The (English) Baseball League (est. 1888): A History

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Baseball League 1902
Second Division Team Batting and Pitching

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Baseball League 1902
Second Division Award Winners

Baseballer of the Year and Batsman of the Year: Alistair Bolton




Pitcher of the Year: Edward Smith





Newcomer of the Year: Bradley Betts

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Baseball League 1902
Second Division League Leaders

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Baseball League 1902
Second Division Top Game Performances

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Baseball League 1902
Second Division Top 20 Batsmen and Pitchers

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Baseball League 1902
Second Division Top Systems

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Baseball League 1902
Second Division Financial Report

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Fulham Cry Foul!

For yet another season, the Fulham Baseball Club have been barely edged out for promotion to the top tier of clubs in the Baseball League. This time around, having drawn their season series with Nottingham Forest at three, the run differential of a mere six cost them the right to compete in the First Division for 1903. The Cottagers’ 531 runs scored versus 354 yielded runs resulted in a 177 run differential. The Foresters scored 550, gave up 367, and as such ended up with two key things, a 183 run advantage, and the promotion.

In 1901, you may recall, Fulham lost out on promotion to Clapton Orient after the two clubs drew for second on the table, only to see Orient win the nod by dint of having won five of the six season matches from the Cottagers. Fulham expressed their unhappiness in muted tones at the time, given the superiority of Orient in the head to head matches, although it was not lost on anyone that Fulham outplayed the rest of the Division by two games better than the O’s.

This season, with Fulham and Forest even on both record and head to head competition, a mere six runs over the course of an entire five month season will consign the cottagers to another year in the nether regions of the League, where the gate and the talent will be second rate, possibly stunting their chances to make their mark on the League in full face of all who follow the British game.

The Cottagers are none too happy about this state of affairs, and their chairman, the estimable Charles Creswell, is only too happy to say so to anyone within earshot who may or may not listen. Mr Creswell has been heard to say, repeatedly, something on the order of “When a promotion is at stake, table draws should be settled on the pitch, and never on the arithmometer!”

This publication is certainly in agreement with that sentiment. It would behove the League to settle a circumstance of this kind with a 103rd match of the season not only to forestall future inevitable complaints of this sort, but also to generate additional gate receipts for what must be by practical definition a full house, to which surely none of the brilliant business minds in charge of League affairs could mount any serious objection.

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Frederick Britton Retires

One of the greatest pitchers in Burnley baseball club history, Frederick Britton, he of “Three Freds” fame, has announced his retirement as of the end of the 1902 season.

Mr Britton, aged forty-six years, joined the Baseball League along with the Clarets in 1888, but he’d been pitching in competitive baseball from shortly after the Spalding tour of 1879, at which point he abandoned a promising cricket career for work on the diamond.

Mr Britton immediately became one of the most accomplished and durable pitchers during the early League days. He led the League in games started three of the League's first four years, and in wins twice. His best season was 1890, during which as the acclaimed best pitcher in the Game he paced the League with a record of seventeen wins versus four defeats, sporting an earned runs average of 2.64 whilst Burnley was winning its third straight league Cup.

Unlike many good players with long careers, who are released from their clubs and languish in the purgatory of unwantedness for several seasons before quietly retiring, the Clarets found starting work for the durable Mr Britton all the way to the end. Mr Britton started twenty five games in 1902, although he finished with his worst record of seventeen defeats versus only nine wins, a 5.53 ERA, issuing a League leading 134 bases on balls, and was in fact instrumental in the Clarets dropping to the Second Division for the first time in their history. That was proof positive to Mr Britton that it was time to quit.

Nevertheless, Mr Britton retires with some of the greatest individual marks in British baseball history. He stands second in career wins with 195, third in games pitched (396), fourth in games started (374), second in complete games (278), second in clean sheets (27), and second in innings pitched (3,210).

Mr Britton will be most remembered for his durability and reliability, having missed significant time to injury only once, in 1895, and even then only for three weeks. Although struggling to keep up with the youngsters of the Game in recent seasons, he showed one more flash of the old stuff in 1902, on the eleventh of July, when he recorded his final clean sheet against Middlesbrough with a five hit effort for a two-nil victory.

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The 1903 Baseball Season Commences

As the warmth of May begins to envelop the island, thoughts turn to sporting pursuits away from the foot and ball variety and towards the bat and ball variety. Gone are the football games of the rugby and association strains, and here are the batting games of cricket and, of course, baseball.

The Baseball League season has become among the most anticipated events in Britain, a harbinger of spring as certain as the green of the trees and the song of the wren and robin.

Nineteen hundred and three brings to us yet another club from the capital, this year the formidable Hammers of West Ham United up from the Central League, who ply their trade in Newham, a mere five miles from London City. This brings the number of that region’s clubs in the League to four, with one of them in the top tier (Clapton Orient), and West Ham strong enough to be poised to join them for next season. The nationalisation of the League continues apace, however, which is the greater point. This sport of baseball is no longer the Lancashire game alone.

The strength of the top tier lies again in Newcastle, Burslem and Blackburn, and the returning Nottingham Foresters will be sure to make hay and spoil, if not steal, the Cup. On the second level, besides League infants West Ham, look for Fulham to once again be the class of the next tier as they seek to shake off the frustrations of drawing level for the second promotion spot each of the past two years only to be shut out on mathematical technicalities. They have reloaded and are gunning for the top. Speaking of gunners, a newly strengthened Woolwich Arsenal should make interesting their first serious attempts at promotion after having toiled in the Division’s nether regions for the past decade of seasons as the first of the London clubs to make a go at League ball.

And now begins the season!

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Baseball League 1903: Clubs

<<<<< All updated uniforms courtesy of forum member No Pepper >>>>>

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Baseball League 1903: Club Locations


First Division



Second Division

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Baseball League 1903
First Division Results

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Baseball League 1903
First Division Champions

Newcastle United

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Baseball League 1903
First Division Final Table

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Baseball League 1903
First Division Team Batting and Pitching

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Baseball League 1903
First Division Award Winners

Baseballer of the Year and Batsman of the Year: Alistair Bolton




Pitcher of the Year: Jesse Morgan




Newcomer of the Year: Harold Hind

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Baseball League 1903
First Division League Leaders

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Baseball League 1903
First Division Top Game Performances

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Baseball League 1903
First Division Top 20 Batsmen and Pitchers