|
Find out more about Allison: Allison Ford is an entertainment writer with her finger on New York's pop culture pulse. She is a film and theater critic for www.newyorkcool.com, and the final authority on the news and trends that everyone's talking about. |
On last night's Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert gave a "Wag of the Finger" to a British author who claims that the English invented the sport of baseball. His evidence? The word 'baseball' used by Jane Austen in her novel Northanger Abbey, published in 1803, almost 40 years before the game was played in America.
Colbert, never afraid to set someone straight, launched into a hilarious bit about why Austen's baseball must have been different from the American version.
"It was a Jane Austen version...where the ball is not hurled about rudely, but rather introduced to the bat through proper channels at a society function."
Check out the clip below for the full version. The baseball bit begins at 1:45.