The 2011 Major League Baseball season has just got underway, but we’ve still got a few weeks before the British baseball season begins. 

Sunday 17 April is Opening Day in the UK and preparations are in full swing so that everyone and everything is ready for another great year when the first pitches are thrown that day. 

Over the last week, the British Baseball Federation has released the league structure for the season ahead, Spring Training was turned up a notch in the Herts Spring League, and one more baseball field has emerged on an unsuspecting British public.

BBF League structure for 2011

The British Baseball Federation published details of the league structure for 2011 on Friday.  The BBF website provides the following overview:

51 adult teams will play at four levels and in ten divisions during the 2011 season.

The flagship National Baseball League has expanded again this year, to ten teams and two divisions.

The AAA level will have North and South divisions, with four teams in the North and six in the South.

At AA level, there will be North and Midlands divisions with five teams each and two South divisions with seven teams in one and six in the other.

At A level, there will be two divisions, both in the South, and both with four teams each.

There have been a number of changes relating to the teams, be it existing teams moving to different leagues, new teams joining the leagues and a few teams disbanding.

The expansion of the NBL is the product of two new teams entering British baseball at the top-tier. The Lakenheath Diamondbacks and the Southern Nationals are the newcomers, although both have experienced members involved and are fully expected to merit their ambitious introduction to the sport.

Glasgow and Harrogate bow out as the AAA (North) reduces to four teams, while the loss of the Herts Eagles and Kent Mariners (the latter struggled to field a team regularly in 2010 and have moved down to the AA South) from the AAA (South) has been partly balanced by the promotion of the AA Champion Richmond Knights.

In the AA Midlands, Mildenhall Bulldogs didn’t find it easy to field two teams in 2010, so they will concentrate on the NBL rather than field a Bulldogs 2 team in the Midlands as well.  In their place comes a new Nottingham Rebels team, while credit should go to the Leicester Blue Sox for fielding two teams in the league once again.

There are five newcomers in the AA South.  The Guildford Mavericks and Richmond Dragons have been promoted from the A South, Kent Mariners have taken a step down from AAA, the Essex Redbacks club are making great progress by fielding a second team in their second year to accompany their AAA outfit, and there is a new club called Latin Boys. Horsham’s introduction to adult baseball didn’t go to plan and they have withdrawn after one season, but hopefully they’ll be back in the future.

The Cambridge Royals will begin their new chapter in the A-South, with the Guildford Mavericks maintaining a presence in the division after their promotion by adding a second team. Chelmsford Clippers have disbanded after an entertaining 2011.

The fixture lists for each league should be released on the BBF website soon.

Herts Spring League update

Herts Falcons, Richmond Flames, Southern Nationals, Sidewinders, Essex Redbacks II and Milton Keynes Bucks all got off to perfect starts in the first weekend of the 2011 Herts Spring League.  A full round-up from the first round of games can be found on the Herts website.

Games in Round 2 are being staged at the Essex Arrows’ Town Mead field and Herts’ Grovehill Ballpark this weekend. The Minors take centre stage on Saturday and the Majors on Sunday, with the full schedule listed on the HSL website.

A baseball field emerges in Cambridge

 

Teams are not just preparing the players for the coming season, they are preparing the ballfields as well. 

There’s something gloriously idiosyncratic about baseball fields in Britain.  Visitors to this website will not need reminding that the sport does have a long history in the UK, but it’s a hidden history to the vast majority of people.  With so few knowing that baseball is played and enjoyed here by many enthusiasts, the fields and diamonds are symbolic landmarks of the sport’s existence. 

Their impact is all the more pronounced when a new field emerges seemingly from nowhere.  Last Sunday afternoon, several dog walkers on Coldham’s Common in Cambridge were eyeing an area suspiciously as if a crop circle had suddenly appeared.  Instead, it was the newly-appointed home of the Cambridge Royals, who will join the British A-League this year.

It’s a standard set up familiar to all in British baseball.  This part of the Common (not the actual cow-grazing common part, opposing players will be glad to know) is a large grass area just outside the city centre, predominantly taken up by football pitches.  Alongside this now are two slices of Americana with a British spirit: a gridiron field and the Royal’s field.

 

The pitching mound is in place, there’s a cut-out dirt area at home and the lines are painted on the grass.  All that’s needed now is for the games to begin and that day is quickly approaching.

The 2010 British baseball season has ended on a very disappointing note after Aspi Dimitrov resigned from his position as Southern Senior League Commissioner today.

Dimitrov took on the role two years ago on top of his commitments with Herts Baseball Club.  He has been instrumental in taking some of the progressive thinking displayed at Herts and applying it more widely within the British Baseball Federation (BBF).  In particular, Dimitrov was at the forefront of an effort to generate much-needed income and commercial opportunities for the sport, while also pushing forward plans to promote baseball through the media.

In his resignation letter, Dimitrov stated that many of the clubs have been “fantastic in embracing the new more commercial approach”; however there have been some exceptions and there is clear frustration on Dimitrov’s part that his work has not being given due support from the BBF Board.

“From the very beginning, the more commercial approach was relying on the BBF Board being a very efficient and proactive operation. At present, the environment and conditions at BBF Board level are not conducive for adopting this more commercial approach”, said Dimitrov.

The impact of the resignation was made all the clearer as it was accompanied by Dimitrov’s Southern Senior League Commissioner Annual Report for January-September 2010.  The report highlights the progress that has been made over the period, such as the growing number of teams and the media exposure the sport has obtained, while also pointing out some of the problems that were encountered, most notably the “numerous ultimatums and threats of industrial action from ABUA-GB [Amateur Baseball Umpires Association – Great Britain]”.  It also suggests improvements for the future, such as possible ways in which the postseason structure could be revised.

In his resignation letter, Dimitrov was still keen to emphasise “the very positive steps made by British Baseball in the last year or two”, adding that “the next Southern Senior League Commissioner will come into a position with enormous potential for further development”. 

The question then, of course, is where the BBF Board will recruit the next Southern commissioner from?  Dimitrov’s resignation has been preceded by several BBF Board members resigning from their posts over the past eighteen months.  The sport cannot afford to keep on losing dedicated individuals from its leading Board if there is to be a genuine period of sustained growth over the years ahead.

Thankfully Dimitrov still intends to be an active member of the British baseball community despite his resignation from his Commissioner role, stating: “it goes without saying that I am very keen to continue to support British Baseball regardless of whether it is in a Board or non-Board capacity”.

Herts Baseball Club will be notching up another first this evening.  They will become the first British baseball team to start their own online TV channel.

The Herts Baseball Channel launches at 20.00 BST today with live coverage of the organization’s 2010 Hunlock Series draft. 

The Hunlock Series is the club’s end-of-season event where players from all of their teams are drafted for an intra-club competition.  Two years ago, an audio version of the draft was broadcast online and now they are moving up to a TV stream instead.

The idea that people will be able to listen to live broadcasts of British baseball club drafts is exciting enough, but it’s clear that this is only the beginning of Herts’ plans, as Club president Aspi Dimitrov explains:

“We now have the ability to televise live or on-demand talk shows, fan phone-ins, player interviews, game highlights, pre-game build up and post-game analysis, and this will have a very positive effect on all Herts Baseball operations.’ He added: ‘We can even stream live games from our own ballpark and this can be done by adopting the same methods used by ESPN and FOX when they show live MLB games.  For example, we can televise a Herts Falcons game live with 10 or more different cameras located in different parts of the ballpark and the various video feeds can be mixed to deliver coverage of the highest quality”

You certainly cannot fault Herts for a lack of ambition. 

For the foreseeable future, nothing will beat the traditional methods of local promotion for making people aware of baseball in this country and whether there is a team nearby.  However, the Internet does open up a whole world of opportunities that British baseball can take advantage of. 

Even a simple club website and Facebook entry can be helpful in recruiting new players.  Interactive features like the recent live scoring of the National Baseball Championships then serve a double purpose, firstly in providing another way for current fans to take an active interest in the domestic game regardless of their location, and secondly in giving out a professional, well-organized image to newcomers or potential new recruits.

The idea of streaming British baseball games live online might seem a bit fanciful, and I’m sure it is likely to be some way off in practice, but it shows what is possible.  There’s certainly nothing wrong in setting high goals and the possibility of action from a future NBC being streamed live online is surely something to get behind. 

If you know of any other innovative ideas being taken forward in British baseball, please let us know.

With the National Baseball Championships settled more than a week ago, there’s not a great deal of news to report from the British Baseball scene. 

In fact, last week’s column will probably be the last weekly full-length edition for 2010, but I’m sure I’ll do a round-up column or two later in the year, while adding in shorter posts to cover any news about offseason changes and 2011 plans.

Youth Baseball Championships

The main newsworthy event of the last seven days has been the youth championship qualifiers that were played over the 11-12 September weekend. 

As reported on the BBF website, London Mets Bronco and Herts All Stars qualified in the Bronco section, while Cobham Cougars and London Mets Pony made it through to the Pony section.  Full details of the games involving the Herts All Star team can be found on the Herts Baseball website.

Those four teams will compete alongside Cartmel Valley, Manchester Saints, Polecats Bronco and Polecats Pony in the National Youth Baseball Championships at the John Mills Ballpark in Halton ballpark this coming weekend.  The BBF will be using the GameChanger live scoring service, so the action can be followed as it happens or you can read all the stats once the games have been completed.

Good luck to all involved.

Hit the Pitch

Reading about the efforts to get youngsters playing baseball has reminded me to promote the developing ‘Hit the Pitch’ website produced by BaseballSoftballUK. 

The ‘Hit the Pitch’ programme is designed to offer an accessible and easy way to introduce people to baseball and softball:

“At the core of this project are easy to access, flexible pick-up sessions where new participants and those eager to get back into the game can pitch up and start playing – no strings attached.Although there are opportunities to play in clubs and leagues across the country, Hit the Pitch programmes have been set up to be flexible and easy to access. There are no club committees, no heavy membership fees and no long trips to away games, ideal for you and a group of friends or colleagues eager to have fun, get fit and try something new”.

The website as a whole will be a hub for the baseball/softball community and provide resources and information for anyone who wants to get involved in either sport.

BBB Update

One of my pre-Xmas offseason projects is to collect all this year’s BBB columns together in one volume, most likely a pdf (thanks to Joe for the idea).  I’ll be adding in some of the comments that many of you kindly contributed, where they gave updates and a bit more information about the topics covered in each column.  Hopefully I’ll be able to include some photos and additional commentary along the way as well.

It should make for quite a neat record of the 2010 season and I’ll post more details about it later in the year.