Yesterday was a holiday for the young folks. All the children of the public schools, numbering some two or three thousand, accompanied by their parents and teachers, went out to the Fair Grounds and spent the day in sports best suited to their years...A cricket club, composed of boys, from twelve to fifteen years of age, had a fine spirited game during the day, and handled the bat almost as well as the members of the St. Louis Club...
-St. Louis Daily Bulletin, May 26, 1860
This is interesting in that it's my understanding that generally speaking cricket during this era was played by adults while the kids were playing base ball. It's possible that this match was inspired by the excitement surrounding the St. Louis/Chicago cricket match earlier in the month. Also of note is that this is one of the very few antebellum references in the St. Louis papers to children playing sports. The only other one I'm aware of is a 1859 article in the Missouri Republican that mentioned several youth activities, including shiny and mumbly peg.
2 comments:
I can't speak to St. Louis, but it certainly was not a universal truth that boys didn't play cricket. There was quite a lot of cricket going on in Philadelphia among the younger set. On the other hand, this is one of the likelier explanations for why cricket caught on in Philadelphia: catch 'em young. So perhaps Philadelphia was peculiar in this regard.
I think I have a post going up tomorrow about the trouble someone had putting together a cricket club in StL in 1852 and one of the things that I don't think I mentioned was that this (to me) illustrated how the game was "alien" to the area. It seems that the game was imported in the early 1850s as compared to a folk game like base ball that was probably played in one form or another throughout the 19th century. Generally speaking, it makes sense for the kids to be playing the folk game rather than something imported by adults. But it's just a generalization and I'm sure that there's plenty of examples of kids playing cricket all over the US.
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