View source for Block:Oxfordshire Churchwarden Encourages "base-ball" for Girls in 1816

{{Block
|Coordinates=51.7612056, -1.2464674
|Title=Oxfordshire Churchwarden Encourages "base-ball" for Girls in 1816
|Type of Date=Year
|Date=1816/01/01
|Block Game=English Baseball
|Block Location=Oxfordshire
|Block Data=<p>&ldquo;Base-ball,&rdquo; as an outdoor means of recreation for girls, was praised by an English churchwarden in a manuscript history of the Oxfordshire village of Watlington. The writer, John Badcock, made his point despite having it almost swallowed within an unusually convoluted sentence: &ldquo;It is contrary to reason and common sense to expect that the most sober-minded, if wholly restrained from a game of cricket, or some other amusement--&amp; the other sex from base-ball, or some recreation peculiar to themselves, &amp; exclusively their own, would fill up every leisure hour of a fine summer's evening better, or perhaps so well, in any other way.&rdquo; Mr. Badcock went on to argue that the lord of the manor, or some other landowner, should take a section of otherwise unusable land and create appropriate playing fields for boys and girls.</p>
|Sources=<p>An Historical &amp; Descriptive Account of Watlington, Oxfordshire, by John Badcock (1816), handwritten manuscript in the collection of the Oxfordshire History Centre, PAR279/9/MS/1, (former reference: MSS.D.D.Par.Wat-lington c.11)</p>
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