Home British baseballProject COBB New collection on 1950s and 1960s baseball in the London area added to Project Cobb website

New collection on 1950s and 1960s baseball in the London area added to Project Cobb website

by Joe Gray

I recently received an email from a designer named Dean Whiting, whose father Barry Whiting and uncle Maurice Whiting played baseball for various teams in the London area in the 1950s and 1960s. Dean has digitized photos and press cuttings from the family collection and also conducted some supplementary research into one particular team for whom his relatives played, the West London Pioneers. He has turned newspaper clippings he found for the 1949-1951 period on the West London Pioneers, as well as the materials from the family collection, into a PDF for Project Cobb. This can be downloaded here.

There is some material with great historical value in the collection, and my favourite item is probably the team photo below for the Bushy Park Cardinals from 1962. Barry Whiting, who is described in one cutting in the collection as “probably the best Britisher in baseball,” is standing at the far right of the back row.

Cardinals_1962

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5 comments

Matt Smith April 3, 2010 - 7:46 pm

What a great collection! These sort of ‘personal’ collections are a brilliant way in which to learn about how baseball was a part of peoples’ lives in years past here in the UK.

There are lots of photos and clips to pick out, but the two that caught my eye the most were:

p 8, right hand clip. It states that “Ingalls hit a perfect home run, but only gained second owing to an unfortunate accident at second base”. Wonder what happended?! An injury, or something more intriguing?!

p 17. Do we know exactly where that game took place? Looks like a football stadium

Reply
Joe Gray April 3, 2010 - 10:31 pm

I’m not sure which stadium that was, but it’s likely it was a football one as the important games from that era tended to be hosted at such venues.

I also enjoyed the photo of players and family members waiting at Richmond station on their way to a game, as 50 years on there are players sitting outside the same station most Sunday mornings during the summer waiting for transport to a game.

Joe

Reply
Mark April 4, 2010 - 8:22 am

That stadium is Mitcham stadium.

Reply
Joe Gray April 4, 2010 - 9:44 am

Cheers Mark.

Joe

Reply
Matt Smith April 4, 2010 - 12:20 pm

Thanks Mark. I saw the citation at the bottom of the photo that said ‘Mitcham’ but wasn’t sure there was a stadium of some sort there.

Reply

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