At Last, Local Baseball in Australia is in A League of Its Own

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With US backing, the ABL is thriving, writes David Sygall

 Written by David Sygall

Field of dreams … the Sydney Blue Sox opened the Australian Baseball League season on Friday with a win over the Melbourne Aces. Photo: Anthony Johnson

A striking aspect of baseball’s opening night is the level of confidence emanating from the tight community of fans, players and officials associated with a sport that acts nothing like a domestic fringe dweller.

And, it’s not just about mimicking the stereotypical chest-pumping, too cool for school-style attitude often linked with quintessentially American sports. The Australian Baseball League and its small but dedicated band of followers have genuine reasons to feel positive about the game’s future here, as it begins its second season since relaunching.

There is plenty to be said for a game steeped in as much tradition as Test cricket, yet which somehow can effortlessly maintain a sense of relevance and modernity. Whereas cricket and many other sports keep tinkering with their rules, image and style, baseball is the same today as it was when it began in the US north-east 140 years ago. You know what you’re going to get every time you watch a game at the ol’ ball park.
”One thing I love about baseball is that it’s consistent,” says Sydney Blue Sox general manager David Balfour, whose son Grant is earning millions playing for the Oakland Athletics. ”It hasn’t changed since the day it started. I think Twenty20 cricket is basically trying to be like baseball. Cricket is baseball on valium.”

Balfour ran former incarnations of Sydney baseball teams and admits to having lost ”a lot of money”. He says the old league was ”very good, a well-run league”, but this league’s better for one enormous reason – the league is now majority owned by US Major League Baseball.

Centralised ownership means there are no owners going broke, player payment and trading issues, or arguments over how the teams should be structured and marketed. Everyone is pulling in the same direction under a sporting behemoth that definitely knows what it’s doing. Merchandise is from the same template as highly successful MLB stock, as is the game-day running sheet, right down to the seventh-inning stretch. It also means American players have a direct opening to play in Australia, setting up a mutually beneficial exchange of skills with Australia’s brightest talents, several of whom will doubtless add to the already impressive list of Australians to hit the big time in the US.

”The problem in the past was a lack of funds and pretty bad facilities,” Balfour says. ”That’s improved. To have the backing of MLB is a really big plus. It basically means we have just one owner, which makes things easier. In the old days nothing ever moved because everyone was looking after their own interests.”

It’s definitely not a bottomless pit of cash, Balfour adds, as MLB expects the ABL to be self-sufficient eventually. But the backing as the game seeks to permanently establish itself is priceless. Other practical factors add to baseball’s appeal. At the game on Friday night – which the Blue Sox won brilliantly 3-2 over the Melbourne Aces with a winning run at the bottom of the ninth inning – knowledgeable and passionate fans could hear at close proximity the whizz of the ball zooming through the air at 160 km/h. They could see its dip and swerve and feel the thud as it smacked into the catcher’s glove. Whereas cricket’s rule tinkering has nearly killed the art of bowling, the baseball pitcher’s skill remains highly celebrated. Same with the batters, who are as courageous as they are powerful.

”The standard is already there,” says Bob Turner, the former basketball identity who is now a chief advisor to Baseball NSW and the Blue Sox. ”You’ve got 20 kids who played in the Majors last year playing in the league. You’ve got five guys who played in the league last year who went on to play in the Majors this year. The fact that Major League Baseball is such a major driving force behind the ABL gives every young fellow a real chance. It’s now a case of, ‘If I show my skills, I can make it to the big league’. The success of the league will probably be based on crowds and media coverage. But I think people have accepted that it’s here to stay and will become bigger and bigger over the years.”