| How a "Curious Version of British Baseball" survives in Wales and on Merseyside |
An extraordinary game known as "British Baseball" or more commonly "Welsh Baseball", with a history that goes back to the 19th century and perhaps earlier, survives today only in Cardiff and Newport in South Wales and in Liverpool.
Played with posts instead of bases and a short bat with a flat surface, but with underarm pitching, the game is an amalgam of baseball, softball, cricket and rounders, and requires both skill and bravery to play.
An article on "Welsh Baseball" appeared in 1998 in the BSF softball magazine Double Play, after then-editor Bob Fromer witnessed a high-level women's league game in Cardiff in June of that year.
Now a more history-based examination of the game's past, present and future has been written by Andrew Weltch and published in Volume 28 (2008) of The National Pastime, the journal of the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR).
Click here to access the article, complete with fascinating photographs, from the Download section of this website.
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