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1894 SEASON TO START WITH OPENING DAY TO-DAY!

“For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

Song of Solomon 2:11-12

The Song of Solomon sings of a spring sprung anew, and with it the promise of a new base ball season to provide us with the thrills and moments of heroics on the pitch to remember and pass down to our progeny for generations hence.

The speed and grace of Vivian Mad Dash Sharp of the Rams of Derby County, on display again in the top level this year. The powerful strokes of batsmen William Roberts of the Villans of Aston Villa, The Foresters’ Clarence Laurence and the Red Devils’ Charley Brewer. The mound mastery of William Chapman of Bolton Wanderers, Kieran Bouvet of the Magpies of Notts County, and of course the return of the finest pitcher on the Island, Brendan Phillips of Derby County, all on display for the pleasure of the knowing and rabid base ball fan this year.

Many talents are bubbling up through the second level as well, as all clubs mired there seek to improve their lot for inclusion in the top flight one year from to-day. Do not discount the thirteen homers of Newcastle United’s Edwin Clark last year, or the stunning .394 hits average of Preston North End’s Charles Smith, or the twenty games won by Frederick Lord of Walsall Town, a club who just narrowly missed promotion and the attendant national spotlight the Burton Swifts and Rams earned last season. The fire of competition and desire burn brightly at the second level, and the base ball played there will be fierce and uncompromising.

Speaking of the second level, there are a couple of changes that may pique the interest of British base ball fans. For one thing, the Citizens of Ardwick (the baseballers, not the people) seek to broaden their appeal to the whole of their city by somewhat audaciously taking on the mantle of Manchester City as the appellation by which to identify their ballclub. The first level Red Devils of Newton Heath cannot have failed to take notice of this and surely must respond in kind at some point.

Secondly, the Walsall Town Swifts have quietly changed from their prior kits, identifiable by their sheer hideousness, to a more conservative and appealing kit more in line with their contemporaries. We are only too glad to trumpet the change if the Swifts won’t do so themselves, and if this clarion call can persuade the other clubs with awful designs, in particular the half a dozen or so clubs who insist on dressing their players no better than inmates in a paupers’ gaol, we will consider our sartorial objective as being met.

One last note: at the top level, the first Scotsmen in League history will be toiling in Manchester for the Red Devils in the person of Andrew MacCutcheon, a shining star aged twenty-seven, late of the Scottish League and mainly responsible for the Queen’s Park club ascend to four SBA Cup finals in the past five years, three of them resulting in actual Cup wins. This should augur strongly for a veritable invasion of jockies and sawneys from the highlands and lowlands to the green and pleasant land of English baseball pitches.