Summary
A look at the best players, teams, grounds, and more from the first decade of the National Baseball League.
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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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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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The 2009 British baseball season gets underway tomorrow. Forty-five teams from across the country will begin their league campaigns all hoping to be a part of the National Baseball Championships at the end of August and the beginning of September.
BaseballGB will be providing plenty of coverage of the British season this year and we’ve already started as we mean to go on. In his debut Roundshaw Hop column, Joe wrote about the new ‘double elimination’ format that will be used in the National Baseball Championships, while Russ has been quick off the mark in publishing some handy pdfs of the British baseball league fixtures. My contribution is an article previewing the season, highlighting each of the leagues and explaining the postseason structure.Â
A Preview to the 2009 British Baseball Season – pdf.
Good luck to everyone involved tomorrow, from the players, coaches, umpires, official scorers and everyone else who plays a part in staging the games. Further details on the league tables and fixtures can be found on the official British Baseball Federation website and if you live near one of the venues, why not go and support your local team and enjoy some live baseball.
Summary
In this article I present a method for comparing the quality of baseball across different leagues or different seasons, based on four factors that contribute to the quality of baseball from the perspective of a spectator. I then use the method to compare the National Baseball League season of 2008 against other country’s leagues and against other British seasons.
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Summary
In this article I produce a formula that summarizes various factors that I feel represent the “health” of a league: forfeit frequency, blowout frequency, and typical run difference. I then present values for the top tier in Britain between 2003 and 2008 and examine whether health in one season is related to player retention during the next.
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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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Summary
In this article I use the concept of dominance to provide an answer to the question of what the best season by a pitcher in British top-tier baseball is this century.
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