The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1922-10-13
BASEBALL INCREASES ABROAD
AS RESULT OF RECENT WAR

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scores were almost unknown outside
the American newspaper field and
those magazines devoted to sports.
Major league teams visited foreign
countries and showed the game off.
Like some vaccinations, it didn't take.
The European and Oriental countries
were slow to take up baseball before
the war. Now, however, hardly a
country but has it's baseball teams.
The men who went overseas in 1917
and 1918 mixed with the young men of
a dozen countries. These allied SOL
diers saw for the first time real anna
teur baseball and it did take.
When the war ended three or four
million young men took off their army
uniforms and started looking for a
job. Some Of them have gone far, to
Turkey, Japan, China, South America
and other countries. They got the
jobs and for the first time had some
thing in common, these world travel
ers. They were var veterans and
therefore eligible to membership in an
VI 6oIiiAoClOh OPCu w "OI1u wal lIlCI
alone, the American Legion.
In virtually every foreign country
is a post of the Legion and in each
Legion club room are baseballs and
bats. For the first time there came
into being an American organization
Of young men, and American young
men play their country's national
game. The result of these foreign
units Of the American service mems
organization has meant a formation
of teams and leagues that reaches
around the globe.
London, which before the war looked
on sourly at American teams playing
baseball presents a changed front to-
day. A full eight team league has
blossomed where not a sprout ex-
listed before. Such typically named
playing fields as "The Crystal Palace
grounds and the Stamford bridge field
are utilized by the Americans for
their contests.
The league was started by the Lon
don post of the Legion, which has
spread baseball to the four winds of
the island and wind carrys a long
way. In speaking of the London
league the Paris edition of the New
York Herald says: "The American
Legion is making every effort to pop
ularize baseball in London and is ex-
pending a great deal of time and mon
ey in enlisting both American and
English interest. At a recent game at
Stamford Bridge between the Ameri-
can University club and the United
States Shipping board, the Legion
sent out more than 500 invitations to
American families living in England
to attend the game"
Yokohama and Tokyo in Japan felt
all the thrills of a real world series
when the mines of the two cities en-
gagged in a recent series of their own.
The Japan Advertiser of Tokyo said
just prior to one game: "Interest in
Yokohama and Tokyo is at fever heat
in contemplation of the baseball game
to take place this afternoon between
the American Legion team and the
CouhI'y anu LIE ACnleClc
club"
Not bad for a country which took
baseball by adoption.
Since the armistice thousands of
Americans have learned to call France
a second home. The Paris post of the
American Legion is the center around
which most of the social and athletic
activities of the Americans in the
French capital whirl. A league is in
full sway there with American teams
as members. Exhibition games with
teams made up of French veterans are
played often. The French have taken
to the game enthusiastically.
To further spread the knowledge of
baseball, the Paris Legion team chal-
lenged a London post of the British
Legion, the organization of English
ex-soldiers, which corresponds to the
American Legion, of which Sir Doug