Guest author
Josh Chetwynd
Summary
This article tells the story of how a speedway fan named Albert King came to follow the West Ham Hammers in the London Major Baseball League of the 1930s. The article is based on correspondence that King had with Chetwynd in 2006, around the time that Chetwynd’s book British Baseball and the West Ham Club was being published by McFarland.
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Yesterday, the official announcement was made on the BBF website that the British Baseball Hall of Fame is finally off the ground. The idea has been proposed numerous times in the past, but for a variety of reasons it has never come to fruition, until now that is.
Full details of the project can be found on the offical webpage: http://www.projectcobb.org.uk/hof.html. It is anticipated that the inaugural class will be announced in the autumn.
I should disclose at this stage that I have played a part in getting the Hall of Fame up and running through my role in Project Cobb, but I am the newest to baseball of all the Hall’s electors and regional experts. It is only through the presence of a pleasing number of individuals with truly exceptional backgrounds in either following the game in Britain or researching its history that I am confident that this endeavour will do justice to Britain’s amazing baseball history in the way it deserves.
Finally, Josh Chetwynd deserves credit for a wealth of solid ideas underpinning the project, and I must thank Ray Brownlie too for providing the inspiration for the Hall’s logo.
Guest author
Josh Chetwynd
Summary
This article presents an All-Star team of Major League players who, at some point, played baseball on British soil.
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As part of my research for the article published just below on the London Twilight Baseball League, I have been enjoying a long email correspondence with Jeff Archer, the league’s central figure. There are many great stories that Jeff has shared with me that unfortunately did not fit into the article, but one of them definitely deserves an airing regardless, not least because Jeff went to the trouble of taking some reconstructive photos for what he describes as “one of the funniest things [he] ever saw on a baseball field.” Continue reading
Summary
In this article I look at the London Twilight Baseball League of 1976, a project led by Jeff Archer. While the league was short-lived, its innovative nature gives it historical importance and also provides lessons for baseball today.
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MLB.com has produced a new documentary exploring baseball’s roots that will be of particular interest to British fans. Base Ball Discovered provides:
“an exploration into the many generational theories about the beginnings of baseball both stateside and across the ocean, to learn firsthand about our national pastime’s ancestors: England’s bat-and-ball games. The film will bring fans of all ages closer to ‘home’ through a detailed look at the game’s roots… and even provide an unexpected and historical discovery along the way”.
The documentary was first broadcast on the MLB Network on Sunday. Although the film is not available in full online, there is an excellent mini-site that offers excerpts and bonus clips alongside general information about the project. It’s fascinating to see how English bat-and-ball games may have influenced the sport enjoyed by millions around the world today.Â
There is no news yet as to whether the full documentary will eventually find a home online or if it will be broadcast anywhere in the UK. No doubt I’m not alone in hoping that it is made available to us in the future. If we hear any news, we will let you know.
Meanwhile, you may be interested in a blog post I have written about the documentary on the blogging network at MLB.com.
Just a quick bit of news on Project Cobb. The domain name projectcobb.org.uk has now been registered. It’s been set up as a mirror of the GBBSA website, so going to http://www.projectcobb.org.uk/ will take you to the index page for the GBBSA. However, you are now able to go to http://www.projectcobb.org.uk/cobb.html for the main Project Cobb page, which makes more sense, and the other Project Cobb initiatives now also have more logical URLs, such as the Baseball Mercury page (http://www.projectcobb.org.uk/mercury.html).
This is all to set up Project Cobb for what I hope are going to be some exciting developments over the coming months, including the possibility of a photo archive.
Back in March, I published an article titled Classic post-war finals in British baseball. In researching the article I received help from Norman Wells, a long-time Liverpool Trojan. Yesterday I had the pleasure of receiving a letter from the “Old Man of Baseball“, within which he expanded on the 1969 final between the Watford Sun-Rockets and his Liverpool team.
Included with the letter was a team photo of the Trojans from the game, which I have scanned in. Norman is on the far left of the back row. Three men to Wells’s right is Ken Williams, who pitched the game. Art Bolton, the winning pitcher for the Trojans in the 1976 classic final, is five from the left in the middle row.
This is the first instalment of a new feature for BaseballGB. On the first Tuesday of every month, I will be pointing readers in the direction of a web resource that I find really useful. Some of them you will probably be using already, others you might not be. Most of the sites will be US based as America is, of course, where the majority of baseball websites originate. That said, I will be making an effort to also highlight stand-out sites on British and international baseball. In fact, my first Web Pick of the Month is a British site. Continue reading
Summary
In this article I look back at some of the classic baseball national finals played in Britain since the end of World War II. I define a classic final as one with a 1-run margin of victory or one that went to extra innings.
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