Block:English Baseball in Cumbria on February 1 1884
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| Data | “Base ball” was put forward as one of the pastimes cited in a lecture presented before the Working Men's Institute in Bowness-on-Windermere in England's Lake District (now Cumbria). The topic of the talk, given by Mr. J. W. Ballantyne, RM, of Edinburgh, was school hygiene and overstrain in education. Mr Ballantyne was a powerful advocate for the role of sports and games in education, saying “A school without a playground, a gymnasium or public park near, I look on as a garden without sunshine or a boat with one oar,” according to a newspaper report on his lecture. He disagreed with those educators calling for a return to classic Greek sports such as racing, wrestling, discus, etc., saying “such are very good in their way, but can never equal in excellence the games we have in vogue in our public schools. The training of the muscles, eyesight, will, and all the bodily functions in cricket, football, rackets, base ball, hare and hounds, &c., is unequalled by any stereotyped exercise in racing round a race course, or swinging rhythmically backwards and forwards on a bar for so many hours a day. No, our old games are manifestly superior to any such cut and dried exercise. Let all our old sports and pastimes be encouraged in schools.” |
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| Sources | Lakes Chronicle and Reporter, Feb. 1, 1884, p. 3 |
| Block Notes | The lecturer was clearly referring to English baseball as he unlikely would be including American baseball among the “old games” or the “old sports and pastimes.” |
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