In a new series I’m calling “Baseball Abroad” we’re looking at how the sport arrived in countries around the globe, how it grew in popularity, famous players representing national pride, and where the game we love stands today in terms of national interest and dominance.
To start, we’re traveling to Australia to examine baseball’s origins Down Under. Today on Rounders: Baseball History.
Baseball Arrives in Australia
The popular narrative is that baseball was believed to have been brought to Australia with American gold miners in the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, where miners would play baseball on the gold fields on their rest days. The first reports of organized teams and results appeared in Ballarat, Victoria in 1857.
John Thorn, the Official Historian for Major League Baseball, disputes this narrative. He states the Ballarat tale is preceded by evidence two years earlier, in the Colonial Times [Hobart] of September 22, 1855:
“Sabbath Desecration. — A correspondent requests us to call attention to the practice of a number of boys and young men, who congregate in Mr. Wilkinson’s paddock, near Patrick and Murray Streets, on Sunday afternoons, for playing at cricket, base-ball, &c., making a great noise, and offending the eyes and ears of persons of moral and religious feeling.”
These two events were not near one another, either. Ballarat is in the far southern part of the country, near Melbourne, and Hobart is on the northern coast of the island that has been known as Tasmania since 1856.
What does this recent discovery tell us? Baseball probably came with American miners who traveled to Australia for work, but others from all walks of life brought the sport and popularized it, too. The Victorian Gold Rush of the 1850s attracted many Americans.
In fact, a census shows over 2,908 U.S. natives living Down Under by 1854. These were businessmen, cooks, even escaped slaves. They played the sport, and it grew with Australians. We saw clubs form as time went on:
The city of Sydney reported its first base ball club in 1878
St. Kilda, a community on the outskirts of Melbourne founded a club that would become a leading movement for baseball in the country. It is described as Australia's oldest non-continuous baseball club.
Surry, a community outside of Sydney, also founded a club in the 1870s.
It is clear that by the end of the 1870s, baseball was popular across the country both casually and competitively.
Goodwill Tours Further Popularize Baseball in Australia
As baseball continued growing in Australia, America took notice.
In 1888, American entrepreneur Albert Spalding, who we’ve discussed in our episodes on the invention of the batting headgear and the first baseball cards, decided to take an American pro team to Australia.
The plan was to bring his team, the Chicago White Stockings (later the White Sox), and have them play exhibition matches against the “All-Americans.”
This second club was comprised of a group of players from other professional U.S. clubs. Some athletes that set off on this tour included future hall of famers like:
Cap Anson
John Montgomery Ward
Ned Hanlon (referred to as the “father of modern baseball”)
The group, known as the “Spaulding World Tour” boarded a steamliner and headed overseas to promote the sport.
The Spaulding World Tour Arrives in Sydney
The ships arrived in Sydney harbor on December 14, 1888 draped in red, white, and blue banners. Tour advertising was effective, as hundreds of people waited on the wharfs to greet the Yankee baseballers (that’s literally how the Aussie press referred to them.)
The first match was played the next day in front of 5,500 spectators. The clubs played two more matches in the city before boarding a train to Melbourne.
One standout match was when the White Stockings played a four-inning game against a squad of Melbourne cricket players — the modern Melbourne Baseball Club — before a crowd of 12,000 spectators.
On December 22-23, the club played three more matches in front of excited spectators, then traveled to Adelaide and Ballarat for more games.
A month later, the Spaulding World Tour said goodbye to Australia and sailed off into the sunset.
Fun Note: Spaulding waited until the ship had left the harbor to inform everyone onboard that the ship was now making stops in Asia, Africa, and Europe before making its way back to the United States.
Albert Spaulding deemed the trip so successful that he decided to leave his assistant, Harry Simpson, to help continue growing the sport by establishing more clubs and organizing them into leagues across the country.
Professional Leagues Emerge to Further Grow Baseball
Harry Simpson was successful in establishing more professional baseball structures after Spaulding’s World Tour departed. In 1890, the Victoria Baseball League was founded. In 1891, the country saw the founding of the New South Wales Baseball League.
Unfortunately, Simpson died that same year of typhus, but his efforts are still celebrated even today. He was inducted into the Baseball Australia Hall of Fame in its inaugural class of 2005.
The two leagues Simpson helped form began interleague play, connecting professional baseball nationwide for the first time. The first match was played in 1890 when Victoria played South Australia at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Baseball’s popularity grew more in the coming years thanks to these pro leagues.
Australia forms a National Touring Baseball Squad
In 1897, the Victoria Baseball and New South Wales Baseball Leagues formed the first Australia representative baseball team which toured the United States on what became known as the Kangaroo Tour.
The club toured cities across the United States, but found little on-field success, winning only eight of their first 26 games.
A highlight occurred on June 21, when the Australian baseball team played a game in Boston against a group of retired players. The match was heavily advertised and would feature the unveiling of a new invention, a mechanical pitching machine. Unfortunately, only 500 fans showed up for the game.
In the 8th Inning, it was agreed that the pitching machine would take the mound for the Boston club. The first “throw” was wild, according to a journalist from The Boston Globe, stating that it “appeared so suddenly that the batsman ducked, the catcher made a wild leap to one side while the ball sailed directly over the plate and up against the backstop with a resounding crack.”
After the game, the Boston Squad, who won easily, organized a banquet in the visitors’ honor.
The tour continued, but due to poor attendance, the organizers ran out of cash. The organizers were so broke that the Australian players had to wire friends and family to pay their ship fare to get back home.
American Pros Return to Australia
On New Year’s Day 1914, two American teams returned to Australia — the New York Giants and Chicago White Sox. Notable players from other teams made the trip since it was the offseason and donned each team's uniforms to take part. Some of those players included future Hall of Famers Buck Weaver, Tris Speaker, and Jim Thorpe.
The White Sox and Giants played an exhibition game on the same day they landed in Brisbane. The next two games were played in Sydney and estimates state they drew crowds of 10,000 people. The teams played a fourth game in Melbourne before sailing back to the United States.
Baseball’s popularity in Australia had become undeniable. That grassroots support and continued fan interest led to the next step in the sport’s evolution down under - the formation of a national league fans could call their own.
Next week, we will look at this league’s growth in popularity, where the sport is today in Australia, and profile some of the most famous players from the country to play in Major League Baseball.
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10/26/24: Baseball Abroad: Australia (Pt.2)
11/2/24: Gloves Abroad: Baseball’s Origins in Australia
11/9/24: Foul Play Files: The 1985 Cocaine Scandal
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