1836.5

Yanks Burn British Runners . . . in Canton, China

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags
Location
City/State/Country:	[[{{{Country}}}]]
Modern Address
Game
Immediacy of Report
Age of Players
Holiday
Notables
Text	"Sometimes we raced our boats [against the English] to the baseball grounds . . . . In out-of-doors sports the Englishman has perforce to drop his insular dignity and become democratic, and he never does it by halves. [A runner could be] pelted by the hard ball as he tried to run in, for it was then the fashion to throw at the runner, and if hit he was out for the inning." John Bowman adds: "Forbes was a Massachusetts man, and one supposes that when he played baseball at the Round Hill school in Northampton (see item #1823.6 above) , 'soaking' was then a routine aspect of the game."
Sources	Sara Forbes Hughes, ed., Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes [Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1899] volume 1, page 86. Submitted by John Bowman, 7/16/2004.
Warning
Comment	Edit with form to add a comment
Query	Can we clarify what the game was (cricket? round ball?) and whether Americans and English both played? How old was Forbes in 1836? Edit with form to add a query
Source Image	[[Image:\|left\|thumb]]
External Number
Submitted by	John Bowman
Submission Note	Email of 7/16/2004
Has Supplemental Text

Comments