By Michael Jones:
With the wet weather now hopefully over, or at least momentarily absent on Sunday, the latest edition of the British Baseball Pavilion will be held at Finsbury Park, near to the home of the London Mets and Meteors baseball and softball clubs, on Thursday 19 July. Continue reading
The third instalment of the British Baseball Pavilion (South East) will take place on the evening of Thursday 12 April, beginning at 6:00pm. This time we head to Ye Olde Mitre Tavern in the Farringdon area of London.
The National Baseball League will be well underway by then, while the other divisions will be gearing up, and so there will be plenty to talk about. One featured topic will be how we can go about improving press coverage for baseball in different areas. The venue is a gem of a pub situated down a sneaky (Labyrinth-style) cut-through between Hatton Garden and Ely Place, within easy access of Farringdon mainline station and Chancery Lane on the underground.
People in any other parts of the country who would like to replicate the idea and begin a second regional chapter can leave a comment below to request more details on how to go about it.
Thanks to Michael Jones for writing this article, which was first published on the BBF website.
The British Baseball Pavilion’s South East Chapter will meet at The Globe Pub on Morning Lane in Hackney at 6.00 pm on March 15 to get in an hour of banter about the upcoming Spring League, the start to the season and the latest player moves across the BBF divisions before heading to the Empire to enjoy the show.
This follows the inaugural meeting of the Pavilion in Central London last month, where over 15 players representing 15 different teams, including some from the GB Baseball programme, came together to enjoy one another’s company off the diamond.
The March meeting and the trip to see Shadowball will take place just two days before National Baseball League clubs take to the field for the first round of Herts Spring League matches, and nine days before other clubs hit the field for pre-season games organised by the Herts and Leicester baseball Clubs.
British Baseball Pavilion co-ordinators Joe Gray and Michael Jones were delighted with the attendance at the first meeting in early February, with members of the Brentwood Stags in particular enjoying the opportunity to spread baseball’s gospel to other members of the bar!
For many sports played in Britain, such as football and cricket, the community spirit that can be fostered within a club bar is a crucial factor in the success of grass-roots activities. And in the baseball played on the continent, taking The Netherlands as one example, community clubs thrive through the social hub of a bar or clubhouse.
But in British baseball, it is often a battle just for clubs to secure a piece of land to erect a backstop on, and thus few outfits have a clubhouse or pavilion. There’s no doubt that this puts baseball at a disadvantage relative to competing sports on the British landscape.
As with many areas of British baseball, though, things do not need to be doom and gloom. We just need to be more creative. And so Joe Gray (Official Scorer, Southern Nationals) and Michael Jones (PR & Marketing Officer, Essex Redbacks) are proposing the start of a monthly gathering on a weekday evening for members of any clubs or other organizations associated with British baseball, and any new or established baseball fans. It will be called the “British Baseball Pavilion” and during the warmer months we hope that the gathering can begin with a friendly game of catch in a nearby park.
The primary purpose of the British Baseball Pavilion will be to add the opportunity for a regular social occasion to the British baseball calendar. However, it is hoped that the discussions that will take place as people unwind after a day at work would also lead to the sharing of local successes and the beginning of more cross-club and cross-organization collaborations. It is a bigger-picture view that we must take if baseball is to regain its rightful place on the British sporting map: the real competition is between baseball and other sports, not among individual clubs.
The first British Baseball Pavilion is scheduled for Wednesday 8 February, beginning at 5:30pm, at the Cittie of Yorke pub in Central London (less than half a mile down the road from British baseball’s first ever league offices, back in the 19th Century). To register your interest please get in touch with Joe via his contact page on the Project COBB website.
Among the various topics under discussion at the inaugural gathering will be the optimum format for the Pavilion, and the best choice of location and venue for future dates. So to have your say, we hope you can join us.
If, as is hoped, the idea does bear fruit, we’d encourage community members in other corners of Britain to set similar ventures going; hence, this will be the “British Baseball Pavilion (London and South East)” to leave the door open for duplication.