‘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.

[12] 1923 international: ‘Baseball: England’s Easy Victory Over Wales’, Liverpool Daily Post, 23 July 1923 1924 international: ‘International Baseball’, Western Mail, 28 July 1924; 1925 international: ‘Bee’s Notes on Sports: Arise, Sir Baseball’, Liverpool Echo, 27 July 1925. Population data: https://web.archive.org/web/20240704043924/https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/census/table/EW1921GEN_M13, accessed 19 July 2025.

[13] Diamond, ‘Baseball Changes’, Liverpool Echo, 24 October 1931.

[14] Reduction in number of officers: Note 13 above; Bailey and Deakin ousted: ‘Baseball: New Men at the Helm’, Liverpool Evening Express, 19 November 1931; Kennard and Cannell ousted in turn: ‘Baseball Officials’, Liverpool Evening Express, 27 November 1931; EBU formed: ‘New Baseball Union’, Liverpool Echo, 30 January 1932; Kennard and Cannell in new Union: ‘English Baseball Union’, Liverpool Echo, 16 February 1932.

[15] Barbara Clegg, ‘Moores, Sir John (1896–1993), businessman and philanthropist’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 20 Jul. 2025. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-40918.

[16]  ‘Bee’s Notes on Sports: New Baseball Trophies’, Liverpool Echo, 9 December 1932.

[17]  ‘Bee’s Notes on Sports: Ambassador to America’, Liverpool Echo, 28 March 1933.

[18] ‘Harridge and Heydler Have Enough Worries’, Springfield Evening Union, 17 April 1933.

[19] Quoted in the Springfield Evening Union piece, Note 18 above.

[20]  ‘Baseball Budget’, Liverpool Echo, 29 July 1933.

[21] ‘American Baseball to be Played in Liverpool Next Season’, Liverpool Evening Express, 12 August 1933

[22] See: Daniel Bloyce, ‘John Moores and the ‘Professional’ Baseball Leagues in 1930s England’, Sport in History, 2007, 27:1, 64–87.

[23] https://www.projectcobb.org.uk/artefacts/1971-interviews.pdf, page 14, accessed 8 September 2025.