Baseball in Britain told through 1891 volume
“I picked it up for a small amount of money. It looked interesting,” he said.
It was part of the “All-England Series” that included books of rules for over a dozen sports including cricket, lawn tennis, hockey and boxing. The book was written by Newton Crane, then president of the National Baseball League of Great Britain and a former United States Consul in Manchester.
Following this visit, a group of American college players spent time in England to teach the game wherever they could. Out of this, the National Baseball League of Great Britain was born.
Crane questioned whether baseball would “take” in England. By 1891, baseball had already taken hold In Canada, Cuba, Mexico and the Sandwich Islands. It was also rapidly gaining traction in Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Crane said baseball’s success in the first year of introduction did bode well for the sport in Great Britain, but as we know today, this did not last.
Gretyl Macalaster is a 2015 library research intern in the Frank and Peggy Steele Internship Program at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
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