A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson — John Shaqi
A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. AnsonAnson, Adrian C. (Adrian Constantine)
History
A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson
Anson, Adrian C. (Adrian Constantine)
Baseball
When it came to playing cricket we proved to be something of a surprise
party. In these games we played eighteen men against eleven and defeated
with ease such, crack, organizations as the Marylebone, Prince's, and
Surrey Clubs in London, the Sheffield Club at Sheffield; the Manchester
Club in Manchester and the All-Ireland Club in Dublin, while the game
with the Richmond Club was drawn on account of rain, we having the best
of it at that time. While I was, comparatively speaking, a novice in
this game, at which the Wrights were experts, they having enjoyed a
reputation as first-class cricketers in America for years, yet I managed
to make the highest score of all in our game with the All-Ireland
Eleven, and to hold my own fairly well in the other cricket games that
were played.
It is impossible for me to speak too highly of the treatment that was
accorded to us on this trip both in England and Ireland, where peer and
peasant both combined to make our visit a pleasant one. We were
entertained in royal style wherever we went and apparently there was
nothing too good for us. Lords and ladies were largely in evidence among
the spectators wherever we played and among our own countrymen residing
in the British metropolis we were the lions of the day.
The contrast between the crowds in attendance at our games there and
those that greeted us at home attracted my attention most forcibly. An
English crowd is at all times quiet and sedate as compared with a crowd
in our own country. They are slower to grasp a situation and to seize
upon the fine points of a play. This, so far as base-ball was concerned,
was only to be expected, the game being a strange one, but the same fact
was true when it came to their own National game, that of cricket. There
was an apparent listlessness, too, in their playing that would have
provoked a storm of cat-calls and other cries of derision from the
occupants of the bleaching boards at home.
It was our skill at fielding more than at batting that attracted the
attention of the Britishers and that brought out their applause. Our
work in that line was a revelation to them, and that it was the direct
cause of a great improvement afterwards in their own game there can be
no reason to doubt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account