{"id":717,"date":"2008-10-02T23:45:29","date_gmt":"2008-10-02T22:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=717"},"modified":"2009-10-28T12:02:12","modified_gmt":"2009-10-28T12:02:12","slug":"an-autumn-classic-great-britain-versus-the-bangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=717","title":{"rendered":"An Autumn Classic: Great Britain versus the Bangers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gb\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Planned<\/span><\/p>\n

On Saturday 4 October at 14:15, a person standing on a\u00c2\u00a0big patch of grass\u00c2\u00a0in Somerset and wearing a chest protector is going to say “Play ball”\u00c2\u00a0(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\u00c2\u00a06 months,\u00c2\u00a0the event of course is the baseball game between the Great Britain National Team and a squad of top cricketers picked by\u00c2\u00a0the\u00c2\u00a0blazing left-handed batter Marcus Trescothick (“Banger” to friends). Basic details of the event can\u00c2\u00a0be found here<\/a>, while below I\u00c2\u00a0take a\u00c2\u00a0look at the make-up of the Great Britain squad.<\/p>\n

A lot of attention has been given to the cricketers who are down to take part – and\u00c2\u00a0that’s obviously great for the event as a whole, and therefore\u00c2\u00a0good\u00c2\u00a0news for baseball\u00c2\u00a0 – but no less attention should be given to the players in the Great Britain squad. So, having previously taken a\u00c2\u00a0brief\u00c2\u00a0look<\/a> at the cricketers named in the publicity material, I will here run through the composition of Great Britain’s roster.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with Brant Ust<\/strong>, 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,\u00c2\u00a0the Seattle Mariners’\u00c2\u00a0Triple-A affiliate.<\/p>\n

Other players on the roster who\u00c2\u00a0live abroad\u00c2\u00a0to play\u00c2\u00a0club baseball are Ian Young<\/strong> (in France) and Chris Falls<\/strong>, Craig Pycock<\/strong>, and Sam Whitehead <\/strong>(all in Germany). Like Ust, the three Germany-based players have never competed for the National Team on British soil before, but\u00c2\u00a0Whitehead 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\u00c2\u00a0our\u00c2\u00a0domestic league.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Completing the roster are a number of players from the British league, with representatives from the Bracknell Blazers, Burgess Hill,\u00c2\u00a0the London Mets, the Manchester Eagles, and the Richmond Flames.<\/p>\n

Even though\u00c2\u00a0I 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\u00c2\u00a0first annual BaseballdeWorld<\/a> rankings have just been announced and place Great Britain\u00c2\u00a0ahead of\u00c2\u00a0Italy (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\u00c2\u00a0is inexplicably ignored on their listings<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0at the time of writing. [Update: BaseballdeWorld picked up on this story and kindly added the British Baseball Federation’s details\u00c2\u00a0to the site.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once the Baseball Cup\u00c2\u00a0of 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.\u00c2\u00a0Also in that group will be\u00c2\u00a0Russia and Japan;\u00c2\u00a0the latter team ranked first in the BaseballdeWorld rankings. The last time Great Britain played a non-European national team was in 1938. (Note:\u00c2\u00a0the\u00c2\u00a0group currently has “France\/Great Britain” down in the IBAF press release, as noted by Matt<\/a>, but at BaseballGB we are working under the assumption that Great Britain will\u00c2\u00a0be given\u00c2\u00a0the place that they won in last year’s Euros and that France’s name will be removed in due course, unless we hear otherwise.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday 4 October at 14:15, a person standing on a\u00c2\u00a0big patch of grass\u00c2\u00a0in Somerset and wearing a chest protector is going to say “Play ball”\u00c2\u00a0(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\u00c2\u00a06 months,\u00c2\u00a0the event of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,21],"tags":[85,63],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-baseball-2","category-international-baseball-2","tag-cricket","tag-great-britain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5968,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/5968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}