London Tournament round-up
Legends honoured while hosts take title.
The London Tournament didn’t disappoint in 2011.
Campers and caravaners alike descended on Roundshaw Playing Fields in Croydon to pit their skills against the best of those who wanted to take advantage of a scheduled break in league fixtures, to play baseball against different opposition.
And it was the international element that took centre stage to start the weekend, with Dutch team Zuidvogels, from Utrecht, taking on the French all-stars. Although the Dutch team started brightly, it was the French who would come back to win a tight 4-2 ballgame. The precedent was set.
Zuidvogels host a tournament each Whitsun bank holiday, and the Croydon Pirates, of the National Baseball League, are perennial visitors to sample the delights that Amsterdam, only about 20 miles away, has to offer. Unfortunately, despite best efforts, south London can’t quite match the culture or canals that tourists to the Dutch capital flock for, but by all accounts they were very entertained by the other more social aspects of the weekend.
The Liverpool Trojans (AAA North) showed why they were unbeaten in 2011 with four wins over the weekend, earning them a place in the overall final, only to lose to the host Pirates 9-4, while the Milton Keynes Bucks and Birmingham Maple Leafs, representing the AA Midlands division, also powered into Sunday having won both games on Saturday afternoon. The Essex Arrows and French team were unbeaten through the weekend but didn’t make the final on run difference, something that was hard to stomach given the Pirates had lost 14-1 on Saturday morning to the Essex Redbacks.
But while baseball unites those in attendance of the tournament, it’s their love of the other parts of the game that encourage them to keep coming back to Croydon in the middle of the summer for a camping holiday.
Beers, burgers and banter joins clubs from across Europe and players from around the world, and where some come to play drunk, hungover or otherwise not sober, many come to see where their skills match up to opponents from different divisions. And a few come because they’re looking to document a slice of history. Joe Gray, from Project COBB – with the aim of documenting British Baseball history – was one such sort who was able to get the meanings behind the names of a few more clubs, while enjoying the contemporaries’ performances on the fields.
Like every year, right field on Diamond 2 got a peppering and the hedgerow couldn’t prevent some of the bigger shots leaving the playing fields altogether in the home run derby, although as yet no claims on smashed windscreens have been made by the gym and retail outlets’ parking lot.
Saturday’s rain wasn’t as dramatic as previous seasons – a personal memory is of bundling into the back of a minibus three years ago amid the heaviest 20-minute summer downpour on unofficial records – but it stayed away for Sunday as somehow the baseball gods knew the importance of completing the schedule.
And Sunday came with the added bonus of many teams playing on “Dave Ward Field” for the first time in history, with the Croydon Pirates legend being honoured for his dedication to the club by having the main diamond named after him.
The season resumes this Sunday as teams across the UK get back to league action, but the tournament will have whetted the appetite of many table toppers and hundreds, if not thousands, of baseball nuts in Britain will be fighting for their place in the National Baseball Championships even harder for the next couple of months.
