The British baseball season will get underway on Sunday as the eight National Baseball League teams compete over four double-headers.

We’ve enjoyed some glorious weather over the last week or so, the type that might be described as ‘baseball weather’ in the States. In the UK ‘baseball weather’ really covers the whole spectrum from heat waves to hailstorms, but of late teams have been warming up for the season in the sunshine.

Typically, the temperatures are forecast to take a downward turn over the coming weekend so we won’t quite have the sunny start to the season that we were hoping for. However, that’s not going to dampen the enthusiasm, nor reduce the temperature of the competitive contests.

The Southampton Mustangs and London Mets will be out to get some revenge over the teams that knocked them out of the play-offs last year (the Lakenheath Diamondbacks and Harlow – previously Southern – Nationals).

The Essex Arrows and Croydon Pirates will both see their double-header as a decent chance to get an early win or two on the board, while the Herts Falcons have been making plenty of noise in recent months and will want to show in their double-header against the Bracknell Blazers that ‘winning the offseason’ is only the start of their ambitions for 2012.

Games will be played at Grovehill Ballpark in Hemel Hempstead, Finsbury Park in North London, the Townmead Leisure Centre in Waltham Abbey and – it seems – at Dave Ward Field in Croydon (it looks like the Southampton Mustangs and Lakenheath Diamondbacks will play their double-header at the Croydon Pirates’ ground).

Those who can’t make it to any of the games should be able to catch-up with all the action courtesy of the impressive new GameDay feature on the BBF website (Nationals-Mets example here).

Meanwhile, plenty of other teams around the country will be continuing their pre-season games, including more action at the Herts Spring League and the Leicester Spring League.