Sports History

NEW PODCAST! The History of Sport Episode 2: Baseball & the Little Pretty Pocket Book

One more episode from my new/other podcast before getting back to medieval travel. You can find more on Apple Podcasts and all the other usual platforms.

Today's episode is about a piece of baseball history, very early baseball history. It's about an 18th-century children's book, about a nationalistic effort to claim ownership over baseball, and about a mining engineer's nostalgic memories of the game's early days. It's about Albert Spalding, the Spalding of so much sports equipment, Abner Graves, the mining engineer in question, and the Civil War general, Abner Doubleday. It's about John Newbery, the man for whom the Newbery Medal for American children's literature is named.


NEW PODCAST! The History of Sport Episode 1: Father of Boxing, Swinger of Swords

I’ve got something new to share with you today. I’ve been working on a new podcast. It won’t be replacing Human Circus, and I won’t clutter up this space with too much non-medieval history material, but I’ll post the first couple of episodes here for anyone who’s interested. You can find more on Apple Podcasts and all the other usual podcatchers. I hope you enjoy it!

This boxing history episode (they won’t always be about boxing) is the story of James Figg, the 17th-century born "Father of Boxing" and one of the 1992 Boxing Hall of Fame inductees. But his boxing was not the sport you're familiar with today. Figg, who would set up his academy on Tottenham Court Road, was before the Queensbury rules and all of that. Figg entered the ring with a cudgel and a sword.

This is his story, and the story of his fight with Ned Sutton, the pipe-fitter from Gravesend.