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Another interesting thing is that baseball was quite popular in England for a time before it faded away.
Rounders (the version of base ball that was codified in Ireland in 1884, so well after the Kinckerbockers codified American baseball and around the same time that the NL was formed) was one of the big team sports for schoolgirls in the UK (alongside netball and field hockey) and Ireland. It only went into decline in the 21st century once there was a serious attempt to push women's cricket.
TIL that the claim that Abner Doubleday invented baseball was a myth created to refute the idea that baseball was derived from rounders. Unsurprisingly, the truth is that both games derived from informal "base ball" games with uncodified rules that originated in England and were played across the English-speaking world - similarly to how Rugby, association football, and gridiron all developed independently from uncodified proto-football.
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You're right, it's absolutely fascinating that baseball was ever popular anywhere.
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