Wearing the Flag: Origins of the First World Amateur Baseball Championship.
In August 1938, playing on home soil, England bested America in the first World Amateur Baseball Championship. Almost all of the descriptions in the that sentence need qualification: the ‘England’ team—more commonly described since as the ‘Great Britain’ team, but not at the time—was composed almost entirely of Canadians; the ‘America’ team was the team selected a month earlier to represent the USA in an event that had already lost its venue and, ultimately, would not take place (the 1940 Summer Olympics); and ‘World Amateur Baseball Championship’ was a label retrospectively applied to the contest, which was called at the time the ‘International Amateur Baseball Championship’ (IABC). To add to the latter qualification, the series only acquired the IABC title some time after it was arranged (but before it was played).
The contest was the result of a meeting of minds and interests of two men seeking to elevate the status of American baseball in their respective domains. On one side—the American—there was Leslie Mann, secretary of the USA Baseball Congress (USABC aka US Amateur Baseball Congress) and International Amateur Baseball Federation (IABF), who was five years into a mission to persuade the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to recognise baseball as an international sport (i.e., a sport played by many nations) and, by extension, worthy of including in the summer Olympics; and on the other—the English—there was John Moores, chairman of the National Baseball Association (NBA) of Great Britain, who had been trying to establish American baseball as a summer sport in the UK for just as long.
By August 1938, both men were on the back foot.
After succeeding in getting baseball included as an exhibition sport in the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the form of a game between teams representing the USA and Japan, Mann then had to watch as the Japanese side declined to send a team, resulting in the contest being between two teams formed from the American squad instead. Although the game drew a crowd in excess of 125,000, it was hardly the intended demonstration of the international reach of the sport. When the 1940 Games were awarded to Tokyo and baseball was included as an exhibition sport once more, with a half dozen nations committing to sending teams (including England), it seemed that success was finally assured. Only for Tokyo to withdraw as the venue the same month that the US picked its team (July 1938—this was fallout from the 1937 Japanese invasion of Northern China and ongoing war; Helsinki stepped up to host the Games, which, of course, ultimately never happened).[i]
Meanwhile, Moores had watched his own attempts to introduce professional American baseball leagues into Britain, begun on a high in 1934, suffer a series of major setbacks by the beginning of 1938, triggered by a drastic fall in attendances: the professional London league was wound up after only two years at the end of the 1937 season, and at the same time, the two professional leagues in the north of England, the North of England League (Lancashire, Merseyside) and the Yorkshire League had to merge to survive, a move that was accompanied by a reduction to semi-pro status (in response to criticism of the number of imported North American players in the leagues, the NBA introduced a cap of two professional players per team, which was in practice a cap on the number of North American players).[ii]
When England was chosen as the first stop of a goodwill tour of Europe by the team selected by the USABC to represent the USA at the 1940 Summer Olympics, Mann and Moores set to thinking how this could be used to revive their separate but aligned fortunes. Whose idea it was originally to stage a world championship of amateur baseball in the mode of the Davis Cup of tennis is uncertain. Mann claimed the credit in print, but letters exchanged between the two men suggest that it was Moores’ idea. However, it has to be said that this exchange of letters appears choreographed, perhaps to hide the extent of Mann’s involvement if things did not go to plan. Regardless, what followed the idea’s conception was an exchange of letters between Moores and Mann in July 1938 in which Moores (seemingly) proposed that the IABF stage a world championship of amateur baseball, in the mold of the Davis Cup in tennis, open to all member nations of the IABF. Moores offered a trophy to be awarded to the winner and proposed (modestly) that the championship be known as the ‘John Moores Cup’. Note: there is no mention in Moores’ letter of the already-planned England–USA series being associated with this multi-nation competition. Mann responded that the IABF had been contemplating staging just such a championship and, so, was happy to accept Moores’ proposal. Again: no mention of the England–USA series in connection with this proposal. However, there then followed a further exchange of letters in which the US side proposed and the UK side accepted that the planned US–England test series be designated the first staging of the John Moores Cup and the winners be known as the ‘International Amateur Baseball Champions’ in line with the name of the governing body, the IABF.[iii]
The stage—already managed—was set.
[i] This account is Mann’s own: Leslie Mann, ‘Baseball Around the World: The History and Development of the U.S.A. Baseball Congress and World’s Amateur Baseball Championship’ (Springfield: International Amateur Baseball Federation, 1940), available here: https://springfieldcollege.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/api/collection/p15370coll2/id/20987/page/0/inline/p15370coll2_20987_0, accessed 29 July 2025.
[ii] Daniel Bloyce, ‘John Moores and the ‘Professional’ Baseball Leagues in 1930s England’, Sport in History, 2007, 27:1, 64–87.
[iii] This account of the origin of the John Moores Cup, complete with reproductions of the letters exchanged by the concerned parties, is presented by Mann, see Note i above. Mann takes credit for coming up with the idea on page 19 inst., but this is contradicted by a letter from John Moores reproduced on the same page, hence the uncertainty. It has to be said that the exact sequence of events is uncertain, as the letter in which the American side proposes that the US–England series be the first staging of the Cup is not included, only the UK-side letter accepting the offer, and the US-side letter acknowledging the acceptance. The term ‘International Amateur Baseball Championship’ was altered to ‘World Amateur Baseball Championship’ at the time of the second staging of the championship in Cuba in 1939 and retrospectively applied to the 1938 competition. This was also reported in the British press at the time when it was hoped that England would host the 1940 Championship: ‘World Title Series Games’, Liverpool Evening Express, 29 July 1939.