Five... Moments from London's Baseball History
Knocking it out of the park since 1874
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… ⚾
This edition, in honour of the annual weekend when Major League Baseball (MLB) descends on London - this time a clash of East divisional rivals Phillies and Mets - I’m looking back at the city’s (weirdly rich) history of the sport. Because something that now feels deeply North American to me was, it turns out, something that the UK in general and London in particular also flirted with hard in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Where it all started
In a nice come-full-circle moment, one of the cities playing in the MLB London series this weekend also sent a team - the Athletic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia - to the first ever recorded large-scale baseball event in the city. In 1874 the teams from Boston (then the Boston Redstockings) and Philly landed on British shores, travelling down to London to face each other in a tournament at Lord’s.
It’s not the first time baseball was played in the UK - that honour goes to a 1749 game in Walton-on-Thames, in Surrey, which also happens to be the world’s first ever recorded game of ‘Bass Ball’. Players included the Prince of Wales, which probably explains why it made it into the pages of various newspapers and then into the pages of history. You can read more about the game in this NBC Sports feature.