Baseball in Ireland. No that’s not a typo. it is indeed true and I am betting the possibility that a league exists which allows participants to use baseball bats for their intended purpose and not for what they are commonly associated with on the news in this country. Has never entered your mind but it does.
The league consist of six teams; the North Stars from Belfast, The Spartans, Black Sox,Twins,Hurricanes and the Greystones Mariners. It is comprised of an eclectic talent pool of players from America, Australia, South Amercia, England, Asia and, of course, Ireland. There are two leagues, the A league and the B league, the later a league for newer inexperienced players basically a developmentally league. We even have a national baseball team who came second in the European b-pool Championships held in Austria in 2006. There has also been an award winning film made on baseball in Ireland called the Emerald Diamond.
So what is it like to play in one of the minority of minority sports? Well I sat down with a member of the oldest baseball team in Ireland, the Greystones Mariners, and relative newbie to the sport, once described by baseball legend Ernie Harwell as “a ballet without music, drama without words.” Marcus Maher to discuss the weird, wacky, and interesting world of playing America’s game in Ireland.
So how does some one born and raised in Ireland ended up playing a game about as American as apple pie“I have a friend who is a big baseball fan and he was going to the open tryouts the Greystones Mariners were holding and I decided to go along with him and now a year later here I am on the team”. While some may look at the game of baseball as basically a jumped up, over- hyped game of rounders and a sport that requires little or no skill, see ball, hit ball, catch ball, throw ball, it is entirely different when you start to play according to Marcus.” oh god yeah” he responded enthusiastically when asked about how difficulty the sport was to play” it looks easy but it takes a lot of practice to learn the basic fundamentals of the game”. The great baseball player and icon Ted Williams sums it up perfectly “By the time you know what to do, you're too old to do it.” Marcus finds the most difficulty part of the game the hitting. “It’s hard to get used to the different speeds and locations a pitcher will throw the ball. For example he may throw a fastball on the inside part of the plate and the next pitch throw a curve ball that makes your knees buckle low and away from you”.
Now you maybe wondering as I was if baseball is so difficulty to play why play? Why not retire and take up another sport. But it’s the challenge of the game that is so alluring to Marcus” its an interesting game, there is so many variables that can happen in a baseball game no two games are ever alike. It keeps you on your toes”
Like its American counterparts the Irish baseball season starts in April but that is pretty much where the similarities end. The highest paid Major League Baseball Player, Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, the Manchester Untied of Baseball, is going to earn a salary of twenty five million dollars this season and that is not a typo. While the highest paid player in our league is going to earn exactly zero euro. Baseball in America attracts crowds of tens of thousands of passionate supports into big gorgeous, state of the art ball parks with top class facilities for players and fans alike, while baseball in Ireland attract literally one man and his dog and the occasional passers by who stop with bemused looks on their face not understanding what is going or why indeed they have stopped to look at all. This it self can lead to some unique situation. “We had to stop a training session after a dog with diarrhoea used our field as a toilet” we have also had to stop games while dogs are removed from the fields we play in explained Marcus. Weather also plays a factor in baseball in Ireland. In America play is stopped for rain over here due to the climate come rain, hail, snow or a thunderstorm if a game is scheduled to be played it will be played.” I remember arriving to a game once and being handed a bucket and told to scoop of water of the field so we could play the game.” Yet this all adds to the uniqueness of playing baseball in Ireland.
Asked about some of the highlights and lowlights of his fledging baseball career Marcus responed”the best game I played in was 3 and a half hour game between us and the Black Sox. It ended up 36-26 after we blew a ten run lead in the bottom of the seventh inning but came back to score eleven in the next inning to win.”
A report of the truly bizarre spectacle from the Greystone Mariners website reads as follows; “No that score is not a mis-print. In three and half hours, the Mariner and Black Sox 'B's managed to combine for a total of 62 runs. While the pitchers will be avoiding the stat book, hitters on both teams will be posting their averages to the major leagues. A 9 run Black Sox lead in the first looked ominous for the Mariners, but then so did the Mariner's 10 run lead in the 7th. But a game without logic was what we were witnessing. Long but no doubt fun to play in, it went to extra innings after the Black Sox did overhaul that 10 run deficit but with the Mariner's tacking on another 11 runs in the 8th, could they repeat their 7th inning effort? Thankfully for the Mariner's and anyone spectating, the answer was no”
Another time a game had to stopped “when these guys started throwing rocks at us as we played in Clondalkin, in the end the coaches of both teams chased them off with baseball bats”ok so maybe in my opening paragraph I lied about baseball bats being used for their intended purpose. Another game Marcus remembers is winning the B league championship “a game we were winning 11-0 then we went to sleep and the hurricanes came back to take a 12-11 lead but we went on to win it 13-12”. It was the first championship in the history of the Mariners.
Because baseball is a sport that flies under the radar funding is an issue and now that the Olympic committee has decide to drop Baseball from its schedule that will further impact the funding Irish baseball gets. When Marcus was asked what can be done to improve the game he responded “get more publicity attract more people into the game like Americans living over here, and more Irish people. and on the issue of funding reach out to some Irish Americans sugar daddy I guess” so until the Irish baseball equivalent of Roman abramovich comes along the game will remain in the shadows of Irish sport, played by a few diehards with a passion and love for a game so uniquely American but yet who play it with a unique Irish twist.
