dale-And school is still in session.
Which adds up to $20.2mil - comfortably under Adrian Gonzales’ salary of nearly $22mil. I took it as read that the claim was not that his individual salary was higher than all players of all 4 of those codes added together (which would be something like 800 players).
Baseball has been played in Australia since 1857, although to be fair it was probably a hybrid of baseball and cricket. Seems to been bought over buy the Americans on the gold fields.
It is a second level sport much like basketball or soccer (but smaller than both) is in this country but they are giving it a red hot go!
Some recent Aussies playing in the USA include:
Peter Moylan - Braves
Trent Oeltjen - Dodgers
Ryan Rowland-Smith - Mariners.
Interesting move, although I doubt they’ll have much sucess turning baseball into the Next Big Australian Sport - after all, about the only way they can get much public interest in Australian gridiron is if the players are A) Female and B) wearing lingerie, and even then the resulting sport doesn’t have much public repsect IMHO.
I’m not even aware of many “social” baseball teams here (I know they exist, but never met anyone who plays in one) so I suspect the sport lacks the junior/amateur/grass-roots level stuff that cricket, the various footballs, netball, etc enjoy.
Still, it will be interesting to see how the baseball match plays out - and if nothing else, at least they’re trying something new.
There are plenty of local leagues around, I have a team across the road called the Mornington Pirates and we have seen players move direct from Australian local teams to US teams.
A lot of cricket players play baseball in the off season.
Depends on the area I suppose, but you are right football, netball, tennis even basketball grass roots competitions are all promoted fairly heavily by the governing bodies.
I played in an organized league in the ACT as a youth in the 1970’s, so they’re around and have been for a long time. I also played in the Australian National Championships at U-15 and U-17 and the level of talent was quite high. One player (Craig Shipley) went on and had a long MLB career.
I don’t think they are doing this to make baseball a major sport in the country, but more to keep the growth going and maybe pick up some TV audience. They are reaching out in other places like Brazil and India as well. Australia seems to have hitched it’s wagon to Asia in a general sense (economically and athletically, if not culturally) and baseball is big in Asia.
Trivia: The first live event broadcast in color in Australia was a baseball game in 1975. Why baseball? I have no idea. It was between two top NSW sides.
The '70s were kind of the high-water mark for baseball in Australia - but never really made it to the ranks of a minor sport like lawn bowls or snooker. They also had a few multi-sport athletes who played at the time quit to concentrate on cricket such as the Chappell brothers and Alan Border.
The Chappell brothers were cricketers first and foremost and only played baseball to keep their batting eye during the off-season.
The ABL is vastly superior to anything that existed in the 70’s and looking at the website of my old club things have advanced exponentially.
Grant Balfour was looking like he was going to be the second Aussie in the All-Star Game until an unfortunate game today.
Not according to what I’ve heard a few times - Ian and Trevor saw themselves primarily as baseball players while Greg leaned toward cricket, but this is the only reference I could find quickly.
I’m not saying that the baseball was better in the '70s - only that it was closer to becoming a recognised sport in the same way that basketball doesn’t attract a shadow of the attention it got in the '90s.
The 70s were well before my time so I don’t know how big baseball was then, but basketball still has quite a strong following - it might not be huge the way it was in the 90s but it’s still ticking over and considered a perfectly respectable sport.
The (apparent) complete lack of a suitable baseball stadium anywhere in the country is quite telling, though - Aussies do like their sport so you’d think there’d be at least one “proper” baseball/softball diamond (with a grandstand) somewhere…
They were a whole lot better and more serious than that. Chappelli played Claxton Shield (national interstate competition 1964-1966) and was named as the Australian catcher twice (1964 & 1966) with South Australia winning the national title.
Blacktown International Sports Park in western Sydney has three dedicated baseball diamonds, but they’d only seat 2,000 in the main grandstand.
The Australian Baseball League teams operate out of six stadiums in Adelaide (Norwood), Brisbane (RNS Showground), Canberra (Narrabundah), Melbourne (Altona Meadows), Perth (Barbagallo) and Sydney (Blacktown).
Agreed, especially as the AFL’s Swans have played there for many years.
The only real problem I see with using a cricket ground is that it’s an oval, so you end up with foul areas the size of Oakland’s.
You also end up with an outfield wall only just past the oval’s centre square - so everyone who’s sitting behind the outfield is barely able to make out the players. Of course, if they have a wall, all the seating at ground level back there is going to have a hard time seeing much of anything.
When the first solo home run is hit, I wonder how many fans will wonder why the batter doesnt get 6 runs.
Who is sponsoring this $$$$$$ sometimes is the reason for MLB doing this
That, and so many talented athletes going to other sports, I am sure MLB is eager to tap new markets for talent
A baseball diamond figured on a cricket ground should be interesting I wonder if they will have to move in the home run line. It would be more fun if they didnt.
Most enlightening! Thanks for that. All I can say is it seems the sport really needs better PR people in this country - I can’t remember the last time I heard anything about any of the Australian baseball teams in the mainstream media or even just people talking about it.
But when did you most recently hear about the Australian Ice Hockey League or the Australian National Water Polo League?
They’re a sport with interest only of a very tiny minority - the fact that they’re ‘national’ doesn’t mean much.
I’ve never heard of the Australian Ice Hockey League before (Wikipedia tells me there aren’t even any active teams in Queensland), but I’m aware of the National Water Polo League - I’ve certainly seen people playing Water Polo at big swimming pools and things like that.
Well the season opener is a couple of days away and I heard a radio report that both MBL teams have arrived, that they are playing a couple of the state teams as warm-up before the double header Sat/Sun. It’s been about as low key as you’d expect considering the local indifference.
Two interesting points is that this weekend the Sheffield Shield final (arguably the best First Class cricket competition on the globe) is being played between NSW and WA starting Friday. NSW finished top of the table and hence have home advantage but because of this baseball series at the SCG they are playing away in Canberra.
The other one was that to complete the transformation 250 tonnes of San Diego clay was imported to prepare the infield. Shit, these pampered gum chewers aren’t able to play on the local dirt? There’s a few million square miles of Red Centre on this continent and all of it has the geological character with an unacceptable risk of knocking 0.1 of a point of somebody’s batting/fielding average? I presume its being dumped as landfill when they jet out?
Damned picnickers.