The British baseball season opens Sunday:
The Southampton Mustangs and London Mets will be out to get some revenge over the teams that knocked them out of the play-offs last year (the Lakenheath Diamondbacks and Harlow – previously Southern – Nationals).
The Essex Arrows and Croydon Pirates will both see their double-header as a decent chance to get an early win or two on the board, while the Herts Falcons have been making plenty of noise in recent months and will want to show in their double-header against the Bracknell Blazers that ‘winning the offseason’ is only the start of their ambitions for 2012.
I’ve seen talk of a regular season game in London (like the ones just played in Tokyo). Maybe there’s still a chance for the game to catch on in the mother country!
Team to follow: Bolton Robots of Doom in AAA.
What is MLB’s fixation on opening the season in Japan over, say, the Dominican Republic? Or Mexico? Or Puerto Rico? Or Venezuela?
If MLB wants a really cool opening weekend, they could start with Saturday evening games in London and Amsterdam starting at 7pm GMT, so American fans could start watching at 2pm. Then have evening games in US, DR, PR, Mexico and Venezuela. After those are over, western division teams could play games in Seoul, Tokyo, and Sydney. Have a 2 game series for teams all over the world on an opening weekend that takes place after Spring Training is over; not before.
I’m just bored to death with the “Let’s open the season is Japan a week before ST is over!” crap.
And start this opening weekend with a Friday afternoon game in Cincinnati, which is where the season traditionally should open.
>>tas, presumably because Japan has larger stadiums. But yeah, the DR should get a MLB visit.
Regarding English baseball, do they run to third base first?
rbj — I just did a quick search to see if DR has a decent sized stadium for MLB play, found Estadio Cibao. It fits around 18,000, so it sounds like it’s the same size as the PR stadium that hosted some Expos games before they became the Nationals, Estadio Hiram Bithorn. And Mexico City has Estadio Foro Sol that fits 26,000 people. I say MLB buys some vuvuzelas in bulk and does a grand international opening weekend just for the hell of it.
Theron, the Bolton Robots of Doom were just victims of a bad BABIP last year; Sir Quentin of Oxford and Prince John are looking like a dynamic middle of the order duo.
Also David, awesome to see you mentioning British baseball, thank you!