The Liverpool Mormon Yankees

I awakened to a -24 degrees reading on the thermometer this morning. Seems the air is coming in the form of the Arctic Express today. Jake came with dinner last night, and he was in a rental car with bald tires. He got stuck in the road on the way out, but we were able to extract him from the snowbank and send him on his way in frigid conditions. Always good to remember that “slow is best” during the winter on the ranch road.

It’s also Martin Luther King Day in America, and the 60th inaugural of a new POTUS, this time it was Donald J. Trump. It’s January 20th, 2025. 

I drove out of here after starting a fire in the stove to warm things up. It was 50 degrees on that side of the house. I went to Heber City for breakfast and listened to much of the inaugural proceeding on the car radio.

I was asked by Melanie the other day if I had ever written about the Mormon Yankees. I remembered writing about them tangentially in previous posts, but never intentionally. So today I will tell the full story.

To appreciate the context I must first lay a foundation. President Henry D. Moyle was one of Grandfather Lee’s favorite people. He was a wealthy businessman before being called to the apostleship, and he and Grandfather became fast friends. I was privileged to be his home teacher for a season in the Federal Heights Ward where we all resided. 

President Henry D. Moyle

Because of his success in business, President Moyle was what most people today would have called a very progressive thinker. For example, he favored rapid building of Church chapels throughout Europe. In addition, he sought and found prominent buildings for the Church to purchase then convert into mission homes. He wanted the Church to establish a “presence” throughout Europe. He reasoned that if missionaries were successful and added to the ranks of the members, the resulting tithing revenues would easily accommodate his expansionist vision. He does what most people who spend first, then hope for the best, also do without having the cash in the bank.

He served eventually as a counselor to President David O. McKay, succeeding the venerable President J. Reuben Clark when he died. It was clear President Moyle would have a vigorous role to play among his brethren of the First Presidency. Eventually, there would be four counselors serving simultaneously with President McKay as he aged, and that proved to be an unprecedented development that had never been seen in Church history, nor since. Two of the counselors, Alvin R. Dyer and Thorpe B. Isaacson were not ordained apostles. 

That development ended when President McKay was succeeded by President Joseph Fielding Smith, and Harold B. Lee and N. Eldon Tanner were named as counselors.

There were signs the Church was growing, but not fast enough to keep up with all the spending. Today, we would call it “deficit spending.” President Joseph Fielding Smith, who was serving as the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Elder Harold B. Lee sought to put a damper on the profligate spending, and were aided by President N. Eldon Tanner of the First Presidency, all of whom were fiscal conservatives. Together they reined in spending and put the Church back on a sound fiscal footing. From 1970 until today, we are reaping the benefit of that conservative approach to Church finances.

T. Bowring Woodbury (l) and President McKay

That’s a quick snapshot in Church history to provide the background. President T. Bowring Woodbury at the time was serving as the president of the British Mission. He shared the expansive vision of President Moyle, and he was what we would likely call a “super salesman” in today’s world. It's not my purpose here to provide the complete litany of abuses that arose in that era. Those have been thoroughly documented elsewhere. Later, he would finish his business career as a vice-president in marketing at Zions Bank, where I knew him. (Coincidentally, President Jeffrey R. Holland and Elder Quentin L. Cook served as missionaries in the British Mission under President Woodbury). He was always a natty dresser and forever a promoter in the first rank. As a mission president he sought to put the Church “on the map” by promoting the Church in every way he knew with aggressive programs to baptize thousands where only mere hundreds had been the historical precedent. He instituted something called “baseball baptisms.”

The elders would gather at local parks throughout England and play baseball together. It was a novelty that attracted many youthful English participants. They would play with the Mormon elders, then go swimming in the nearby pools and local bathhouses where baptisms were performed. The numbers of baptisms soared, and the program was deemed a rousing success. This was way before the Osmonds made their rise to prominence to assist with marketing the Church, and the American baseball playing missionaries scored a lot of baptisms that pleased their promoters.

But there was a problem. The success was neutralized by the vast number of “converts” that were lost due to lack of follow up and fellowshipping on the part of the local members where they resided. Many of those “converts” would attest years later that they had no idea they had been baptized into the Church. The expected tithing revenues, therefore, failed to materialize, and the Church’s deficit spending caught up and threatened the Church financially during the Sixties.

That’s where I come in. I went to the North British Mission in 1967-69. One of my first assignments as a new missionary was to look up some of those ill-gotten converts. Our instructions were to seek them out, and if we could locate them ascertain their level of interest in the Church. President Spencer W. Kimball was by then supervising the work in England. My companion and I were given about 2500 names to research. If they expressed interest in the Church we were to embrace them and encourage them further. If they knew nothing about the Church and we were unable to arouse any interest we were to excommunicate them and strike their names from the records of the Church. I used to joke that I excommunicated WAY, WAY MORE than I baptized in my two years in England, and that was no joke - it was true. We failed to find most of our 2500 names.

President Wilford H. Payne was my first mission president. He was an advocate for “legitimate” baseball among missionaries. He elevated the effort by subscribing our North British Mission team in a semi-pro baseball league (“The National League”) sponsoring teams throughout England. We were exclusively Americans back then, and we competed against other American teams mostly comprised of servicemen in the various branches of the military serving in England. It was all above board, hoping to offset what back then was a never-ending onslaught of negative press from many sources. 

I joined what we dubbed the “Liverpool Mormon Yankees,” called to play by President Payne when I had been out about four months. There was also a “London Mormon Yankees” team. We were headquartered in Liverpool and the nearby Wirral Peninsula. I took Mom there with me years later to visit my old stomping grounds, though it didn’t resemble the old days much when we were there as missionaries. The team had been playing for three years before I joined them. We did well, playing other teams within our mission boundaries, and we did well enough that we went on to play in regional tournaments, then down to Nottingham (outside our mission) to play for the national championship. Here’s the line score from my Google search:

We took home the national trophy. I have to say the competition wasn’t really that great. Baseball was in its infancy back then in England, and it has never overtaken the national pastime of football (“soccer” is what we call it here).

Truth be told, it felt like that summer was one long holiday for us. We even got in a long weekend of spectating at the British Open golf championship that happened to be played within our zone boundaries that summer. The instruction from our zone leader was to “proselyte” among the spectators. It’s in quotes because that didn’t happen at all.

President Lenard R. Robison succeeded President Payne as our new mission president in July. He came to one of our games, and he told me later it was his strong impression after witnessing it firsthand to shut it all down. His instincts were right on point. He also told me that was when he knew I would be one of his Assistants someday before I went home. 

I am so grateful to have lived long enough to witness the day when President Russell M. Nelson has put the Church unerringly on a path of single-minded discipleship to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and temple worship. May we never again return to the days I lived through in England as a baseball-playing missionary. I am simply illustrating here what the contrast has been historically.

We didn’t attract many converts because of our exploits as baseball players, I’m sure. For all the hype that went along with it there was very little substance that converted to baptisms. We attracted a lot of young English lassies, some of whom were members, most were not, but we were little more than an interesting sideshow. Parenthetically, if you do a Google search for “Mormon Yankees,” you will discover a basketball team organized in the Fifties in Australia.

Eventually there would be seven missions throughout the British Isles, including Scotland and Ireland. We were on the front end of converting districts into stakes, and that part was fulfilling and rewarding. I have written elsewhere of my interactions with Grandfather and Aunt Joan when they visited my mission during the time when I had a challenging assignment with my “greenie” Elder Shoemaker in Gateshead up in Northumberland. 

So the chapter on the Mormon Yankees ends with my affirmation that even seemingly frivolous ventures can bear long-lasting fruits. We baptized the niece of the branch president during our assignment on the Wirral Peninsula while playing baseball. That was the summer back in the day, when native branch presidents thought they were entitled to a summer vacation (not kidding here), and we took over his branch leadership responsibilities while he relaxed. She remains active in the Church today, presuming she’s still living.

I was just sitting down to write when three beautiful young women passed over my threshold - granddaughters Paden, Chloe and Aleyah Goates. They were off for the holiday, and what a delightful trio they are!

I am grateful for each of you, and pray you may all be blessed. The sky overhead is crystal blue, not a cloud in sight. I pray that it may be so for each of you today and always!