{"id":9556,"date":"2010-12-04T05:00:46","date_gmt":"2010-12-04T05:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=9556"},"modified":"2011-09-17T22:26:57","modified_gmt":"2011-09-17T21:26:57","slug":"countdown-to-sabr-day-2011-1970s-cobbette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=9556","title":{"rendered":"Countdown to SABR Day 2011: 1970s Cobbette – The “Yankees” British national league of 1977"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cobbette-(128x128)\"This is post\u00c2\u00a0three in a ten-post countdown to <\/strong>SABR Day 2011<\/a><\/strong>. The series is going through the decades of the 20th Century, backwards from the 1990s. On SABR Day itself, there will be a special feature on the 1890s,\u00c2\u00a0which will celebrate the significant link between keeping score and baseball history. This article will be published at 05:00 British time in order to coincide with the start of the day in the time-zone of the Cleveland-based SABR office. To view all the Cobbettes published to date, click <\/strong>here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"1970s<\/h1>\n

Most of the details presented in this short article are taken from the <\/em>Baseball Mercury web archive<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

During the winter of 1976-77, the British Amateur Baseball Federation (BABF) was approached by a public relations consultancy named Messrs Aquarius Ltd. The proposal that the firm presented was for their client Mattessons Meats to enter into a promotional venture with the BABF, in order to gain publicity for one of their “Yankees” hot dog brand. For this, a new league was to be set up, to run in parallel to the existing British domestic structure.<\/p>\n

What was in it for British baseball?<\/h3>\n

Mattessons’ offer included posters and banners to promote games, as well as 3000\u00c2\u00a0free programmes for each competing team (the cover from one of these can be seen above-right). In addition, Mattessons agreed to arrange\u00c2\u00a0a trophy for the Most Valuable Player in each game and a set of trophies for the overall winners of the league. Finally, Aquarius offered to publicize the competition through the radio and the print-media press.<\/p>\n

Therefore, baseball was not really getting a direct injection of cash. Instead, the hope was that baseball would gain increased exposure through the effcts of the promoted league, and this in turn would tempt other businesses in the future to partner in promotional ventures, or even take on a straightforward sponsorship.<\/p>\n

Which teams competed?<\/h3>\n

It was agreed that each of the four regions affiliated with the BABF – namely, Merseyside, Humberside, the Midlands, and the South – would enter an All-Star team into the league competition, which was to be played out during the spring and summer of 1977. It seems that the Humberside All-Stars and Southern All-Stars were called just that, but the Merseyside entrants opted for to play under the Liverpool Giants tag, while the Midlands outfit were known as the Midland Mets.<\/p>\n

Each team was scheduled to play every other team in the league once at home at once away, and thus six games would be played in total by each side.<\/p>\n

Which side won?<\/h3>\n

The Humberside All-Stars and Southern All-Stars \u00c2\u00a0finished joint league leaders with a 4-2 record (the Giants finished 3-3 and the Mets 1-5). It was thus decided that a play-off should be contested at Bromsgrove to determine the outright winners. This the Southern representatives won, to become the champions of the one-off league competition. The outcomes of the 12 contests in the league are listed below (dates of games are taken directly from the league’s programme, and thus do not take into account if any fixtures needed to be arranged):<\/p>\n

29 May 1977<\/strong>
\nHumberside All-Stars (home) beat Midland Mets [?-?]
\nSouthern All-Stars (home) beat Liverpool Giants [14-5]<\/p>\n

12 June 1977<\/strong>
\nLiverpool Giants (home) beat\u00c2\u00a0Humberside All-Stars [?-?]
\n<\/strong>Southern All-Stars beat Midland Mets (home) [7-2]<\/p>\n

26 June 1977
\n<\/strong>Humberside All-Stars\u00c2\u00a0(home) beat Liverpool Giants [?-?]
\nSouthern All-Stars (home) beat Midland Mets [13-3]<\/p>\n

3 July 1977
\n<\/strong>Liverpool Giants (home) beat Midland Mets [?-?]
\nSouthern All-Stars (home) beat\u00c2\u00a0Humberside All-Stars [13-5]<\/p>\n

17 July 1977<\/strong>
\nHumberside All-Stars beat Midland Mets (home) [?-?]
\nLiverpool Giants (home)\u00c2\u00a0beat\u00c2\u00a0Southern All-Stars [10-9]<\/p>\n

14 August 1977
\n<\/strong>Humberside All-Stars <\/span><\/span>(home)\u00c2\u00a0beat\u00c2\u00a0Southern All-Stars [4-3]
\nMidland Mets (home) beat Liverpool Giants [9-3]<\/p>\n

Did it work?<\/h3>\n

If the eventual champions of the league, the Southern All-Stars, felt a benefit for baseball in their region, it did not feature in an end-of-season report from administrator “Rapid”<\/a> Robert Garrod. However, representatives of the other three regions did express views on the league, and their opinions were mixed.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1977, Humberside baseball witnessed an upsurge of spectator interest, which was attributed mainly to the “Yankees” National Baseball League, where the region’s three home games attracted a cumulative crowd of around 1000. Moreover, some of the people attracted to the game through the promoted league were said to have been drawn across\u00c2\u00a0to the regular domestic fixtures of the regions’ three adult teams (the Hull Aces, Giants, and Royals).<\/p>\n

The Midland Mets were also happy with the crowds they attracted to their home games in the league. Around 200 people came to each of the first two contests, despite unfavourable weather conditions. The fans were said to have enjoyed the hot dogs as well as the baseball.<\/p>\n

A grimmer view of the league’s success was offered by Merseyside correspondent Norman Wells. In his words:<\/p>\n

\n

“Financially this league proved to be very expensive for our area. The necessary paid<\/em> advertisements, which would have, we feel, brought good attendances, were almost non-existent. Added to this lack of attendance, the cost of coach travel, hiring of grounds, and umpire fees, insurance etc., all but drained our resources. The whole project could hardly be described as a sponsored<\/em> league, and left us with a lot to reflect upon.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Elsewhere, Wells added that the major domestic league in the north of England “ran into some difficulty, as so many Sundays had to be sacrificed” to the “Yankees” National Baseball League.<\/p>\n

Given Wells’ comments, it is not surprising that there was no genuine sponsorship deal for a British baseball league during the 10 years that followed, and when such a competiton did arise, in 1987, it was after such a gap in time that the “Yankees” National Baseball League can hardly be offered as a contributing factor.<\/p>\n

\n

If you have an interesting history snippet to share\u00c2\u00a0that has\u00c2\u00a0a link to Britain then please send a message to Joe Gray through the <\/em>Get in contact<\/em><\/a> page. To see all of the work of Project Cobb, which is a Chartered Community of SABR (the Society for American Baseball Research), click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is post\u00c2\u00a0three in a ten-post countdown to SABR Day 2011. The series is going through the decades of the 20th Century, backwards from the 1990s. On SABR Day itself, there will be a special feature on the 1890s,\u00c2\u00a0which will celebrate the significant link between keeping score and baseball history. This article will be published […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[310,309,130,313,311,324,323,322,321,326,325,312,314,320,317],"class_list":["post-9556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-cobb","tag-310","tag-1970s","tag-cobbette","tag-humberside-all-stars","tag-liverpool-giants","tag-mattessons","tag-mattessons-league","tag-mattessons-national-baseball-league","tag-mattessons-yankees-national-baseball-league","tag-merseyside-all-stars","tag-midland-all-stars","tag-midland-mets","tag-southern-all-stars","tag-yankees-league","tag-yankees-national-baseball-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9556"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9563,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9556\/revisions\/9563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}