Baseball is Popular in England

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 115, 5 August 1927, Page 10

Baseball is Popular in England

PEANUTS AND QUEER NOISES

It is an odd thing, when one considers the clamorous .characteristics for which baseball is famous, that the game should have been making remarkably steady progress in the United Kingdom during the last few years without making any noise in the world to speak of, says a writer in the London “Observer.” Stamford Bridge on any Saturday afternoon is a little corner of America. Not only is there the game itself to be seen, but there is special apparatus which broadcasts to the uttermost corner of the ground “this redhot peppy American jazz-stuff,” as one of the officials put it; there are peanuts on sale, and one adopts the local custom of scattering the shells liberally over the earth (these same peanuts, by the by, were mentioned to me by the official as one of the special

attractions!); there are unlimited soft drinks; but, above all, there is the noise. One of the first things that strikes the visitor when he looks at his programme is a request couched in idiomatic American, which means, being interpreted, “Please make as much noise as you can; the players like it.” The programme adds a somewhat obscure slogan: “Help along the noise with the girl* and boys!” We cold-blooded English spectators have to be urged to it, it seems. But we are picking up the ida very nicely. SNAPPY BARRACKING Sixty-five per cent, of the crowd MrCharles Muirliead, the secretary, told me, are English; but it is a crowd that roars its comments with a will. True, the noisiest* and most eloquent comments seem to be in American accents. There is something in the American language which makes it possible to shout whole paragraphs of highly-coloured criticism in one breath ;

but we English manage to make our less complicated noises and the players seem to enjoy it. Matches at Stamford Bridge are arranged among the University teams. American steamship teams (the Leviathan, for instance, has a strong team, which has appeared twice in London this season; the U.S. warship Detroit is sending a team later in the month), and the London Americans. The game thus has become popular among working-class crowds. A great

many Association football professionals take it up during the summer. In South Wales it is even more popular than in the Liverpool district. In these two districts the number of clubs playing baseball runs into scores. There is an international match every year between England and Wales. This year it is to be played at Liverpool at the end of July. It cannot bedenied that in one way and another baseball is steadily achieving popularity in England. In Australia, of course, the game has a strong following, many famous cricketers being among the leading exponents of America’s foremost game.