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1904 Baseball Season Starting To-Day

The promise of spring brings with it the optimism of warm weather, sunny skies and lazy days spent enjoying traditional pastimes. One of those pastimes is baseball.

The sport is referred to as the “national pastime” in America. Here in Britain, baseball may never rise to that level since the association football and rugby union games still reign supreme. But baseball has come closer to that level through the years, and even if it does not supplant football as the favoured game of Britons, it may at least claim that mantle for itself during the months of May through September.

Nineteen hundred and four will commence the seventeenth season of League baseball, and the game has become much more popular in recent years. Last season saw nearly five million patrons in total pass through the gate—4,989,623, to be exact, and this is nearly seventeen per cent more than in 1902, which itself was ten per cent more than the roughly 3,850,000 who attended in 1901. These are indeed impressive figures, made even more impressive by the fact that the teams of the Baseball League collectively drew more supporters through their gates than those of the American and National Leagues of the United States, combined!

Consider the case of the Magpies of Newcastle United. For fifty one matches played in 1903, they drew a total gate of 233,088. Compared to baseball gate figures obtained from America, this figure is seen to be higher than that of no fewer than seven teams in the American major leagues, who play almost twenty more matches in their grounds!

It would be premature to say that British baseball is the equivalent of American baseball, especially in consideration of quality of play. But taken as a spectacle, there is no denying that League ball is every bit as popular here as American major league baseball is abroad.

The consistency in champion quality is certainly one reason for this gate success. United seek their fourth Cup in six seasons starting to-day, and Burslem Port Vale, Blackburn, Sunderland and the newly promoted Fulham club all seek headway toward the top of the table themselves. On the second level, the quality teams appear to be West Ham United, Crewe Alexandra and the recently demoted Doncaster and Sheffield Wednesday clubs, with new League side Tottenham Hotspur aiming to make hay while the League sun is shining on their ground.