Letter: Origins of baseball lie in the 'Old Country'

Sir: Amateur baseball grew primarily out of gentlemen's cricket clubs in the north-eastern US. Members switched to baseball, not for intellectual reasons, but because baseball happened to win out.

There is a reference to 'base ball' in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, which suggests that a primitive version was played here in the late 18th century. Perhaps baseball, rich in British bloodlines, had to go to America to grow up.

Yours sincerely,

MIKE ROSS

London, W2

14 April