Clipping:Baseball and rounders; the upcoming English tour
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| Date | Sunday, January 18, 1874 |
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| Text | In the year 1858, while reporting the English international cricket matches at Montreal, we had a conversation with the late Tom Locker, which was, as near as we can remember, as follows: We were speaking of cricket in the States, and Tom Locker had just asked us how cricket stood in Yankee land, when the subject of baseball was broached. Said Tom: “Baseball is our game of rounders, they tell me.” “Well it is, as far as its origin is concerned,” we replied, “but no more like the original than modern cricket is like the game played with a wicket in 1680.” “Rounders,” added Tom, “Is a school-boy’s game in England–even girls play it sometimes.” “All I have to say,” we responded, “is, that I don’t believe your eleven could play our American game in a year’s practice.” Tom laughed incredulously at this, and said, “We’ll show thee what we can do with yer Yankee rounders when we get to New York.” To which we replied, “Some of these days, Tom, we’ll be sending a baseball team to England, to show you Britishers our game, as you come here to show us yours.” “That’s right: send ‘em long,” he responded, “and we’ll polish ‘em off for you.” The idea referred to was actually entertained by some enthusiastic ball players a couple of years afterwards, when the Excelsior Club was in the heyday of its successful career. That was fifteen years ago, when the conversation took place. Now it is soon to be un fait accompli, as the French say, for arrangements were last week completed to send a party of representative players over to England in August next to show our English cousins how we enjoy ourselves on the ball field, not by a three days’ match at the scientific game of cricket, with its needless and tedious delays and its old fogy rules, but in playing an exciting game, marked by beautiful displays of fielding, requiring manly pluck and endurance, and mental judgment and intelligence, in as many hours as cricket requires days. |
| Source | New York Sunday Mercury |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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