Strike Four: Adventures in European Baseball is a book that I have reviewed here on BaseballGB and posted a follow-up post about here. The first half of Jeff Archer’s entertaining collection of memories and observations from his time in European baseball in the 1970s and early 1980s covers his time in Britain. He became involved in the sport’s administration, and one of his ventures, which is recounted in Strike Four, was the London Twilight Baseball League of 1976. I have written a history of that innovative but short-lived competition here, and posted follow-ups on it here and here.
What more can I write on Archer’s time in England, you might think? Well, I had the pleasure of meeting him out in his home in San Diego right at the end of last year, and we talked at length about baseball. We even enjoyed a game of catch in which he threw in a few of his famous knucklers. When I first corresponded with Archer in 2008, he was a man whose interest in baseball had long been dried up, in part because he had put so much into the sport in the 1970s and 1980s and in part because the game he saw being played in the Major Leagues was not the one he had played growing up or even the one he enjoyed in England. Okay, the rules were basically the same, but MLB is not real baseball. However, Archer’s interest in baseball has recently been rejuvenated, and one of the projects he is taking on is a Facebook area to gather recollections and images of baseball in Britain during the 1970s, his time in Britain.
In his book Strike Four – reviewedÂ