When Baseball Went to England

During the summer of 1874, the Boston Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Athletics promoted baseball in England, playing exhibition matches in London and Liverpool.

A British sporting weekly reported, "Baseball with the Americans is the sport of sports, as superior to all others as cricket is to us English in the way of summer pastimes. Its influence is unbounded and its supremacy preeminent over the American continent. its popularity is so great that the professional exponents of the art can be commanded salaries at which those of our professional cricketers sink into positive insignificance; and a skillful pitcher like Cummings of Chicago or Spalding of the Bostons may count on remuneration equal to that of an agile danseuse or an operatic star."

The Field suggested that baseball, rather than cricket, appealed to Americans because they are "fretful of restraint and less tenacious of purpose than English stock from which they sprung." Baseball "is an amusement that allows of no delays, that admits of no unequal division of labour, but keeps the interest unflagging until the finish."