By www.baseballeurope.com
Dear European Baseball Federations,
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I’m writing to you to introduce you to the Strategic Plan of the Confederation of European Baseball (CEB), devised by your elected Executive Committee. The plan is the culmination of many months of work, which have resulted in what we believe is a strong vision for the development of baseball across our continent.
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You’ll be aware that the state of baseball in Europe is critical to the sport’s place internationally. Over half of the International Olympic Committee members are European. At a time when we are all working to return as regular sports included in the Olympics, the Executive believes that we need a clear and unifying plan to put European Baseball on track for significant growth.
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So, today, as your President, I would like to outline to you our vision for the sport in Europe.
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We envisage a day when baseball is popular in Europe. This is our vision. The first and most important step we can work towards to achieve this vision is to double the number of people playing baseball regularly and in teams by 2021. This equates to 250,000 players. To reach this target, we need to have a baseball community made up of more than 10,000 umpires (including 500 top ones), 20,000 coaches (including 1,000 top ones), 2,500 fields with permanent backstops and mounds and enough scorers. This means that we need to move from approximately 6,000 teams to 12,500.
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This is a considerable challenge that we are laying out for European baseball – one that we do not intend to take on alone. As your elected board, we will undertake four key approaches, centered on communication between, coordination, clarity and a commitment to our collective goal.
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CEB is a collective of member countries and cannot effect change without the buy-in and involvement of its member countries. The growth possible to achieve the strategic direction set by CEB is only possible if each country accepts and works towards achieving its potential. CEB will work to explore what this growth potential is with each member country and encourage:
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• The largest European baseball countries to double the number of players in their country.
• The middle group of countries to triple the number of players in their country.
• The smallest group of countries to reach 2,000 players in their country.
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These are figures of players who are members of a baseball team.
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For our part, we will be guided by a number of key plans covering Competitions, Development, Communications, Marketing and Revenue Generation.
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In devising this plan, we are undertaking to you a personal commitment for CEB to be the best possible European federation that we can be – one that is effective and thoroughly well governed, acting with integrity as guardians of the sport in Europe. We will define and evaluate the role we play as your board, setting, as we have, the high level strategy and vision and working to ensure it is followed. We will reform our board to be objectively balanced and appropriate to our work – made up of the right balance of skills and experience and inclusive of independent view. We will be conscious of the standards we should operate to and exercise appropriate and effective control over the organisation we serve. We will be accountable and transparent to you, our members, and to baseballers across the continent – our actions should stand up to scrutiny when reasonably challenged. Finally, we will work to position our organisation appropriately in relation to international, continental and national efforts.
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This challenge is a great one, but one that will move European baseball into a far better place. We will start our work to address some of the issues we face today and work with you to create a community working together towards a common purpose, over time.
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The Executive will continue to devise its plan during this winter and we look forward to presenting this new plan to you in more detail at the congress early next year. In the meantime, as ever, we would welcome your views and thoughts on how what we’ve laid out to date.
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Yours sincerely,
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Jan Esselman
President, Confederation of European Baseball
If you want to know why European basebal cannot compete with legitimate baseball countries, just read this document.
It isn’t a “vision”, it’s a pipe dream.
“Hey, folks, we want to double our participants in 7 years, so get out there and make it happen!”
The CEB president works for a company that made it’s money in shipping and in ore contracts. Can he seriously imagine going to a shipper and saying “We want you to double your tonnage in 7 years. Get it done.” That’s what he offers the European federations: No plan, no request for input, nothing specific offer of assistace, just double the number of players in Germany and triple the number in Great Britain.
Right.
Moreover, the generalities in his promise to be a great continental organization that is transparent, accountable, thrifty brave clean and reverent. Lotsof adjectives, but nothing substantial.
Those who have observed his biases in favor of the KNBSB must be moved by promises of objectivity. It’s the historical problem of European baseball management: people with little or no baseball experience being ruled by their provincial loyalties to the detriment of everyone else — and passing it off as governance. Now, here’s the continent’s head guy trying to convince local federations to work a membership miracle on the promise that the CEB will be committed to everyone. And, by the way, Rah rah.