The 2011 Major League Baseball season has just got underway, but we’ve still got a few weeks before the British baseball season begins.Â
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.Â
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
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Teams are not just preparing the players for the coming season, they are preparing the ballfields as well.Â
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.Â
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 1996 national final was played at Coldham’s Common. It was the (then) brand new diamond for the Cambridge Monarchs.
John Roebuck, from the Parks department of the local council, threw out the first pitch to officially open the ground.
Then about 2000ish they moved home games to RAF Feltwell. Nice to see a diamond back at the Common.
Thanks very much for that info, Mark. Didn’t know there used to be a field there, let alone one used for the national final.
Here’s the line scores for that three-game series:
Game 1
Game 2
Game 3
…all just added to Project Cobb’s growing National Champions archive
Great stuff Joe. Thanks
Hey guys, it’s good to see the leagues expanding once more…
Any info on the Latin Boy’s and where they will be playing?
This season is looking to be a good one, the two new teams in the NBL looked good when we played them the past two weekends. (I felt we were really unlucky not to get a results agains the natonals yesterday but hey ho!)
Hi Luke,
I think they’ve been training in Clapham, so my best guess is somewhere in South London — but we should know more once the new BBF site is launched (which will be very soon I believe), enabling new teams’ details to be added
Good luck for the season.
I’m looking out for some smart plays from you at shortstop. You certainly made a very good name for yourself there in last year’s NBL campaign.
Joe
Hi guys
Great to get the season going again. I can’t wait to make the step up to AAA with many of the Clippers players who have come over to the Redbacks this season, both at AA and AAA level.
We’re uploading our reports onto our forum again, with the 6 of our 8 games from the Spring League already here: http://essexredbacks.proboards.com/
I’m not sure I’m needed as a catcher this season, which should save my weary knees, but we’ll keep you updated to all the progress the club makes through the summer.
Michael Jones
Press Officer
Essex Redbacks Baseball Club
Thanks Michael. The Clipper game reports were some of the best out there so it will be great to see that continue this year with the Redbacks. Good luck for the season ahead.
Just wanted to say good luck to two of the newest teams in 2011, both formed by ex-Leicester Blue Sox players.
Cambridge Royals has been re-established thanks to former Blue Sox slugger Adam Brown.
Nottingham Rebels is the brain child of our former captain Shannon Henry.
Both guys have done sterling work building teams and diamonds from scratch during the off-season.
And despite losing the majority of our first team to these new clubs, Leicester has managed to recruit sufficient quality and quantity to put two teams in the league once again.
Thanks for that Joe, I’m looking forward to seeing the new website actually.
I’m looking to do a bit more with the bat this year, and hopefully stay sharp at shortstop.
Quick question on Sunday I turned a double play against the Nationals, a groundball was hit up the middle, I fielded it stepped on the base, jumped the runner and threw to first. How is this scored is it 6-6-3 or 6-3 or something else?
Personally Luke, I would score as a 6-3 double play. The baserunner would be marked out as Force out-6. The batter would be gdp 6-3. Joe probably has a better way, but for my two cents hope this helps! Glad to see the blog back and running again!!!
Adam Commons
Essex Redbacks
I’d put a “6” in the sqaure of the runner starting from first and “6-3” in the batter’s square
I would use 6U-3 for that. You normally use a U to denote an unassisted play, which is what happened here.
Oh cheers to both Matts by the way. The field is nicely tamped down now and the council should be putting the backstop up soon.
Hi Adam, no problem. Looking forward to getting along to a few games there.
Has anyone heard anything about the schedule yet? All my players will have booked holidays at this rate. Only 10 days til Opening day and we don’t even know who we’re playing!
Hi Adam. I believe they should be available very soon.
BBF schedules are now available:
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=bf88013c30f61369b03d355fe&id=bd92242826
Shame it had a number of glaring errors in the Northern and Midlands schedules.
Credit to the affected clubs opening lines of communication yesterday to re-do the schedules for the BBF.
Hi guys
Just wanted to know whether we had a Twitter hashtag for updating scores throughout the season?
I was chatting with a few people yesterday and we suggested #bbfscore – add in the two teams playing and the inning for play-by-play updates, or at the end of the match so that we can race through and get the results as soon as possible.
What do you reckon?
Mike
Hi Michael. #bbfscore looks a decent option to me. I try to get #britishbaseball in when I can, but that uses up quite a few precious characters!
You could add other things in to make it more specific such as leagues (#bbfnblscore, #bbfaaascore, #bbfaascore, #bbfascore) although, again, that starts using us characters. I guess if you did use the league in the hash tag then you might be more able to use abbreviations for the teams, which could get very complicated otherwise. SO NBL could be:
CRO, RIC, SOUM, BRA, ESS, LON, HER, MIL, LAK, SOUN
Southampton Mustangs and Southern Nationals gets tricky there!
Great stuff, Matt. 140 characters really isn’t many, but we’ll make it work.
Game on. Three days until we go live, kids!
Mike
Hello again.
If anybody uses game changer, can you drop me a line?
Would like to ask some questions about it.
Matt
info@leicesterbluesox.co.uk
Re: three-letter abbreviations for NBL teams
Funnily enough I was talking with someone else about this very topic today, and the problems caused by SOU in the NBL.
Here’s what I’ve settled on for the GBBSA for this season, what I’m hoping the BBF will settle on on the website, and perhaps what could be used on Twitter:
BBL, CRP, ESS, HTF, LKD, LNM, MBU, RCF, SMU, SNA
Pretty sure MLB has standardized abbreviations across different things for the teams (e.g. STL always means the Cards rather than the Mariners). No reason why we shouldn’t in Britain too.
I suggest — again for standardization — using the abbreviations on the BBF site for the other leagues too on Twitter.
These can be seen in the week-ahead schedule on the page for each division.
Joe
Hi Joe
I popped over to look at something on the BBF website and noticed their abbreviations too. The stickler in me would prefer them to be a bit more consistent rather than sometimes abbreviating the nickname, sometimes the place name etc, but I guess this way each one can be distinctive across the leagues so the pros outweigh the cons.
So AAA South…
OXF, ERB, INF, BAD, RKT, MTR
Oxford Kings, Essex Redbacks, Bracknell Inferno, Bristol Badgers, Richmond Knights, London Metros
What do we think?
Mike
The MLB typically favour abbreviating the city and only using the nickname as well if necessary. So BOS rather than BSX and STL rather than SLC, but NYY and NYM, and LAD and LAA.
I think for the point of consistency, if you have clubs that have multiple teams, it would be good if the first 2 letters represented the club and the 3rd letter the team. So HTF, HTH and HTR for the 3 herts clubs as an example?
How about
LBS
&
LB2
For Blue Sox 1 & 2?
And how come we’re discussing this here and not informing the BBF?!
Thanks for the suggestions. I know there have been discussions about standardized abbreviations between the GBBSA and BBF.