Documentary proof has been uncovered that baseball was being played in Britain before it was taken to America.
A diary which refers to a game played in Guildford, Surrey, in 1755 has been verified as authentic by Surrey Historical Centre.
The mention of baseball was found in the diary of an 18th century lawyer, William Bray. It documents a game with friends on Easter Monday 1755, when he was a teenager.
Major League Baseball, the governing body of the sport in the United States has accepted that the diary, found in a shed near Guildford by a local historian, Tricia St.John Barry, contains the earliest known manuscript reference to baseball. It had been thought that the game, which is one of the most popular sports in the United States, began in the 1790s.
Julian Pooley, the manager of Surrey History Centre, has now worked with Major League Baseball on the production of a documentary film tracing the origins of the game, called Baseball Discovered.
It doesn't alter the fact that Cartwright's rules of 1846 in New Jersey were the origins of the modern day version of the game we play today, but it would be interesting to know what they did in 1755
See also the newspaper article here(Telegraph) or here (BBC with audio interview) [more...]
