Baseball: Born in Surrey?
On September 19, 2008 by Administrator
On Easter Monday 1755, a young man named William Bray and a select group of young ladies and gents from Guildford, took part in one of the earliest recorded examples of a game of baseball. They made tea afterwards and by all accounts had a ripping good time. Mr. Bray immortalised the day in ink between the covers of one of his many diaries and returned to his work. However, the events of that Easter Monday were to be forgotten for over two hundred and fifty years.
Baseball is the national sport of the United States of America. The game is believed to be the mutant offspring of cricket and rounders, two sports that were popular with British and Irish settlers in the 18th century. After conventional bat-and-ball games fell by the wayside, baseball and American football rose to take their place, becoming extremely popular with professional players, young sluggers, and armchair umpires alike. The rules used in the modern game -– an evolution of the Knickerbocker rules -– are credited to Alexander Cartwright, whose team were walloped 23-1 in the first ever official baseball game on June 19th 1846.
The discovery of Mr. Bray’s diary by local historian, Tricia St John Barry, changes not only the date that baseball was conceived but also the country in which it was born. It reads: "After dinner, went to Miss Jeale’s to play at base ball [sic] with her, the 3 Miss Whiteheads, Miss Billinghurst, Miss Molly Flutter, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Ford and H. Parsons. Drank tea and stayed ’til 8."
While Major League Baseball (MLB) still recognises Alex Cartwright as the inventor of the modern game, the US governing body has accepted that the diary entry provides the first irrefutable documentary evidence of an actual baseball game, adding forty-five years to the sport’s illustrious history. Some fans have noted that the change continues an American tradition of borrowing and improving other sports:
