Baseball

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Arthur Conan Doyle played and praised Baseball. he played it in 1914 in Jasper National Park (Canada) and in 1922 in the United States. After practising it he wrote many positive articles about that sport and was willing to import it in England.


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Conan Doyle about Baseball

  • « Baseball is a noble game. I enjoy watching it immensely and have even played it. I know baseball is the game England needs. For years there has been a demand for a young man's game, and baseball will fill it. It would not displace cricket, to which England is so devoted, as that is an old man's game. » (Conan Doyle Avers he will Materialize Baseball for J. Bull, 1922)
  • « As far as the English are concerned there seems to be something in the national temperament that is attracted to cricket. For this reason baseball has never achieved the same popularity in England that cricket enjoys in this country. There are nevertheless, quite a number of baseball clubs springing up in England and in the future I think there will be more. I think the reason why men in the country do not keep up baseball as the English keep up their cricket is that here the sport is so highly specialised, the great object being to win, rather than the mere enjoyment of the game. On this account a man of middle age might feel he was making a spectacle of himself to indulge in baseball. Competition is undoubtedly much more intense in this country, and that in probably why, in the various sports, you concentrate to an extent that is unknown to us. » (Sir Arthur Cogitates on Baseball, 1922)
  • « The more I see of good baseball the more impressed I am by the great possibilities of the game and the place it might fill in England. It is the summer game of the young and active man, where no one finds a place who has not the supple joints of the thrower and sprinter. A man may stick to his cricket till he is fifty, but a baseballer is old and stale at thirty, in spite of Ty Cobb and a few examples to the contrary. The outstanding advantages are that it can be played on any fairly level field, that the outfit costs very little, and that the whole strenous affair may be over in a couple of hours. Life is too serious now for games that last days on end. It has the additional merit of forming an excellent spectacle when once the points are understood, and there are none of those long, weary intervals when bowling is short and batsmen sticky. It would be an admirable thing if all our association professional teams, trained men in the pink of condition, engaged good American coaches, gave themselves up to the game, and played League matches against each other. I will venture to say, that if this was done, we should in a few years have as many to see a baseball final between Tottenham Hotspur and Preston North End as come now to the football. » (Our American Adventure, 1922)
  • « As one who has sampled most British sports, may I say a word upon baseball? [..] I fully agree that the continual ragging is from a British view-point a defect, but baseball is a game which is continually in process of development and improvement, as anyone who reads Arthur Mathewson's interesting book on the subject is aware. The foul tricks which were once common are now hardly known, and what was once applauded, or at any rate tolerated, would now be execrated. Therefore, this rough badinage may pass away and it is not an essential of the game. What is essential is that here is a splendid game which calls for a fine eye, activity, bodily fitness, and judgment in the highest degree. This game needs no expensive levelling of a field, its outfit is within the reach of any village club, it takes only two or three hours in the playing, it is independent of wet wickets, and the player is on his toes all the time, and not sitting on a pavilion bench while another man makes his century. If it were taken up by our different Association teams as a summer pastime I believe it would sweep this country as it has done America. At the same time it would no more interfere with cricket than lawn tennis has done. It would find its own place What we need now is a central association which would advise and help the little clubs in the first year of their existence. » (Merits of Baseball, 1924)
  • « There are many strong arguments for baseball, and I wonder that it has not caught on more rapidly in England. First of all, the whole match can be played out in a single evening, and that is a very great advantage. Secondly, it needs no specially prepared ground, but can be played on any fairly level field or common. Thirdly, it costs little in the way of outfit. These are great virtues, and when one adds that it is a game which works the audience up to a state of frenzied excitement, and that there is to the expert never a dull moment, it is clear that we should find a place for it among our sports. The tactics of the rooters or fans are the only things which an Outsider can find to criticise. So long as they cheer their own side no one can blame them, but when their yells are for the purpose of rattling the other side they offend against our conceptions of sport.  » (Western Wanderings, 1924)


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