British Baseball Beat: BBF league structure announced and a baseball field emerges in Cambridge

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.