Baseball for England?
Baseball for England? is an article published in The Chicago Tribune on 25 june 1922.
Baseball for England?
Conan Doyle says that he thinks he can take baseball back to England and get English boys to adopt it. They need it, he says, and ought to be playing it. We believe that it could fit in English life to advantage, and we are certain the English will have nothing to do with it. When American teams play exhibition ball in England the English regard it amiably and good naturedly as an amusing sport development of an erratic people largely unaccounted for.
Cricket is the game of Englishmen of leisure. The great mass of English working boys and young then call it a rich man's game. They cannot take two days or more to a match. Baseball is the game for young fellows who have two hours after work it on Saturday afternoon or Sunday.
It is the best adapted game for working populations. It conforms to their scheme of leisure. The Canadians play some cricket, but not nearly as much as baseball. It almost us much a Canadian game as it is an American.
If Conan Doyle had any chance of laying out baseball fields in England he might work a social revolution in the English proletariat. Good dentistry and a popularly played game might knock out the caste system by proving that a person did not need to be a gentleman to have sound teeth and to be proficient in athletics.
