By Richard McIlroy
January 20 2018

Who did invent Baseball? Its a good question, as its history is far more intwined with the thoroughly English game of cricket. In fact rather than entertaining the Aussies in cricket this summer, the tourists could well have been the USA.

[Originally published February 20, 2001]

J. Barton King is a colossus of American Sports History, with a bat poised or with ball in hand he was, at the turn of the century without peer, in his native Philadelphia 100 years on people still talk of his exploits. What do you mean you have never heard of him ?

Bart King, aka ‘The King of Swing’ was one of the Worlds great cricketers, he played for the Belmont Club in Philadelphia and toured England 3 times between 1897 and 1908, his nickname originated from a spectacularly swinging ball perfected in Baseball which he played as a youth. He still holds the record score for a North American (344) and topped the English bowling averages in when he visited for the last time with an average which wasn’t bettered for 40 years, imagine if you like Darren Gough pitching the perfect game for the Yankees.

His most notable feat was in one legendary game in Philadelphia when he bowled a visiting team out single handedly after sending his fielders, including wicket keeper to the pavilion.

But if it wasn’t for the Civil War in the 1860’s King would have been idolised as part of the heritage as Americas national sport, a title it held in the 1850’s, possibly leaving Baseball in 150 years later vying for space on the smallest cable sports channel.

Dr Tim Lockley a lecturer in American History at Warwick University says that the first ever cricket international was played in 1844 between the USA and Canada. “Crowds this size were almost unheard of for a sporting event in the 19th century anywhere in the world,” Dr Lockley said. “This was a testament to the amazing popularity of cricket on the North American continent. There was nothing that could compete with it as a crowd-puller.”

A team led by John Wisden toured the country in 1859, 25,000 people them play Canada in Montreal. Dr Lockley said: “Such was the competitive nature and popularity of cricket in North America, the Canadians and Americans were prepared to pay substantial sums of money in order to play the best in the world. They had real cricketing ambitions and there was a very real desire to learn from the best in the world.”

The Civil War claimed many young lives though especially those from the North East where the game was strongest and its popularity quickly died off. All things English were then frowned upon and the blue collar game of Baseball a derivative of the English game of rounders took precedence over the preppy game of cricket.

Recently we had the bizarre spectacle of Sammy Sosa hitting (or not) a cricket ball around the Oval whilst telling us that until 9 years old he played cricket and not Baseball, if it wasn’t for a couple of nineteenth century wars, American accents in the pavilions of England would be whole lot more common.