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The first round of games from the Herts Spring League (HSL) over the previous weekend gave all involved the chance to knock off some rust and ease their way into the 2010 British baseball season.\u00c2\u00a0We have baseball and British Summer Time, but the weather doesnt want to turn to springtime just yet.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, details of the six games that took place at Ham Field were not available at time of writing, but there was more than enough action at Grovehill Ballpark for us to look back at.\u00c2\u00a0 There was an average of twenty runs and nearly nine errors per game in the six contests at the home of Herts Baseball Club.\u00c2\u00a0 It was an indication of a few lopsided match-ups and, more particularly, teams containing some very welcome newcomers to the sport.<\/p>\n
From experienced players to those playing in games for the first time, and even some potential official scorers learning the ropes from our own Joe Gray, the twelve contests on Saturday and Sunday would have been an invaluable exercise.\u00c2\u00a0 Weather permitting, the HSL will continue over the coming Easter weekend with twelve more games, before the top teams head on to the tournament final over the following weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The Herts Falcons got their Spring League off to a winning start by defeating the MK Bucks by a score of 9-6 in seven innings.\u00c2\u00a0 The Bucks actually out-hit the Falcons by 9 to 8, but 7 errors, 6 walks, 2 passed balls and 1 hit-by-pitch led to Milton Keynes conceding six unearned runs.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Falcons followed up that victory by defeating their Triple-A counterparts, the Herts Eagles, 6-0 in a five-inning game that saw Peter Kikel pitch a no-hitter.\u00c2\u00a0 Admittedly it was a little scruffy around the edges, with 4 walks, 2 hit-by-pitches, 2 wild pitches, 1 balk and an earned run conceded, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a no-no in the Herts Spring League record books.\u00c2\u00a0 Catcher Andy Cornish was the Falcon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main man at the plate, driving in two runs and coming around to score twice himself.<\/p>\n
After losing to the Falcons, Herts Eagles then had the unenviable task of facing the 2009 Double-A champions, and 2010 National Baseball League newcomers, the Mildenhall Bulldogs.\u00c2\u00a0 Many are excited to see how the Bulldogs will fair in the top tier this year and they started their season in fine form with a comprehensive 23-2 victory.<\/p>\n
Herts Hawks scored two runs in the bottom of the sixth (and final) inning to defeat the Thames Valley Bisons 13-12.\u00c2\u00a0 The Bisons rebounded by beating Leicester Blue Sox 11-7 in a game packed with incidents<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The most telling came in the fifth inning when Blue Sox pitcher Adam Brown disputed a balk call and was given the heave-ho by the umpire.\u00c2\u00a0 That sent the Blue Sox into a spin and the Bisons took full advantage, plating five runs in the frame to move ahead 6-3: a lead they would not relinquish despite a battling effort by Leicester.<\/p>\n The Windsor Bears ended the day by making short work of the Herts Raptors with a 31-0 win.\u00c2\u00a0 The Bears\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pitcher, Milner, had quite a game, pitching a six inning shut-out with eight K\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s while going 7-for-7 at the plate and driving in 11 runs.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Saturday is a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMajors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 day in the HSL.<\/p>\n At Ham Field, Richmond Flames start the day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s play at 10.30 with a game against Southampton Mustangs. The Mustangs will then face the reigning NBL champion Bracknell Blazers, before the Blazers take on the Essex Redbacks in the final game.<\/p>\n All eyes will be on the Mildenhall Bulldogs at Grovehill Ballpark after their demolition of the Herts Eagles last Saturday.\u00c2\u00a0 The United States Air Force team will take on the MK Bucks, who have experience of competing against the Bulldogs from their contests in the Midlands League last year, and will then round off the day by facing National Baseball League opponents in the Herts Falcons.\u00c2\u00a0 For all the talk of Spring Training results not meaning anything, the Falcons surely will want to restore a bit of Herts pride while the Bulldogs will see the game as a way to send out a warning shot to the rest of the NBL.\u00c2\u00a0 The action begins at 10.30 with a game between MK Bucks and Herts Eagles.<\/p>\n The \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMinors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 competition takes centre stage on Sunday.<\/p>\n As on Saturday, the opener at Ham Field involves the home team. The Single-A Richmond Dragons will face the Double-A Sidewinders at 10.30, before the Sidewinders follow on\u00c2\u00a0with a game against\u00c2\u00a0the Guildford Mavericks and then the Mavericks finish the day against the London Marauders.<\/p>\n At Grovehill, the Herts Raptors will try to gain a bit of confidence from their game against the Thames Valley Bisons, who showed a tendency to both score and concede a fair number of runs in their opening two games.\u00c2\u00a0 The Leicester Blue Sox will provide a sterner test for the Windsor Bears at 13.05, and the Midlands team will then round off the day with a game against Herts Hawks.<\/p>\n Further details about the HSL can be found on the official website: http:\/\/www.hertsbaseball.com\/HSL\/<\/a><\/p>\n As we probably all expected, those bright shoots of spring last week soon disappeared once the baseball started over the weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 It has only got worse this week: rainy, cold and even snowy in some parts, which could make for less-than-ideal playing conditions this weekend.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Even if the clouds stay away during the games, not all that likely considering it’s a Bank Holiday weekend, the amount of water that has fallen in some areas already has the potential to turn fields into quagmires.\u00c2\u00a0 Such was the story in North London over the previous weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 Martin Stabe of the London Mets described Finsbury Park as a “muddy swamp”<\/a> at their training session on Sunday and backed up his claims with a photo of his muddy ‘cleats’<\/a> on Twitter.<\/p>\n There might be a bit of mud around, but otherwise the baseball and softball facilities at Finsbury Park look like they are in very good shape.\u00c2\u00a0 The Mets organization has recently installed two new backstops, one for the main baseball diamond and one on their second softball diamond.\u00c2\u00a0 As the BaseballSoftballUK report<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0states: “The facility development project at Finsbury Park is a great example of the partnership between the club, the national development agency (BSUK), the regional Sports Partnership (Pro-Active North) and the local council (London Borough of Haringey)\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n The Mets are far from the only organization who have worked hard to improve their facilities over the offseason.\u00c2\u00a0 Those efforts extend from further developments<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0at the Herts Baseball Club complex, to BBF newcomers Essex Redbacks getting their diamond ready<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0for their first season in the league system.\u00c2\u00a0 The photos on the Redbacks’ website show that, as with most teams in the UK, they have been able to gain a bit of land surrounded by the traditional multitude of football pitches.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully the site of the new diamond, plus the Redbacks competing on it, will convince some of the football crowd that baseball may be worth a try.<\/p>\n Earlier this morning, and before this column was written, details of the 2010 Southern Adult league schedule were released. This brings the excellent news that there are nine new teams for 2010.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ll be looking at this more closely in next week’s British Baseball Beat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first round of games from the Herts Spring League (HSL) over the previous weekend gave all involved the chance to knock off some rust and ease their way into the 2010 British baseball season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,192],"tags":[556,188],"class_list":["post-7159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-baseball-2","category-british-baseball-beat","tag-british-baseball","tag-herts-spring-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7159"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7503,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159\/revisions\/7503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}This weekend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s games<\/h3>\n
Muddy swamps and muddy cleats<\/h3>\n
Fine-tuning baseball facilities<\/h3>\n
Breaking news: Southern League schedule released<\/h3>\n