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British-Born American Baseballer Returns Home

One very interesting story we will be following this year will be that of Marty Hogan, a twenty seven year old British baseballer who learnt the game in America, and who plays well enough to have toiled in the National League, the most advanced of all baseball leagues in the United States.

Hogan is a native of the market town of Wednesbury, just outside of Walsall. His parents moved him as a child to Young’s Town, in the state of Ohio, where he learnt the game and became quite proficient at it. He is a left fieldsman who played for the Reds of Cincinnati and the Browns of St. Louis, where he compiled a hits average of .241 across 40 games in 1894 and 1895. Although he made it to the top flight, Hogan met his match there, and he left the National League before 1895’s end.

In the lower leagues of America, however, Hogan showed himself to be quite good, hitting .343 in over one thousand at bats across four different leagues. He had a particularly good season with the Hoosiers of Indiana last year, hitting .324 with eighteen twos, twelve threes, nine home runs and seventy-three stolen bases in one hundred and ten games. Hogan also played four games in Grand Rapids, in the state of Michigan, last month before deciding to take the offer of Stoke Ramblers chairman William Patton to come back to Britain to ply his stock and trade among his fellow countrymen starting this season.

We are anxious to see how a baseballer who has played at the highest levels in America fares here at the highest levels of England. This will be a clear test of the plane which the Baseball League occupies in the baseball world. The more that League pitchers can contain Hogan to little better than replicating his National League performance versus his superior lower league performance, the more we can be confident that our Baseball League might take its rightful place among the best leagues in the world.