🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
In the cartoon at 26:30 i am wondering if Abe is holding a base post which predated the canvas bags for first second and third base. This would align with the caption that he is laying the ground rules and also holding the ball before passing it to a successor. FANTASTIC work on this piece, thank you for making it available!
Thanks for the comment. I'm unsure if the wooden rail Abe holds is a base post. It seems like a good question for someone with more knowledge than myself. What I like is how well formulated the language of baseball has become in 1860 and its intelligibility to a national audience. Let me know if you get a definitive answer on this issue.
@@thebaseballprofessor I reviewed the cartoon and it appears that my interpretation was incorrect. It is a "confounded rail, to strike with" as told in the speech bubbles. Seems Abe was swinging a railroad tie - square bats would not be ruled out until later. Now I am wondering about the history of westward expansion and whether Abe was the only one "strong" enough to wield such a heavy striking bat.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
Love this video! The history of baseball has always fascinated me, and it's always been quite interesting to look at the evolution of the game as it happened in the 19th century.
@22:45 .. that Atlantic/Excelsior box score is interesting. It shows how the Excelsior still hit in the bottom of the 9th even though they were already winning. Any idea when they stopped playing the bottom of the 9th when ahead?
During the mid-nineteenth century, batting first carried a significant advantage because the ball (they only used one) was destined to become a misshapen piece of mush. By the end of the nineteenth century, professional leagues had standardized the size and weight of balls although they could still could become dirty and less lively after a few innings. At the time of Jim Creighton, home teams preferred batting first. The tradition of home teams batting second was firmly in place at the start of the twentieth century. I don't know much more than that!
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever😊
Puddex is a game that is a cross between cricket and baseball. It seems to have a long history. In England, it was still played until fairly recently but rarely and by school children as a quick alternative to the complexities of cricket but more complex than rounders.
@@thebaseballprofessor No. Puddex is only played in certain schools and church groups, I think. Even in those situations, I think it is rarely played. Rounders is much more widely known than Puddex. I think most British children will play rounders growing up in school or in a church group or youth group or the scout association.
26:14 You've got those names switched. The figures would be left to right Bell, Douglas, Breckinridge, Lincoln. Note Breckinridge's reference to Kentucky --- his home state. Bell (far left) was from Tennessee and was not a Democrat, but a Whig, called by then the "Constitutional Union Party" (note also "Union Club" on his belt) which was opposed to extending Slavery. Breckinridge, third from left with the "extension" bat, stood in favour of a federal guarantee of Slavery protection -- the crux of the whole question at the time. He, not Bell, was the splitter Democrat. Lincoln and Bell opposed such a federal guarantee, and Douglas, the official Democrat, held the "popular sovereignty" position, leaving it up to each new state as it came in. Second correction at 26:52 - "not long after his inauguration 11 states seceded and formed a Confederacy" ... actually just seven states seceded at first to form the CSA, and they did so in February 1861 *before* the Lincoln inauguration. Texas, the last of the seven, was not fully involved in the formation. The other four seceded after the War began.
Am just catching on to your videos, which I find fascinating from my perspective of being both a history buff and a baseball fan. Your vintage source materials used are very much appreciated and add so much to the presentations.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
I think, if I remember correctly, that Los Angeles had its own men's baseball team and women's softball team around 1888. They played in California leagues and were employed by a cattle yard in Riverside.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
Did you ever consider doing a video about announcers at the ballpark? Bob Shepherd comes to mind "The Voice of God" at Yankee Stadium or Tex Rickard at Ebbetts Field. Here in the Baltimore area we had Rex Barney and Roger Griswold, both of whom had their interesting idiosyncrasies. And don't forget the organists, such as the incomparable Gladys Gooding at Ebbetts Field and the organist (can't remember his name) who was thrown out by the umpire for playing "Three Blind Mice" after a bad call (there may have been more than one of those). But all of those people really enriched the ballpark experience.
I really need to do a tribute to the great announcers of the twentieth century. Speaking of the organists, I did a video on that: th-cam.com/video/g0QH8gnX3R4/w-d-xo.html
Not forgetting that the great Vin Scully called the last game at Ebbets in 1957 before their relocation to LA where he continued until not that long ago...
Cricket being associated with the upper classes is an American idea, no doubt promoted by 19th century baseballers. Cricket doesn’t have aristocratic connotations in England, Australia, India, etc. It is a popular sport for all classes; the upper classes may dominate the organization of the sport but that’s true in all organized sports.
In Ireland it has somewhat aristocratic connotations too but that’s also probably due to the GAA. Fun fact, the GAA governs rounders in Ireland! I play hurling and I found that my background in baseball has helped me a lot with striking the ball out of my hand along with catching the ball. But I have to do it barehanded like old school baseball. I’ve been watching old Ted Williams videos talking about hitting to help me.
I visited (Thomas) Lord's Cricket Ground, London ten years ago being a lifelong cricket player / follower since my junior days. I have also been a baseball tragic for over 40 years playing my first season in the mid 90's. A visit to the Lord's excellent Museum has displays of much memorabilia and I was taken with an old scoresheet. This clearly showed the level of a gentrified game where some of the team were listed with a Mister prefix and one even being Doctor...(not W.G. Grace !). The balance simply had their initials and surname as we see for all players today. This was known to continue into the 1930's and when an Australian team was visiting England for the famous biennial "Ashes" Tour. There was famous series denoted the Bodyline Tests and in it a humble English bowler from a coal mining background was essentially forced by an upper class Captain to bowl an new style of bowling to upset one particular famous Australian batsman. Australia's liking for baseball goes back to our 1850's Gold Rush days when many visiting US people tried their hands at making a fortune and introduced the sport. Leagues were st up from early 1870's but scores tend to indicate a more like Rounders situation.
I took a whole college course on the history of baseball through Minnesota State Community and Technical College. This video was just as thorough as that course. What I really appreciated about your take on everything is unlike the professor I had for that course, you mention the racial aspect of the game and its history honestly. My professor was clearly biased (he used the term "blacks" to refer to black people, which is kind of an automatic red flag), so he often overlooked or simply briefly mentioned players of color and their impact on the history of the game
@@notvalidcharacters just an outdated phrase. Kind of like hearing “colored.” It boils someone who is a whole complex person down to their skin color. It indicates that they’re not seen as black PEOPLE, just as “blacks” as if that’s its own entity
@@JayDagny In a singular, we'd generally use the adjective (predicate adjective), not the noun. In the previous example if your prof is referring to generic Black people in the *plural* -- are they not "Blacks"? Guess I'm not following what you're expecting there.
It is true that in most English speaking countries that they call association football soccer. US, Canada, ireland(football is Gaelic football), and Australia(football is AFL).
Well, (except the US Virgin Islands) every single English-speaking country in the Carribean uses the word "football" exclusively. That's a higher number of countries than US, Canada, Ireland and Australia. Also, Ireland is somewhat ambivalent. "Football" can refer to both Gaelic and association football. Association football fans in Ireland rarely use "soccer".
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever❤
We Aussies usually refer to all those popular codes as footy / football. Aussie Rules is certainly called footy but Soccer is very common name (officials do not like that name) Rugby Union and Rugby League are popular in specific areas.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
Creighton was the first pitcher to be accused of snapping his wrist. Doing it overtly would have been illegal and poor sportsmanship. NY rules specified that the ball had to be pitched underhanded (stiff arm) and not thrown overhand. The pitcher's job was to induce contact, not prevent it. After Creighton, pitchers pushed the boundaries of what was legal and came up with inventive new pitches such as the curve and sinker. MLB legalized the wrist snap in the 1870s.
Soccer still isn’t “gender neutral” to most of the world. It was an exclusively male sport in a lot of countries until fairly recently. It’s why US women’s national team has had an advantage over the past 30 years.
Soccer is gender neutral in the sense that men and women play it at the collegiate and international level like the men. The same is true of tennis and basketball or track and field. What sets baseball and cricket apart is that women overwhelmingly play softball. Meanwhile, women in the British Isles overwhelmingly play rounders, not cricket. It's different from other sports.
I think the point the lectorer made is that in those sports women play the same kind of sport as men do. While in baseball they don't, they play a variant called softball, with different rules and even a different name. A woman playing basketball doesn't play a variant called handbagball and a woman playing football doesn't play a variant called pedicureball.
Probably the seminal influence for the rise and spread of various English team sports (including cricket, rugby & soccer) was the Public School system which was an enthusiastic propagator of the Masculine Christianity ideal during the first half of the nineteenth century. But Muscular Christians frowned on professionalism and amateurs were held up as the leaders/administrators of the various games, a situation that extended well into the twentieth century in rugby & cricket. This paradigm was typical of the English class system.
“Soccer as it’s called in most English speaking countries”…..WRONG I live in England and no one uses the term “Soccer” here, neither do they in any European country. We call it “Football” because it’s played with the feet! In the USA it’s known as Soccer. That’s because in the USA they already have a modified version of Rugby which they refer to as “football” ,which is played with the hands!
New Zealanders, Australians, and Canadians call it soccer. That amounts to more people than the population of England. www.businessinsider.com/football-vs-soccer-map-2013-12
@@thebaseballprofessor Yes, you are correct about the Aussies and the Kiwis, they also use the term “Soccer” which essentially is an American term. Part of the reason being that, just like the USA they both also don’t have a football culture, and play mainly other sports such as Cricket, Rugby etc etc. Whereas all of the countries which do have a football culture, all of them refer to it as Football, which is the correct term. That includes, the whole of Europe, the whole of South America, the whole of Africa, and almost the entire Asia. In other words, apart from a handful of countries such as Australia, New Zealand etc, pretty much the entire planet refers to it by its correct name which is Football. And that also includes countries such as England and Ireland, both of whom are English speaking countries.
@@thebaseballprofessor I enjoyed your documentary on baseball which I found to be quite interesting. By the way, I think you should make a similar documentary on the history of Cricket in America, as you’re probably aware I’m sure that Cricket also had a strong tradition in America at one point especially in the north east, which lasted good part of a century, sadly eventually being completely overshadowed by the rising popularity of baseball and ultimately forgotten.
@@tamerlane7 Stay tuned! I've always wanted to do something on 19th century cricket in the USA. It was more widespread than most Americans realize. Cricket clubs existed in all of the big cities.
I watch Ken Burns Baseball once a year or so. I'm gonna start watching this video as an appetizer every time from now on. Fantastic stuff.
Thanks for the comment.
@@thebaseballprofessor Yea dude. I'm loving all the lectures.
That picture of Elysian Fields is terrific. Always loved it.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
Elysian Fields🎵🎶🎵☠️
Thank you for this. Extremely in depht, easy to understand and entertaining.
I agree! 👍
Depht
@@slidymctuesday5711 Oh my gosh, he made a typo, cast a stone at him...
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
In the cartoon at 26:30 i am wondering if Abe is holding a base post which predated the canvas bags for first second and third base. This would align with the caption that he is laying the ground rules and also holding the ball before passing it to a successor. FANTASTIC work on this piece, thank you for making it available!
Thanks for the comment. I'm unsure if the wooden rail Abe holds is a base post. It seems like a good question for someone with more knowledge than myself. What I like is how well formulated the language of baseball has become in 1860 and its intelligibility to a national audience. Let me know if you get a definitive answer on this issue.
@@thebaseballprofessor I reviewed the cartoon and it appears that my interpretation was incorrect. It is a "confounded rail, to strike with" as told in the speech bubbles. Seems Abe was swinging a railroad tie - square bats would not be ruled out until later. Now I am wondering about the history of westward expansion and whether Abe was the only one "strong" enough to wield such a heavy striking bat.
I found this video a bit late but it is appreciated!
Thank you for this. Interesting, informative, entertaining and educational.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
Love this video! The history of baseball has always fascinated me, and it's always been quite interesting to look at the evolution of the game as it happened in the 19th century.
@22:45 .. that Atlantic/Excelsior box score is interesting. It shows how the Excelsior still hit in the bottom of the 9th even though they were already winning. Any idea when they stopped playing the bottom of the 9th when ahead?
During the mid-nineteenth century, batting first carried a significant advantage because the ball (they only used one) was destined to become a misshapen piece of mush. By the end of the nineteenth century, professional leagues had standardized the size and weight of balls although they could still could become dirty and less lively after a few innings. At the time of Jim Creighton, home teams preferred batting first. The tradition of home teams batting second was firmly in place at the start of the twentieth century. I don't know much more than that!
@@thebaseballprofessor thank you
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever😊
Great video!
I enjoyed this video.
Puddex is a game that is a cross between cricket and baseball. It seems to have a long history. In England, it was still played until fairly recently but rarely and by school children as a quick alternative to the complexities of cricket but more complex than rounders.
Is puddex a game that ordinary, middle aged Britons would know about?
@@thebaseballprofessor No. Puddex is only played in certain schools and church groups, I think. Even in those situations, I think it is rarely played. Rounders is much more widely known than Puddex. I think most British children will play rounders growing up in school or in a church group or youth group or the scout association.
26:14 You've got those names switched. The figures would be left to right Bell, Douglas, Breckinridge, Lincoln. Note Breckinridge's reference to Kentucky --- his home state. Bell (far left) was from Tennessee and was not a Democrat, but a Whig, called by then the "Constitutional Union Party" (note also "Union Club" on his belt) which was opposed to extending Slavery. Breckinridge, third from left with the "extension" bat, stood in favour of a federal guarantee of Slavery protection -- the crux of the whole question at the time. He, not Bell, was the splitter Democrat. Lincoln and Bell opposed such a federal guarantee, and Douglas, the official Democrat, held the "popular sovereignty" position, leaving it up to each new state as it came in.
Second correction at 26:52 - "not long after his inauguration 11 states seceded and formed a Confederacy" ... actually just seven states seceded at first to form the CSA, and they did so in February 1861 *before* the Lincoln inauguration. Texas, the last of the seven, was not fully involved in the formation. The other four seceded after the War began.
Am just catching on to your videos, which I find fascinating from my perspective of being both a history buff and a baseball fan. Your vintage source materials used are very much appreciated and add so much to the presentations.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
I think, if I remember correctly, that Los Angeles had its own men's baseball team and women's softball team around 1888. They played in California leagues and were employed by a cattle yard in Riverside.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
Did you ever consider doing a video about announcers at the ballpark? Bob Shepherd comes to mind "The Voice of God" at Yankee Stadium or Tex Rickard at Ebbetts Field. Here in the Baltimore area we had Rex Barney and Roger Griswold, both of whom had their interesting idiosyncrasies. And don't forget the organists, such as the incomparable Gladys Gooding at Ebbetts Field and the organist (can't remember his name) who was thrown out by the umpire for playing "Three Blind Mice" after a bad call (there may have been more than one of those). But all of those people really enriched the ballpark experience.
I really need to do a tribute to the great announcers of the twentieth century. Speaking of the organists, I did a video on that: th-cam.com/video/g0QH8gnX3R4/w-d-xo.html
Not forgetting that the great Vin Scully called the last game at Ebbets in 1957 before their relocation to LA where he continued until not that long ago...
Cricket being associated with the upper classes is an American idea, no doubt promoted by 19th century baseballers. Cricket doesn’t have aristocratic connotations in England, Australia, India, etc. It is a popular sport for all classes; the upper classes may dominate the organization of the sport but that’s true in all organized sports.
Cricket would not have caught on so strongly in South Asia had it been associated with the upper classes.
In Ireland it has somewhat aristocratic connotations too but that’s also probably due to the GAA. Fun fact, the GAA governs rounders in Ireland! I play hurling and I found that my background in baseball has helped me a lot with striking the ball out of my hand along with catching the ball. But I have to do it barehanded like old school baseball. I’ve been watching old Ted Williams videos talking about hitting to help me.
I visited (Thomas) Lord's Cricket Ground, London ten years ago being a lifelong cricket player / follower since my junior days. I have also been a baseball tragic for over 40 years playing my first season in the mid 90's. A visit to the Lord's excellent Museum has displays of much memorabilia and I was taken with an old scoresheet. This clearly showed the level of a gentrified game where some of the team were listed with a Mister prefix and one even being Doctor...(not W.G. Grace !). The balance simply had their initials and surname as we see for all players today.
This was known to continue into the 1930's and when an Australian team was visiting England for the famous biennial "Ashes" Tour. There was famous series denoted the Bodyline Tests and in it a humble English bowler from a coal mining background was essentially forced by an upper class Captain to bowl an new style of bowling to upset one particular famous Australian batsman.
Australia's liking for baseball goes back to our 1850's Gold Rush days when many visiting US people tried their hands at making a fortune and introduced the sport. Leagues were st up from early 1870's but scores tend to indicate a more like Rounders situation.
I took a whole college course on the history of baseball through Minnesota State Community and Technical College. This video was just as thorough as that course. What I really appreciated about your take on everything is unlike the professor I had for that course, you mention the racial aspect of the game and its history honestly. My professor was clearly biased (he used the term "blacks" to refer to black people, which is kind of an automatic red flag), so he often overlooked or simply briefly mentioned players of color and their impact on the history of the game
What kind of "red flag" is that? I don't follow.
@@notvalidcharacters just an outdated phrase. Kind of like hearing “colored.” It boils someone who is a whole complex person down to their skin color. It indicates that they’re not seen as black PEOPLE, just as “blacks” as if that’s its own entity
@@notvalidcharacters I think it would help if you made it singular. You wouldn’t say “Have you met Randy? He’s a black”
@@JayDagny In a singular, we'd generally use the adjective (predicate adjective), not the noun.
In the previous example if your prof is referring to generic Black people in the *plural* -- are they not "Blacks"? Guess I'm not following what you're expecting there.
@@notvalidcharacters no, they’re not blacks. They’re black people
Wait. What about Abner Doubleday?
The Ridiculous 6 (2015) provides all the answers to Doubleday's invention of baseball.
It is true that in most English speaking countries that they call association football soccer. US, Canada, ireland(football is Gaelic football), and Australia(football is AFL).
Well, (except the US Virgin Islands) every single English-speaking country in the Carribean uses the word "football" exclusively. That's a higher number of countries than US, Canada, Ireland and Australia.
Also, Ireland is somewhat ambivalent. "Football" can refer to both Gaelic and association football. Association football fans in Ireland rarely use "soccer".
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever❤
We Aussies usually refer to all those popular codes as footy / football. Aussie Rules is certainly called footy but Soccer is very common name (officials do not like that name) Rugby Union and Rugby League are popular in specific areas.
Still love the game.
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
🙏🙏Blessings forever GOD loves y'all too forever tell everyone you know and don't know. Jesus loves y'all too forever. Teach everyone how to see and enjoy their blessings too forever
23:41 who else snapped their wrist?
Creighton was the first pitcher to be accused of snapping his wrist. Doing it overtly would have been illegal and poor sportsmanship. NY rules specified that the ball had to be pitched underhanded (stiff arm) and not thrown overhand. The pitcher's job was to induce contact, not prevent it. After Creighton, pitchers pushed the boundaries of what was legal and came up with inventive new pitches such as the curve and sinker. MLB legalized the wrist snap in the 1870s.
Soccer still isn’t “gender neutral” to most of the world. It was an exclusively male sport in a lot of countries until fairly recently. It’s why US women’s national team has had an advantage over the past 30 years.
Soccer is gender neutral in the sense that men and women play it at the collegiate and international level like the men. The same is true of tennis and basketball or track and field. What sets baseball and cricket apart is that women overwhelmingly play softball. Meanwhile, women in the British Isles overwhelmingly play rounders, not cricket. It's different from other sports.
I think the point the lectorer made is that in those sports women play the same kind of sport as men do. While in baseball they don't, they play a variant called softball, with different rules and even a different name.
A woman playing basketball doesn't play a variant called handbagball and a woman playing football doesn't play a variant called pedicureball.
Probably the seminal influence for the rise and spread of various English team sports (including cricket, rugby & soccer) was the Public School system which was an enthusiastic propagator of the Masculine Christianity ideal during the first half of the nineteenth century. But Muscular Christians frowned on professionalism and amateurs were held up as the leaders/administrators of the various games, a situation that extended well into the twentieth century in rugby & cricket. This paradigm was typical of the English class system.
No offense to the Professor/narrator, but the only thing missing from this is some Shelby Foote narration (press F).
The production team looked for a preeminent southern writer to narrate the lecture series. Tim Gautreaux was unavailable.
Cricketer, not “cricketeer.”
No gloves and no shoes in Elysian? No shoes?
What is the point of your comment?
@@andrewyarosh1809 He's Shoeless Joe Azzopardi.
The easier answer is cricket
Don't say "green space." How about using a normal word like "park" so you don't sound bourgeoise
“Soccer as it’s called in most English speaking countries”…..WRONG
I live in England and no one uses the term “Soccer” here, neither do they in any European country.
We call it “Football” because it’s played with the feet!
In the USA it’s known as Soccer.
That’s because in the USA they already have a modified version of Rugby which they refer to as “football” ,which is played with the hands!
New Zealanders, Australians, and Canadians call it soccer. That amounts to more people than the population of England. www.businessinsider.com/football-vs-soccer-map-2013-12
@@thebaseballprofessor Yes, you are correct about the Aussies and the Kiwis, they also use the term “Soccer” which essentially is an American term.
Part of the reason being that, just like the USA they both also don’t have a football culture, and play mainly other sports such as Cricket, Rugby etc etc.
Whereas all of the countries which do have a football culture, all of them refer to it as Football, which is the correct term.
That includes, the whole of Europe, the whole of South America, the whole of Africa, and almost the entire Asia.
In other words, apart from a handful of countries such as Australia, New Zealand etc, pretty much the entire planet refers to it by its correct name which is Football.
And that also includes countries such as England and Ireland, both of whom are English speaking countries.
@@tamerlane7 It's certainly true that most countries across the globe have a word that is some version of football.
@@thebaseballprofessor I enjoyed your documentary on baseball which I found to be quite interesting.
By the way, I think you should make a similar documentary on the history of Cricket in America, as you’re probably aware I’m sure that Cricket also had a strong tradition in America at one point especially in the north east, which lasted good part of a century, sadly eventually being completely overshadowed by the rising popularity of baseball and ultimately forgotten.
@@tamerlane7 Stay tuned! I've always wanted to do something on 19th century cricket in the USA. It was more widespread than most Americans realize. Cricket clubs existed in all of the big cities.