According to the Times Online (U.K.), rounders–a predecessor to what both Jane Austen and we Wretched Colonials refer to as baseball–is alive and well in the U.K. amongst modern young ladies.

The name may evoke childhood memories of knockabout beach games and school matches for those too slow and uncoordinated for tennis or athletics, but these days rounders, the forerunner of baseball, is taking itself very seriously, indeed. The game began in Tudor times and is mentioned in Northanger Abbey as a light-hearted pastime, but the teenagers charging grimly between the posts at the national trials appear the antithesis of Jane Austen’s genteel young ladies.

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Morland might disagree, remembering the grubby little girl who grew up to be the mistress of Woodston Parsonage (who never minds dirt).