ABSTRACT
Introduction For many decades the United States has been actively involved in international sports with many early influences coming from the British Isles, particularly England. English settlers and their American offspring established horse racing, boxing, pedestrianism, and cricket as major pastimes in the period before the American Civil War (1861-1865). After the war, other sporting influences emerged, including the arrival of football, in the forms of soccer and rugby, which were codified in England in 1863 and 1871, respectively. During the 1870s and 1880s baseball began to replace cricket as the leading summer bat-and-ball sport, though pockets of cricket popularity remained, and English and Australian cricket teams continued to tour the United States until the 1920s.1 Baseball became so popular that Albert Goodwill Spalding, former player and sporting goods pioneer, financed a world baseball tour in 1888.2 Though the world did not take to baseball as easily as Spalding had hoped, neither did Cuba take up cricket as Winston Churchill famously predicted.3
