19th Century Baseball....in London!

[vintagesportscollector]

Originally Posted by bgar3

That is very nice. You should look out for the book Knowles wrote to introduce baseball to the English. It was published in 1896 and is fairly hard to find.
There were several earlier efforts also, including an extremely nice, but tough book by Chadwick.

Thanks. I found a digitized copy of the book when researching. Great resource - it has a large portion dedicated to describing everything about the LBBA, it's organization, teams and players.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?...12;skin=mobile

[vintagesportscollector]

1893 an 1894 Thespians Baseball Club - British National Champions. Check out the Spalding Cup Championship Trophy.





Chicago Tribune, July, 1896.

[Jay Wolt]

Joe very cool collectible & info, thanks for posting about it

[drcy]

I work with an Oxford University researcher and, looking into it out of curiosity, discovered that Oxford has two baseball teams (one university, one club) and a university American football team. The football team clearly isn't advanced, because their page says you don't need to have ever played the sport to try out.

[Huysmans]

Great item and back story Joe!
Love it! Congrats.

[Leon]

Very cool stuff, thanks for sharing!!

[Scott Garner]

Joe,
Excellent research & very unusual. Thanks for the terrific post!