British baseball back for 2013

British baseball is back, but details are still to be decided.

It’s been over three months since the last competitive game here in the UK, but teams are making up for lost time when they get back to spring training this month.

No one was elected to the Hall of Fame in the Major Leagues, but British baseball returns in 2013 with a further three inductees (see the British Baseball Hall of Fame website for more details) and perhaps even more teams registered for league action than ever before.

With still a week or so before the BBF AGM, which where many of the decision makers for the game will be elected to the Board, the discussions around the motions and other various conversations are as loud and heated as ever, but for now I think clubs, teams and players are happy to be back turning their arms over in preparation for the new season.

When details of the registered teams, leagues and structures are announced, I’ll break that news here, and later this month I’ll also take a look at how last year compared to the previous season in the much-discussed ‘fixtures won vs fixtures completed’ chart that I compiled. We’ll call it, ‘does the taking part really count?’ or something equally snappy! But for now, let’s have a look back at the past few months of growth, development and change…

While 2012 was dogged with bad weather and competing against, among other excellent sporting events, the Olympics and Paralympic Games on our doorstep in London, 2013 promises to offer a chance for renaissance of the game here on the shores of Blighty.

Omitted from the Olympic programme in 2005, baseball and softball had a last hurrah in Beijing and sat looking in at the excellent competitions of the 30th Olympiad. And things were resolved to change.

In the off-season, the International Baseball and Softball communities came together to form the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) to attempt to get back to the show (not the Majors, but rather the one where competitions are actually competed in by teams outside of North America!), with more information available via the BBF website

The Croydon Pirates became the South London Pirates. Many of the Braintree Rays team that folded at the start of last year have come together to form the Haverhill Blackjacks, looking to affiliate with the Cambridge Royals, once again boosting baseball in East Anglia.

Teams in the Midlands have set the precedent for incorporating both softball and junior programmes into their offer, with Leicester and Nottingham leading the way.

And following the success of similar set-ups in other sports, the GB Under-23s has been redesigned to become the GB Lions – a more formal development squad to feed in to the full senior national team, bringing baseball in line with major participant and spectator sports like cricket and rugby.

Something changed for baseball over the past year – people started to realise that if they wanted to see the change, they had to be the change.

It’s still a long old way to go until even mirroring other successful minority sports such as ice hockey, American football or basketball here in the UK, but with more teams doing more things to inspire more people to play their sports – well that can only lead to one thing: a legacy.

While baseball may have been omitted from the Olympics, the spirit of London lives on in the British game.