Derek Jeter has played 15 seasons for the New York Yankees and earns more than $A25 million a year but would he fancy playing short-stop for a summer in Sydney?
Probably not, but the new Australian Baseball League to launch in November is aiming to one day lure ageing Major League stars down under to give baseball unprecedented exposure in a cricket-loving country.
The new league will be bankrolled by Major League Baseball and the Australian Baseball Federation, and it’s the first time the MLB has made such an active investment in an overseas competition.
Much like the A-League has enticed football greats like Dwight Yorke and Robbie Fowler, the ABL is hoping the attractive lifestyle and a calendar which will coincide with the MLB’s off-season will encourage players of the ilk of Jeter, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols to play in Australia when they reach their twilight.
“The fact is more and more major league players are prolonging their careers in the major leagues,” ABL Baseball Operations Manager Ben Foster said.
“It’s not uncommon now for players to keep playing well into their 30s and into their 40s and still compete at the major league level.
“When you’re talking about a league where even if you make the absolute minimum wage, you’re talking about something that far outstrips what we could ever imagine offering them.
“But by the same token we have the added appeal of lifestyle and there’s a lot of conversations you have with professional players and coaches amongst the industry, saying `I’d love to come to Australia, I’ve never been there.’
“So there’s that drawcard where people would come more for a different landscape rather than any financial value.”
The former ABL ended up on the scrapheap in 1999 amid mounting debts, and although it seems like an unlikely `field of dreams’, the Baseball Federation of Australia believe they have the model in place to build a successful league.
The inaugural teams will be based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra and will be centrally owned by the competition itself, as opposed to private ownership.
If things go well teams will be added in Newcastle and on the Gold Coast, but generating enough money to achieve their goals will again be the fledgling league’s biggest challenge.
The ABL’s immediate plan is to get the 88 Australians playing in the majors and minors in the US – including the likes of Grant Balfour and Ryan Rowland-Smith – as well players of other nationalities in the US minor leagues and Asia to come and strengthen the local competition.
“We would be open to those arrangements because it’s a win-win,” said Foster.
“We will be targeting as many US professional players or Australians who are based in the US participating … we would be keen to pursue that.”
“We’re fairly realistic on where we will be starting out and we’re not expecting to emerge onto the scene and compete directly with the major sports.
“It’ll be a step-by-step process, but we’ve got some definite plans of growth in the league and we’re supremely confident in the type of product we can produce.”
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