Australian Baseball steps to the plate

Next weekend sees that start of a new era in Australian baseball with the first game of a new national league. Some ten years after the collapse of its previous incarnation the Australian Baseball League comprising teams from Canberra, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth will run from November through to the end of January.

With strong financial support from Major League Baseball hopes are high that the disappointments of previous years can be avoided.

Baseball in Australia has a long if chequered history.

The man credited with bringing the game to Australia is Samuel Lord an American merchant who arrived in Melbourne in September 1853. Lord made numerous efforts to organise baseball in his adopted city but lack of enthusiasm kept it from developing past the occasional game.

Shortly after Lord, other newly arrived Americans played an early form of baseball at the Exhibition Grounds on Saturday afternoons. These games were seen more as a curiosity than as a serious attempt to start a permanent competition.

The first recorded baseball event in Australia was a series of three games between Collingwood and Richmond in 1857. It’s also possible that American miners played the game on the gold fields of Ballarat about this time although no documentation exists to confirm these stories.

From there the game slowly spread with Sydney’s first recorded match taking place in July 1878 at Moore Park. Australian baseball was now assuming the role it would largely be seen to fill for almost the next 100 years, a winter fitness activity for cricketers.

During the 1880s the first clubs, associations and competitions were organised, all with varying degrees of success.

A major boost to the local game came with the lavish and expensive Spalding Tour of 1888. Albert Spalding who had been a successful baseball player in his own day was, by the time of the tour, a team owner, a baseball entrepreneur and America’s leading sporting goods businessman.

Spalding brought out his own Chicago White Stockings and an All-America team, made up of players from the other clubs. Big crowds attended games in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and media coverage was extensive.

An Australian team toured the US in 1897 playing numerous games against minor league and amateur clubs. Although it was not a particularly successful trip, losing more games than they won, the Australians at least gained invaluable experience and knowledge which they were able to pass on to the local baseball community.

The first decades of the 20th century marked a period of sustained growth for Australian baseball. There was greater public and media interest in the game. Baseball was by now considered a respectable game in its own right as well as the premier sport for cricketers in the off-season.

The early baseball clubs had usually been branches of cricket clubs, but after 1920 most Australian baseball clubs were dedicated to baseball alone.

This period witnessed a number of innovations including games against visiting American and Japanese ships, visits by professional American teams in 1914, 1928 and 1929, annual interstate carnival competitions for adults and schoolboys, a women’s competition, the start of baseball in Queensland and Western Australia and perhaps most importantly a formal and permanent national competition.

The Claxton Shield was inaugurated in 1934 in Adelaide. Previously matches between states were one-off affairs but now all states would come together and play each other on a regular basis. Until 1989 The Claxton Shield was Australia’s national baseball competition representing the highest level of play.

Somewhat paradoxically the local game was further advanced during the Second World War with more than 1 million American troops coming through Australia. Businesses and recreational pastimes were influenced by the visitors, who brought their money as well as their lifestyle.

Hundreds of American serviceman playing organised baseball in Australia did much for the domestic scene. Thousands of spectators attended games from Sydney to Perth, attracted not only by the American presence but also by the need for relief from the anxieties of war on their doorstep.

By the 1960s Australian baseball was forging a new direction.

No longer a “keep-fit-for-cricket” sport, it was developing quality players, administrators and competitions that attracted world attention. In 1971 Australia sent its first international side to Korea and Japan, marking the start of serious international competition as part of the Asian Baseball Federation. The first summer Claxton Shield took place in Brisbane in 1972 and the major club competitions also switched to the summer months.

The biggest step in Australian baseball was the launch of a national league across the country in the 1989-90 season. This first attempt would last until the end of 1999-2000 before ceasing operations. Although ultimately a failure it gave hundreds of quality Australian players the chance to play and develop in a high-standard national league.

In 2002 the Claxton Shield series recommenced and has continued each year since with Victoria winning the 2010 title.

This year fourteen Australians played in the US Major Leagues.

Over the years some notable Australian cricketers have played at the highest domestic levels including Ian Chappell, Neil Harvey, Norm O’Neill, Bill Ponsford & Monty Noble.

Today baseball is played in almost every part of Australia and many have experienced the pleasure of playing or watching this sport at some time in their lives. Australian baseball is about to step up to the plate.