10 Key Points in British Baseball History

(Image of Derby Baseball Club courtesy of BaseballSoftballUK)

• The game of Baseball is believed to have first been played in Surrey in the mid 18th-century.

• Various American teams toured England during the late 19th-century, striving to popularise the game in the country and, for a period of time, doing so.

• The first baseball club officially formed in England was York Baseball Club, reported to have been formed in March 1889.

• The British Baseball association was founded in 1889 by a variety of county cricket clubs as well as newly founded baseball teams with close links to the emerging association football clubs of the time, such as Derby County, Preston North End and Aston Villa.

• The first professional baseball league in Great Britain was formed in 1890 and was called the ‘National League of Baseball of Great Britain’. Aston Villa were crowned champions having won 17 games and losing 8.

• Edinburgh North Baseball Club was set up in March 1890, becoming Scotland's first baseball team. Wales took a little longer to join the party, with Cardiff Central Baseball Club claiming to organise the first game of baseball in Wales in 1893.

• British Baseballs ‘Golden Age’ was during the years preceding WWII. At this time, spectator numbers reached upwards of 10,000 people per game.

• In 1933, Sir John Moores, former Everton Football Club chairman, founded the National Baseball Association as a response to a challenge from America’s National league president John Haydler.

• The pinnacle of British Baseball on the international stage was when a team of players representing Great Britain beat the United States Olympic team in the 1938 Amateur Series, believed to be the first ever ‘Baseball World Cup’.

• The current national governing body of baseball in Britain is the ‘British Baseball Federation’, it  was formed in 1987. The BBF governs both the main national baseball league in Britain and the Great British National Team.