Home British baseball An Autumn Classic: Great Britain versus the Bangers

An Autumn Classic: Great Britain versus the Bangers

by Joe Gray

Gb

Planned diamond at Taunton

On Saturday 4 October at 14:15, a person standing on a big patch of grass in Somerset and wearing a chest protector is going to say “Play ball” (or perhaps just “Play” if feeling economical). In case you’ve just returned from a holiday on Mars or have had your head in a long-jump pit for 6 months, the event of course is the baseball game between the Great Britain National Team and a squad of top cricketers picked by the blazing left-handed batter Marcus Trescothick (“Banger” to friends). Basic details of the event can be found here, while below I take a look at the make-up of the Great Britain squad.

A lot of attention has been given to the cricketers who are down to take part – and that’s obviously great for the event as a whole, and therefore good news for baseball  – but no less attention should be given to the players in the Great Britain squad. So, having previously taken a brief look at the cricketers named in the publicity material, I will here run through the composition of Great Britain’s roster.

Let’s start with Brant Ust, tournament MVP from the 2007 Euros. With his only other appearances for Great Britain so far coming in the Four Nations Tournament in Belgium earlier this year, he has not previously competed on British soil. He owns an incredible .636 batting average in a Great Britain shirt, going 28-for-44 to date. Ust is based in the US and in 2007 played for the Tacoma Rainiers, the Seattle Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate.

Other players on the roster who live abroad to play club baseball are Ian Young (in France) and Chris Falls, Craig Pycock, and Sam Whitehead (all in Germany). Like Ust, the three Germany-based players have never competed for the National Team on British soil before, but Whitehead did play a season in the British domestic league back in 2005, helping the Croydon Pirates to win the National Championships (in the regular season he batted .380 and finished with a 3-0 record from the mound). Young has played here on several previous occasions for the National Team and has also played in our domestic league. 

Completing the roster are a number of players from the British league, with representatives from the Bracknell Blazers, Burgess Hill, the London Mets, the Manchester Eagles, and the Richmond Flames.

Even though I might wonder why I wrote this when I’m battling to keep my scoresheet dry, it is going to be a great weekend, not least because the first annual BaseballdeWorld rankings have just been announced and place Great Britain ahead of Italy (a traditional European powerhouse). I don’t think these are official rankings, although they are mentioned in a headline in the IBAF news archive, giving some credibility to them. And I should also point out that Great Britain’s high placing in the rankings is clearly not due to a bias on the website, as our domestic league’s governing body is inexplicably ignored on their listings at the time of writing. [Update: BaseballdeWorld picked up on this story and kindly added the British Baseball Federation’s details to the site.]

Once the Baseball Cup of the Americas is completed, Great Britain will probably be leap-frogged by at least Puerto Rico and Panama, but more importantly we will know who the fourth team in our group for next year’s Baseball World Cup will be. Also in that group will be Russia and Japan; the latter team ranked first in the BaseballdeWorld rankings. The last time Great Britain played a non-European national team was in 1938. (Note: the group currently has “France/Great Britain” down in the IBAF press release, as noted by Matt, but at BaseballGB we are working under the assumption that Great Britain will be given the place that they won in last year’s Euros and that France’s name will be removed in due course, unless we hear otherwise.)

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7 comments

British National Team faces Cricket Squad - News - British National Teams - Mister Baseball October 3, 2008 - 11:04 am

[…] Ust, Josh Chetwynd, Ian Young, Chris Falls, Craig Pycock and Sam Whitehead are expected to play. Joe Gray of Baseball GB takes a closer look at the game. More info also on the official […]

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Joe Cooter October 3, 2008 - 11:00 pm

Well this is going to be interesting. I’ve always wondered about how the players from each sport would fair when trying to play the other sport. I read a tour a bunch of english cricketers took of North America in the late 1850’s. On match was sceduled for late October in Upstate New York. Apparently, the weather was good enough wasn’t good enough to play a full cricket match but there was enought daylight to get nine innings in. The American team won.

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Simon Page October 4, 2008 - 8:25 pm

Just Got home from watching GB Baseball take on the might of Bangers cricketers in Taunton. I have been a member at Somerset ccc for more than 30 years and know very little about baseball however dispite the rain and the lack of serious competition the cricketers offered, it was a thoroughly entertaining afternoon and a big thank you to the GB team for turning up. I for one will deffinately follow the game and the GB team with much interest in the future…..Thanks

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Matt Smith October 5, 2008 - 12:01 pm

Hi Simon

I’m glad you enjoyed the game and will be taking an interest in baseball in the future. BaseballGB’s own Joe Gray was the official scorer yesterday and he will be posting a report in due course.

I’ve always been of the opinion that if you like many of the features of cricket that make it such a great sport (tactical battles between bowler and batter, athletic fielding, games being turned on one delivery/swing of the bat etc), you’ll find lots to enjoy about baseball as well.

Some people seem to be of the opinion that you need to take sides, but I don’t go along with that at all. Why settle for one great sport when you can enjoy two?

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Richard Hall October 5, 2008 - 6:42 pm

I also went to the Bangers vs Gb Baseball game in Taunton yesterday (saturday) i enjoyed it thoroughly. even though it only went 8 innings due to the weather, i however didn’t think to do a box score for it (duh?), does anyone happen to have one i can use?

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Joe Gray October 5, 2008 - 7:40 pm

Simon: Many thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. It’s great that the game appealed to cricket fans.

Richard: Many thanks to you also for sharing your thoughts. I have sent you an email about the box score request.

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BaseballGB » Blog Archive » Great Britain versus the Bangers: Game report October 5, 2008 - 11:05 pm

[…] cut-outs made (these were not as substantial as on the mocked-up image of the diamond shown in a previous post, but I don’t think the groundstaff would have agreed to that amount of de-turfing). On the […]

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