Check out this website and click on "other grounds" and you'll find the Baseball Ground. http://www.footballgroundguide.co.uk/
Baseball was quite popular in England in the Victorian era, I think recreationally rather than pro teams or anything like that. Had cricket not already been established it might have become our main summer sport.
Not finding the link on the site, I put 'old grounds' into its search engine and was taken to a link to a page 'Old Grounds--Gone But Not Forgotten'. Sadly prophetic, clicking on that screen's Derby's Baseball Ground link takes one to a 'page not found at this address' screen. However, using trusty Google, I found many pictures of the grounds. Can anyone tell that I can't figure out what to do with myself during MLS's off season? Way too much time on my hands, and no telecasts of Blackburn available today.
is doesn't look at all like a baseball satdium. it is a pity the game was replaced by cricket in england. as boring as people think baseball is, it is vast improvement on cricket. the beauty of baseball is that it is p[layed every single day for 7 months straight. how can you beat that?
It doesn't look like a baseball stadium because the stands were built long after baseball stopped being played there. Similarly, the rececourse ground, Wrexham, is hardly ideal for horseracing. None of the grounds called the recreation ground have a set of child's swings of a slide to be seen anywhere either. For those interested, legend has it that this corner is where balls used to be pitched towards. http://www.derby.org/neil/bbg7.jpg Baseball wasn't replaced by cricket. Cricket has been around for a very long time. It is known that games of cricket were being played at least as long ago as 1751. The marylebone cricket club, who were responisble for really codifing the rules of the game were formed in 1787, and their ground, Lords (which is still the biggest cricket ground in England) was first developed in 1814. Cricket is also played every day of the summer, although for only 6 months.
I think it is a fantasy that baseball was ever popular in England. Perhaps a few people played it, but it was a very minor sport. I have read a large amount of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centurty fiction and history, but I don't recall any references to baseball in England. The history of baseball on Encarta makes no reference to England except to say that baseball is in part based on the English children's game of rounders. Apparently the first official game was played in 1846, when cricket was already hundreds of years old. Cricket dates back at least to the mid 16th Century, and was popular by the early 18th century. An often told story in England is that baseball became popular in America because during the Civil War soldiers didn't have the time or facilities for a proper game of cricket.
there's perhaps a tad of bias in promoting the games popularity, but here are details of baseball's history in England. http://www.sabruk.org/history/uk.html
Thanks for the link. To summarise, every attempt to launch professional baseball in the UK ended in complete failure after a few years. Furthermore these competitions were launched by one or two businessmen in imitation of the American professional game, rather than evolving out of an amateur sport. To return to the original provocative point, that cricket "replaced" baseball, this is further disproven by the fact that the first of these attempts to import baseball from America didn't occur until 1890. That that time cricket was possibly still the highest profile sport in England, rather than football.
At the top click on "Other Grounds" then from the pop-down menu click "Old Grounds" then scroll down to "Lost Grounds" and click on "Baseball Grounds"..It's the 4th link on the left. You can't link directly to pages there or I would. http://www.footballgroundguide.co.uk/
Yah but that means taking the time to look at the source code or something like that which is work.. Damned site is in frames..
To clear up any confusion, here's some info from simon Inglis' excellent book "the Football Grounds of Britain" (which would have made an excellent Christmas stocking filler for anyone who possesses book-shaped stockings). to summarise some of his info on Derby.... Derby County were formed as a winter offshoot of the Derbyshire County Cricket Club. They originally played on part of the cricket pitch, which was itself in the middle of the city's racecourse. Elsewhere in the city, a foundry owner, who nine years previously had created a sports ground for his workers, returned from a trip to America and loved baseball so much that he spent a considerable sum of money (for the time) adapting the sports ground into a small baseball stadium. As baseball failed to really catch on Derby moved in as main tenants. Baseball was still played at the stadium for several years and it wasn't until the 1920s, when Derby County bought the site outright, that they were able to develop the ground into a traditional four-sided football ground.